This is what happens when voters are driven by emotion rather than data. Hopefully, the county commissioners and the voters will remember that when it comes time to plan and vote on flood control bonds. From the InBox:
Bill King
In 2001, the last year before Metro began spending money on light rail, Houstonians took over 89 million trips on Metro’s local bus service.[i] Last year, the combined trips on the local bus service and the light rail system came in at about 76 million, a decline of over 14% since 2001. [ii] Over that period Harris County’s population has grown by over 30%.
Considering that after Metro invested $2.2 billion in light rail, yet fewer Houstonians are opting to take transit, it seems a good time to ask: Was it worth it?
This, of course, is not what the promoters of Metro’s light rail system promised back in 2003. Nor, I expect, is it what the voters thought they were going to get when they voted in favor of the 2003 referendum which authorized the construction of the light rail system. The rosy projections of increased transit ridership originally promised in 2003 have long since been abandoned. Instead, the program appears to have mostly converted a significant portion of bus riders to light rail riders.[iii]
This means the light rail has done virtually nothing to reduce congestion. Getting some buses off the street probably improves congestion to some minimal degree, but then I have never been in a traffic jam on Harrisburg anyway. And the light rail causes its own congestion, like the fact that we can no longer synchronize the lights downtown.
Although Metro’s leadership appears to have mostly abandoned the idea of building more light rail, it still seeks to justify the investment on a variety of other grounds.
It argues, for example, that the light rail has spurred development in the areas it serves. And there is some evidence that supports that contention. The East End is certainly experiencing a revival that more or less coincides with the light rail being extended into that neighborhood. To what degree that new development was caused by the light rail or independent of it is difficult to ascertain.
In my opinion, Metro undermines its credibility by frequently citing the total new development along the light rail lines. I think the last number I heard was $8 billion. But that includes all the new development in the Texas Medical Center, which had absolutely nothing to do with the light rail.
But whether there have been any collateral advantages from the construction of the light rail system is not the question we should be asking ourselves. The question should be: Why did Houstonians support building in the first place?
I don’t have any polling from the time of the referendum, but polling on transit over a long period of time has shown that most people support transit because they hope someone else will take it and relieve the congestion they experience. (SeeIf So Many People Support Mass Transit, Why Do So Few Ride?, Eric Jaffe, City Lab, September 22, 2014.) Contrary to the public’s impression, very little definitive scholarly research shows that transit reduces congestion.
This raises what I have always thought that is one of Metro’s principal problems: the lack of clear objectives. Metro’s vision and mission statements are so vague that they can be interpreted to mean anything. Interesting, neither even mentions the word “congestion”. (Click [here]to read vision and mission statements.)
It is impossible to manage an organization that does not have a clear objective(s). This is a conversation we need to have. What do we want Metro to do? Is it to reduce congestion? Provide transportation to those who cannot afford a car or are physically incapable of operating one? Spur redevelopment? Perhaps Metro should have another referendum to answer this fundamental question.
And then the question we will have to ask ourselves: What is the most cost-effective strategy to accomplish the objective(s)? There is no way to know that answer, until we know the objective. But I doubt light rail, especially at-grade light rail, is going to be the solution for any objective.
In the meantime think about this. What could we have done instead with the $2.2 billion that was spent on light rail? The answer is lots. Like solving most of our flooding problem or resurfacing virtually every street in the street in the City or repairing our dilapidated wastewater system or putting more police officers on the streets or demolishing some of the thousands of dangerous buildings in the City or any one of dozens of other critical priorities facing the City.
The question is not whether light rail is a good thing or not. The question is whether it was the best use of $2.2 billion of taxpayer money. The answer to that question is pretty clearly, “No.”
[i] Metro keeps separate ridership statistics on its local service, which covers the city street grid, and its “Park & Ride” service, which shuttles passengers from the suburbs using its HOV system.
