Houston

[RailBaronYarr]

http://www.transitsystemreimagining.com/

Pretty amazing proposal. I wonder how likely it is to be implemented. It would be great if Metro Transit viewed all the arterial routes as a "must" for the backbone of a frequent network, with a few more supplemental routes in there as well.

[Nick]

http://thebillfold.com/2014/06/you-never-leave-houston/

Good in general re: being insecure about your city.

[RailBaronYarr]

http://houstonarea.har.com/2354-county- ... e_81589854

How many of us want to move to Greater Houston? We'll need a little bit of elbow grease to get her in working order, but what a compound she'll be! We can make friends with the other cult building next door, go for walks in the lovely neighborhood to the northeast, and push for Houston to extend the Red Line along the tracks close to us as to maximize $profit.

[FISHMANPET]

But should we use the 15 acres for suburban farming, or fill it with ADUs?

[acs]

dear God it's the McMansion taken to extremes.

[EOst]

Houston rolled out its new network, and there are now some more concrete numbers behind the frequencies.

If you dig into the timetables, the network isn't quite as impressive as it's marketing itself to be. Most of the "high frequency" routes are at the very edge of that definition, with 15-minute headways, and only a single route runs more than once every ten minutes at peak (more than double what the 18 or the 5 do at peak here). That's the trade they made, and it's probably a good one for them, but it couldn't necessarily be replicated here without some pain.

It strikes me though that Metro Transit may not be the best at advertising its own strengths, and I think there's a pretty good argument here somewhere for expanding the definitions of their hi-frequency network to include some more routes, even at the expense of total clarity. There are several routes which already run at basically 15-minute headways midday but which have lower frequencies on weekends (like the 17, the 4, and the 3), which could fit pretty easily with a looser definition.

[RailBaronYarr]

I often find the very definition of 15 minutes as "frequent" pretty frustrating, even as I push for expansion of that very metric here. I find that waiting outside for 8 minutes (the average for a transfer to a 15 min headway bus), even in nice weather with a smartphone to distract me, is pretty intolerable. And odds are more likely you'll miss the closely-timed transfer due to your bus running a few minutes late in traffic or because of slow pickups or whatever (though technically "on-time" by MT standards). It might sound crazy, but 10 minute headways really is the minimum we should expect from a grid of reliable buses.

THAT SAID. EOst is right, it's a tradeoff they're willing to make to expand the network of buses with 10-15 minute headways instead of blowing operating dollars on 3-6 minute headways during peak. If we ran articulated buses for routes 18, 5, 6, 19, 21, etc to drop their frequencies down a bit (but keep capacity), would that be worth making buses like the 23, 46, 32, 30, 63 etc have 15 minute headways all day? I'm not sure! It'd at least be nice to see a what-if analysis of a slightly rationalized bus system. It's also possible that, in a sprawling metro like Houston (not different from our own!), a more even grid of 10-15 minute headway buses will build a transit market better than fewer 3-6 minute headway peak hour routes, and they'll have the political will to pay for more service in a few years. In any case, props to Houston for doing this, I'm sure it wasn't easy.

[FISHMANPET]

I'll say, as a choice rider, 15 minutes is the minimum acceptable headway for a one seat ride (no transfer). When a transfer is involved, I won't accept anything less than 10 minutes.

But 15 is better than 20 etc etc. If you don't have a choice it's hard to say what the absolute minimum should be, but 15 minutes at least seems reasonable.

[FISHMANPET]

A good read about Houston's land use regulations, and in particular how it's lead to a townhome boom in the city: http://www.montgomeryplanning.org/event ... ennant.pdf (I swear it's about Houston, despite what the URL says)

[KML_1981]

Damn..a lot of that looks really good..

[Nathan]

yeah, that's actually kind of amazing.