Houston's Reimagined Bus System

[TexasPlaya]

Unfortunately, due to corruption and downright incompetency by Houston METRO, the major light rail expansion saw the completion of the least important alignments and quite a bit of debt that will put significant rail expansion back maybe a decade. Fortunately, METRO has been on track to right the ship and has unveiled a redesigned bus system without any new operating costs.

Here's a good summary of the proposed from The Atlantic's City Lab: Houston's Plan to Get an Amazing New Bus System for No New Money

So how could Metro possibly improve that much without any new operating costs? For starters, writes Walker, the existing network has loads of redundant routes that make it inefficient. Additionally, the new system relies more heavily on transfers, which passengers tend to dislike in theory but which can bring them to their destination more quickly in practice....

...The bigger change was Metro's decision to prioritize ridership over service area. That means focusing on corridors with high ridership patterns at the expense of those serving more remote areas with fewer passengers.

Existing Frequent Bus Service vs Proposed

[memph]

I did a little exercise. Plan a transit network for a city you're not very familiar with (Houston, since I'm from Ontario) without looking at where transit there is currently to try to avoid any biases. Plan the routes based on how close together major potential trip generators are, such as retail, multi family housing, lower income housing, small lot SFH, office parks, universities, hospitals, even industry to a degree if it's dense enough (just based off Google Earth aerials).

This is the result


Basically in much of Houston, things are too spread apart to justify much transit, and I kind of gave up trying... But there is one area where things are closer together, and a dense network of bus routes would be viable, highlighted in blue, basically the 610 Loop and a similarly sized area west of it.

After I was done mapping this out, it turns out this is indeed the densest part of Houston, home to about 1.4 million people at 5,500 ppsm (Houston's urban area averages at 3000 ppsm). I think it's likely the job density is even high compared to the Houston average. And it corresponds pretty well to this frequent transit map too. It fits in relatively well with the LRT plans, most of the original proposals went through areas that had a high concentration of routes on my map, although the Westheimer/Westpark corridor should probably been given higher priority compared to other lines (Gold, Red North and Purple especially).

[memph]

Now as for income... I do think trying to have transit in places that are lower income makes sense. These are the people that would benefit the most. If the purpose of transit planning is to attract riders, lower income people are the ones that are easiest to attract. That's not to say there's no place for middle and upper middle class on transit, just that it's going to take more to attract them. Lower income people aren't guaranteed users though, many might still buy a cheap old used car that they can barely afford (when including insurance, gas, maintenance) if transit is not good enough.

So where do poor people live in Houston?

Well the Western part of Houston is quite wealthy, although this is just an average.
http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?cityincome

A place that's an even mix of low and high income will show up as middle income on average, even though it has more poor people than a middle income area. There's still a fair bit of lower income people starting around Gulfton and heading SW from there.

http://datatools.metrotrends.org/cha...44784545898438

East half of the 610 Loop is poor too, and several parts are dense enough for decent transit. Same goes for the area around Spring Valley and beyond, and also Southeast of 610 into Pasadena.

There's also Cloverleaf and North Houston, as well as areas Northeast of 610. Much of that is low density so it might be difficult to support transit. Really much of East, South and North Houston is fairly low density (even inside 610), at least until you get to the newer suburbs like The Woodlands, Atascocita and Pearland. A lot of these areas are on a grid, both local street grid and a broader arterial grid, and blue collar employment near and within the communities, often along the arterials (potential bus routes). But there's also a lot of large lots, and in some areas vacant lots too. Looks like they could certainly benefit from infill leading to high residential, and employment and retail density.

[memph]

One more thing...

I think if you really want transit that benefits someone, usually you don't just want them to live near one good route, whether that's heavy rail or just frequent bus. One line will only take you to the places along that line. Most people will have to go to places beyond what one would find along just one line. If they need a car to get to those places, they'll buy a car, and once they have a car already paid for, the likelihood of them benefiting from transit is low. Basically, you need either really bad congestion, really high parking costs at their destination, or really really fast transit.

That's why it's important to not just have one good routes nearby, but a whole network of good routes nearby. If you can't have a good network, probably your best bet is just a BRT to downtown with some park and rides, and maybe dial-a-ride service (some municipalities have found free taxis is cheaper to provide than dial-a-ride). Maybe some very basic bus service for people who really have no choice.

And the high quality frequent network doesn't have to cover the whole city. I'm a half broke car-less student, so I don't do much shopping and my university ("work place") is close by, so I'm not the best example... But my parents who live in a suburb of Toronto and each have a car still do most of their shopping relatively close by. Even though Toronto's sprawl continues for 50-60 miles from where they live, I'd say for 95% of shopping trips, doctor's appointments, etc, they stick to places 5-6 miles away or less. Maybe once a month they'll venture to the big regional mall, or the outlet mall, each about 15 miles away. A couple times a year they might visit a friend in another corner of the city, or go downtown to see a show or museum, but 99% of the time they stick to areas about 15 miles away or less.

Even for commuting, one parent works downtown Toronto and the other in the same suburb they live in. That's pretty typical. It's rare for Torontonians to commute across the metro area. From the outer suburbs to downtown, that happens in moderate numbers. But from the Western suburbs to the Eastern suburbs, or vice versa is very rare. If commuting time wasn't an issue, you might expect 50% of people to work in their half of the metro, and 50% to work in the opposite half. But in Toronto, it's really more like 95%/5%. If you live in the far outer suburbs, it's even less likely you'll commute to the opposite side, it might literally be something like 98%/2%.

I'd imagine Houston is similar. Lower income people might decide it's not worth having a car just to take 1-2 trips a year to the other side of Houston (or to other parts of Texas and the country). Either rent a car, use a friend's/family's, or just forget it and not go there. Middle income might go down to one car. One person might still use it to get to work, but the other might use transit. And if there's teenagers or grandparents living with them, they'd use transit too whereas otherwise they might have their own car, or borrow the parents'.