[ii] The FTA counts “unlinked” trips. That is anytime a transit rider get on a transit vehicle. Because riders frequently must transfer between buses and/or trains, a single commute can result in a transit agency (including Metro) counting a single commute two or more times. Some Metro critics argue that Metro’s ridership statistics are inflated because the light rail system resulted in more transfers as riders were forced to take a bus to an LRT terminus to continue their trip. I have not found any data that would support or refute this claim. Metro can track transfers on riders which use the Metrocard, but it has only aggregated that data for one short term study fairly recently. I cannot think of any way to reconstruct the data going back to 2003.
[iii] At least, that is what pretty clearly happened when the original red line on Main Street was opened 2004-2005. It also appears to have occurred when the Main Street line was extended to the north in 2013. However, there was an increase in ridership when the East End and University lines were opened in 2015, without any corresponding decrease in bus ridership. This was about the same time that Metro rolled out its Reimagine program, which dramatically restructured its bus routes. So, it is difficult to sort out whether the new light rail lines had fundamentally different ridership dynamics or if there was a loss in ridership along those lines like the Main Street line that was offset by an increase in ridership from Reimagine.
One sgain, Bill King goes off the rails with his “what could we have done with the money” comments. Since Metro pays for light rail with Metro sales tax dollars, those dollars would not be available for other uses. The rest of the piece is mostly sour grapes, since the rail is built and the money spent.
1
Jimsays
Those sales tax dollars can be diverted to any other find with a simple vote. This is an important analysis in hindsight because it can give evidence of what should be done in the future
Bill Danielssays
Ross:
Bob Lanier disagreed with you.
Foolmesays
One should compare the economic effect of the $2 billion and it’s rate of return (or expense) in the areas that the train was built.
Roykosays
In the prophetic words of Bob Lanier:
“First, rail’s supporters say ‘It’s cheaper.’ When you show it costs more, they say, ‘It’s faster.’ When you show it’s slower, they say, ‘It serves more riders.’ When you show there are fewer riders, they say, ‘It brings economic development. When you show no economic development, they say, ‘It helps the image.’ When you say you don’t want to spend that much money on image, they say, ‘It will solve the pollution problem. When you show it won’t help pollution, they say, finally, ‘It will take time. You’ll see.'”[ii]
[ii] Former Mayor Bob Lanier on rail transit proponents in Houston Metropolitan magazine, November 1990.
In a 1990 meeting with recently fired METRO chairman, Bob Lanier, I asked why Kathy Whitmire was using an illegal, NO BID contract for her 14 mile monorail.
Lanier said….”that the contractors could hide $200 million profit in that billion dollar project”
Houston Press, Mar 21, 1991 interview with Alan Field and Tim Fleck
TexasRepublicanPatriotsays
Bill King is correct in all that he says, but there is even more to understand about the “Toy Train” disaster. In 2003, barely 8,000 voters separated the “No” from the “Yes” voters on building more rail beyond the 7-mile initial line from downtown to the Astrodome. The initial 7-mile line cost about $ 65 million per mile, but the more recent lines have cost more than double at above $ 130-150 million per mile. (Note: the new 8 lane wide 6-mile long addition to the Tomball 249 Parkway cost just $ 25 million per mile) Sadly, the biggest mega-accordion natural gas powered bus costs just around $ 300,000 per bus, and most other natural gas powered buses are a fraction of that cost. Houston could have afforded over 5,000 new buses, PLUS made hundreds of millions of dollars of more investments in our extensive roads and their critically needed resurfacing and expansion programs. Buses run on surfaces roads anywhere, and trains run on expensive fixed rail imbedded in surface roads thus unmovable to other surface roads. Buses can be moved from route to route, as demand ebbs and flows, but choo choo trains cannot. Had the election been held a week later, Michael Stevens’s Texans for True Mobility opposing the Metro plan, might have prevailed. They started down 29-71% in the polls 60 days earlier, and ended up 49.8 to 50.2%. Now, the new lines create insane traffic backups down Smith, Milam, Fannin, etc., as the trains cross those eastern downtown main roads, and thus mobility is hurt through