Would You Like a Transit Lesson with that Shoe Shine?
Recently as I was leaving a rodeo committee meeting at Reliant, I stopped at a shoe shine stand to have my boots shined. During the shine I struck up a conversation with the young man operating the stand. It was late and he told me was about to head home, which was near Westheimer and Highway 6. I asked him how long it would take him to get home.

"Oh, about two to three hours," he replied.

"How can that be?"

"Oh, I ride the bus."

He then went on to share that one of reasons it took so long was that Metro had cut back the number of buses running, making it harder to make the two connections necessary to navigate the 14-mile trip home. He also told me that since the bus fares had been increased the roundtrip would cost him $5.00. He had calculated that the higher bus fare would pay for his gas if he drove to work. So he was saving up his money to buy a car. In doing so he could get to work earlier and stay longer and thus increase his income. Or he was considering using the extra time to take some classes at HCC so that he could get a better job.

There were three things that struck me about this conversation. First, in debates about public transportation policy we frequently hear about issues such traffic congestion, development patterns and air quality. What we rarely hear discussed is the very important role that transit plays in providing economic opportunity. Transit provides low income workers who cannot afford to own an automobile the ability to get to a job and begin building a financial base. This is a tremendously important contribution, not only to the workers who need the transportation, but also the employers that employ these workers and thus to our local economy generally.

Second, one of the favorite pastimes of the new urban pundits is to deride Americans' "love affair" with the automobile. They depict the attraction of the automobile as some sort of deranged erotica, the last vestiges of mankind's desire to dominant nature as opposing living harmoniously with her. This is complete nonsense. The allure of the automobile is very simply freedom; the freedom to go where you want when you want. This young man's desire to own a car was a perfectly rational economic decision from his perspective. He wanted a car to free up his time to improve his own economic circumstances.

Third, our transit policy in Houston has utterly failed the transit dependent like this young man. For it to take 2-3 hours to make a 14-mile trip is a disgrace. And his story is hardly unique. The Houston Chronicle has run a series of stories documenting similar travails. The poor service is a direct result of Metro decision to downscale its bus service. It is rarely discussed today, but the 2003 referendum which authorized the light rail, also mandated that Metro would increase bus service by approximately 50%. Instead, today we have fewer buses and fewer bus riders than we did in 2003.

The truth is that transit policy in Houston is made by people that do not have to rely on public transportation to get to their jobs. It is made by businessmen, lawyers, developers, academia, the media and other wealthy elite whose grandiose vision for the city trumps the real life hardships of trying to hold a job without access to an automobile. We can only wonder what our transit system would look like if the folks that actually had to use it everyday to get to work had a voice in making our policy.

Raising Some Rail

If you missed it, the Houston Chronicle published an op/ed for me last Sunday on the possibility of elevating Metro's light rail through the Texas Medical Center. See http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6574074.html.

Any of you who have driven down Fannin know what a nightmare it is. The experience raises the broader question of the efficacy of "at-grade rail" especially in corridors that are already highly congested. If you like the experience of driving down Fannin, you are going to love driving down Post Oak with two train tracks. The Westheimer/Post Oak intersection should be a particular treat.

Virtually all of the world's great iconic transit systems have been built in a different horizontal plane than the existing vehicular traffic. Most of the systems have been placed underground, but many have segments that are elevated. Even portions of the much heralded Paris Metro are elevated above the city. But these have been beautifully integrated into the city's architecture, proving that elevated rail does not have to be ugly. Of course, the problem with grade separating rail is that it is more expensive. However, I think we need to take the longer view here. The truth is that a rail system in Houston will not make any meaningful impact on congestion in most of our lifetimes. It is infrastructure that we are building for future generations.

Elevated Section of Paris’ Metro

Houston currently has over 1,200 at-grade rail crossings. I have been told that we have the highest number of at-grade rail crossing per capita of any major U.S. city. They are a major cause of congestion. Metro's proposed light rail will add hundreds of new at-grade crossings. We have so many at-grade crossings currently because, frankly, our forefathers were not willing to spend the money to do it right. Now we are proposing to repeat the same mistake. Is a system that adds hundreds of new at-grade crossings really the system we want to leave to our child and grandchildren?

Of course, to build a grade separated system, we will have to slow down and make the investment over a longer period of time. In the meantime, we might consider getting busy overhauling our bus system, a mode that could give us some short term relief from congestion and provide working families a real transit alternative. Siphoning money off the bus system to build an at-grade system that is going to make congestion worse is a lose-lose scenario.