In the spirit of “get something posted today with a minimum amount of time”, I also present an email from a friend of mine who works in the business (transit) who commented a while back to me on Capital Metro’s plan. Note that he’s more sanguine about streetcars than am I; he also mentioned in a follow-on that streetcars on both 4th and Congress wouldn’t necessitate a transfer in all cases, since there are models out there that could easily navigate that turn.
Here’s his note to me (this was a couple of months ago):
Hey M1EK,
Good stuff about the Cap Metro plan. I agree with you: it’s flawed.
The transfer penalty for choice riders is significant regardless of the type
of transfer – if it’s not a one-seat transit ride to work, it’s usually not
going to compete, in the mind of the choice rider, with driving to work.
Some folks will tolerate having to transfer between trains (which is how
commuter rail generally works), but much fewer will tolerate transferring
from a bus to a train to get to work. For example, the park and ride bus
that used to run from north Houston to the Texas Medical Center was
truncated when the rail line opened, and people who used to ride the bus all
the way to the TMC are now forced to transfer to the train in downtown.
Needless to say, ridership on that route has fallen.
As you correctly note, almost nobody will tolerate a rail-to-bus transfer to
get to work.
About eight or so years ago, when TxDOT was doing the Major Investment Study
on the Katy Freeway (I-10 west), they looked at using the existing MKT
railroad right-of-way running parallel to the freeway as a possible commuter
rail corridor. It would have been a quick and smooth trip into the central
city, but there was no way to distribute the passengers to major activity
centers such as downtown or the Texas Medical Center once they got there
(because Bob Lanier the highway lobby whore was still mayor, the Main Street
rail line wasn’t even on the drawing board at the time). Passengers would
have been forced to get off the train at the Amtrak station just northwest
of downtown Houston and continue their journeys by bus. Even if the bus trip
from the train station into downtown was relatively short, you can imagine
what the ridership models looked like when the transfer penalty was factored
in. The commuter rail idea was dropped and the MKT right-of-way was used to
expand the freeway itself instead.
What kind of ridership predictions is Cap Metro making for this system?
The streetcar idea intrigued me. This plan might work if a downtown
streetcar network were implemented to distribute passengers. People might
not transfer from trains to shuttle buses, but they’ll transfer from trains
to streetcars. Such is the nature of mode preference.