downtown. Trains on street rail are inherently more dangerous than buses on the same roads, and we see that daily with incident after collision incident after collision incident, and even death after death more than any buses would have caused. Again, it is insane to keep these trains running. We should sell the train cars to cities that are not as spread out as we are, and use the funds to buy hundreds of nat gas buses. Lastly, when in Atlanta recently, I am simply amazed how bad their traffic is compared to us, because they have one loop road distanced from downtown like our Beltway, but no 610 loop, nor any Grand Parkway. Their Marta elevated monorail is also an outrageously expensive transit debacle, which could have been used for real HOV bus lanes tripling capacity or more. Choo choo disciples need to understand that Houston is NOT like landlocked New York & Chicago, with their water barriers around most of one or two sides. Houston needs its Metro system 1% sales tax revenue spent on natural gas buses and well-maintained surface roads to carry them around. Only then, will we have the transportation system that meets most of our needs……….and the millions more that will call Houston home in the decades ahead. We must stop blowing these billions on anything other than natural gas buses and the resurfacing, improving, and building surface roads that they can run around on. Lastly, please remember the insanity of the Astros Parade, with the stupid trains falling miserably short of moving all the fans from the Astrodome to downtown in time to see the parade, and back again. This happens every sellout Rodeo night, as well. If you lined up 50-75 nice natural gas buses at the Astrodome, you could load and move 3-4 times more people in the same time frame, and no one would have missed the parade, or wait 3 hours to get home from a soldout Rodeo performance. Lastly, I had to laugh the other day sitting on Milam waiting on the second train to cross the second cross street. How insane this situation is there now. When I looked under the trains at their wheels, I could have sworn I saw rubber-like tires like a bus running on the rails? Whether train bodies on bus-like chassis, its insanely expensive, and wrecking the traffic flow downtown. Sell the trains and recycle the money into natural gas-powered buses. We can run 3-4 times as many nat gas buses down the great doublewide HOV lanes too, and really move people smartly and quickly through Houston. We must only suppress our childhood-derived love of choo choo trains, in order to fix this traffic and money mess. That’s what the Metro Train vote of 2003 was all about – choo choo trains for some people to feel like we’re New York or Chicago. My advice is that if you really like that environment, please move there. The rest of us will stay here and support leaders like Bill King that want to help us move quickly around town. Bill King should be at least the next Metro Chairman, so he can truly improve our traffic and road system, selling the choo choos to other foolish cities, and buying more nat gas buses. 15 years after the stupid 2003 vote, it’s long past time to fix the mess created by toy train lovers wanting to relive their childhood choo choo experiences.
One sgain, Bill King goes off the rails with his “what could we have done with the money” comments. Since Metro pays for light rail with Metro sales tax dollars, those dollars would not be available for other uses. The rest of the piece is mostly sour grapes, since the rail is built and the money spent.
Those sales tax dollars can be diverted to any other find with a simple vote. This is an important analysis in hindsight because it can give evidence of what should be done in the future
Ross:
Bob Lanier disagreed with you.
One should compare the economic effect of the $2 billion and it’s rate of return (or expense) in the areas that the train was built.
In the prophetic words of Bob Lanier:
“First, rail’s supporters say ‘It’s cheaper.’ When you show it costs more, they say, ‘It’s faster.’ When you show it’s slower, they say, ‘It serves more riders.’ When you show there are fewer riders, they say, ‘It brings economic development. When you show no economic development, they say, ‘It helps the image.’ When you say you don’t want to spend that much money on image, they say, ‘It will solve the pollution problem. When you show it won’t help pollution, they say, finally, ‘It will take time. You’ll see.'”[ii]
[ii] Former Mayor Bob Lanier on rail transit proponents in Houston Metropolitan magazine, November 1990.
In a 1990 meeting with recently fired METRO chairman, Bob Lanier, I asked why Kathy Whitmire was using an illegal, NO BID contract for her 14 mile monorail.
