Posts Tagged ‘METRO’
Use the Transit Tax for Transit
David Crossley wrote an excellent editorial yesterday, which you can find here. His key point: 25% of the Houston region’s Transit Tax is diverted to highway projects, plus a very large percentage of METRO’s capital budget (outside of the 25% diversion of funds) has to be used to expand, improve, and otherwise rebuild streets that [...]
Austin to Houston Rail Link in the planning stages?
The Texas Tribute reports a study is underway on the possibility of a 3-hour rail link between Austin and Houston, although “not anytime soon.” Two thoughts: 1. I am an ardent, hard-core believer in Rail transit as a critical part of our urban and inter-urban infrastructure. But, 3 hours to Austin isn’t good enough. Not [...]
Metro and FTA disagree about cost of Light Rail
This, from the River Oaks Examiner, is pretty interesting… Letters to the Metropolitan Transit Authority from the Federal Transit Administration place the baseline price of building both the North and Southeast light rail lines at almost $1.58 billion. Based on the correspondence, dated Aug. 17, that would place the cost of the 11.84 miles of [...]
A tiny step in the right direction
I was pretty excited to be quoted in the Chronicle two days ago. With regards to the passage of the Transit Corridor Streets ordinance, Mike Snyder reported the following: The changes drew support from real estate organizations including Houstonians for Responsible Growth, which generally resists new development regulation. But others who have followed Houston’s efforts [...]
Newswire: February 16, 2009
No more car czar, says the Obama administration. GM and Chrysler will be supervised by Geithner. Doesn’t he have enough on his plate? – – – – – States and cities scramble for stimulus dollars. Except South Carolina? – – – – – Metro ‘in final negotiations‘ for most of the LRT expansion. Maryland Transit [...]
Multiways in Houston
A lot of the recent discussion about transportation in Houston has been focused on light-rail and streetcars. These have been great conversations, and I think they are rightly front-and-center considering where we are with METRO and their current LRT expansion plans to date. There have been a few other pieces of the transportation discussion that [...]
From the Newswire: January 7, 2008
Two other articles worth taking a look at today come from Kuffner and Christoff: RIP, TTC The Little Line that Could
McGowen Green
So, over the years there has been a lot of discussion about what to do with the “superblock” at McGowen and Main. Lots of people have wanted to see a major mixed-use development go in there, and I think that would be an acceptable use of the land. However, as we’ve recently seen with Discovery [...]
Commuters instead of circulators? Bad idea.
Houston Strategies today suggests abandoning three of the planned light-rail lines in order to free up funds for other projects. In place of those lines, he suggests improved bus service, and investment in the commuter rail and improvements to the commuter bus system. His suggestion is that we cannot afford the investment in the north [...]