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Old Posted Feb 21, 2012, 11:56 PM
USMichael USMichael is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanactivist View Post
Of the 10 counties in the Houston MSA, 5 of them have (to my knowledge) no access at all to "public transit"...

Liberty County-- 75,643
Waller County-- 43,205
Chambers County-- 35,096
Austin County-- 28,417
San Jac County-- 26,384

That's 208,745... very little (both population and geographic space) of Houston MSA's total. In fact there are huge swaths of Harris County that are 20+ miles from the nearest bus stop.

The conversation we need to be having in our Texas cities is how can we improve the QUALITY of transit services that we already have?? I still believe that most people don't ride public transit because they think it's "just for poor people" or are afraid of violence on the bus. Until that perception changes, transit numbers in cities like Houston and Dallas are always going to be down in the dumps.
I think that perception is definitely a major part of it.

About 2.2 Million people reside in the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, so it is similar to DART with regards to having a great percentage of suburbs municipalities with no public transportation access.

One of the best improvements can be made by expanding service, because as service expands more people can see buses near their neighborhoods with their neighbors on board which could help dispel some of the caricatures put forward by the media.

However we have got a long way to go.
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