Lanier said….”that the contractors could hide $200 million profit in that billion dollar project”
Houston Press, Mar 21, 1991 interview with Alan Field and Tim Fleck
Bill King is correct in all that he says, but there is even more to understand about the “Toy Train” disaster. In 2003, barely 8,000 voters separated the “No” from the “Yes” voters on building more rail beyond the 7-mile initial line from downtown to the Astrodome. The initial 7-mile line cost about $ 65 million per mile, but the more recent lines have cost more than double at above $ 130-150 million per mile. (Note: the new 8 lane wide 6-mile long addition to the Tomball 249 Parkway cost just $ 25 million per mile) Sadly, the biggest mega-accordion natural gas powered bus costs just around $ 300,000 per bus, and most other natural gas powered buses are a fraction of that cost. Houston could have afforded over 5,000 new buses, PLUS made hundreds of millions of dollars of more investments in our extensive roads and their critically needed resurfacing and expansion programs. Buses run on surfaces roads anywhere, and trains run on expensive fixed rail imbedded in surface roads thus unmovable to other surface roads. Buses can be moved from route to route, as demand ebbs and flows, but choo choo trains cannot. Had the election been held a week later, Michael Stevens’s Texans for True Mobility opposing the Metro plan, might have prevailed. They started down 29-71% in the polls 60 days earlier, and ended up 49.8 to 50.2%. Now, the new lines create insane traffic backups down Smith, Milam, Fannin, etc., as the trains cross those eastern downtown main roads, and thus mobility is hurt through downtown. Trains on street rail are inherently more dangerous than buses on the same roads, and we see that daily with incident after collision incident after collision incident, and even death after death more than any buses would have caused. Again, it is insane to keep these trains running. We should sell the train cars to cities that are not as spread out as we are, and use the funds to buy hundreds of nat gas buses. Lastly, when in Atlanta recently, I am simply amazed how bad their traffic is compared to us, because they have one loop road distanced from downtown like our Beltway, but no 610 loop, nor any Grand Parkway. Their Marta elevated monorail is also an outrageously expensive transit debacle, which could have been used for real HOV bus lanes tripling capacity or more. Choo choo disciples need to understand that Houston is NOT like landlocked New York & Chicago, with their water barriers around most of one or two sides. Houston needs its Metro system 1% sales tax revenue spent on natural gas buses and well-maintained surface roads to carry them around. Only then, will we have the transportation system that meets most of our needs……….and the millions more that will call Houston home in the decades ahead. We must stop blowing these billions on anything other than natural gas buses and the resurfacing, improving, and building surface roads that they can run around on. Lastly, please remember the insanity of the Astros Parade, with the stupid trains falling miserably short of moving all the fans from the Astrodome to downtown in time to see the parade, and back again. This happens every sellout Rodeo night, as well. If you lined up 50-75 nice natural gas buses at the Astrodome, you could load and move 3-4 times more people in the same time frame, and no one would have missed the parade, or wait 3 hours to get home from a soldout Rodeo performance. Lastly, I had to laugh the other day sitting on Milam waiting on the second train to cross the second cross street. How insane this situation is there now. When I looked under the trains at their wheels, I could have sworn I saw rubber-like tires like a bus running on the rails? Whether train bodies on bus-like chassis, its insanely expensive, and wrecking the traffic flow downtown. Sell the trains and recycle the money into natural gas-powered buses. We can run 3-4 times as many nat gas buses down the great doublewide HOV lanes too, and really move people smartly and quickly through Houston. We must only suppress our childhood-derived love of choo choo trains, in order to fix this traffic and money mess. That’s what the Metro Train vote of 2003 was all about – choo choo trains for some people to feel like we’re New York or Chicago. My advice is that if you really like that environment, please move there. The rest of us will stay here and support leaders like Bill King that want to help us move quickly around town. Bill King should be at least the next Metro Chairman, so he can truly improve our traffic and road system, selling the choo choos to other foolish cities, and buying more nat gas buses. 15 years after the stupid 2003 vote, it’s long past time to fix the mess created by toy train lovers wanting to relive their childhood choo choo experiences.