David Crossley

Houston needs University Line

President, Houston Tomorrow, Mar 15, 10.

Tagged with transportation, quality of life, transit, houston, infrastructure, rail, economics

Full story: The University Line is key to Houston’s greatness

...today we are experiencing a ferocious renewed attack of the transit opponents and sprawl supporters as they hit Metro with everything left in their quivers in a last-ditch attempt to kill the innovative light rail system that promises to make Houston a model for successful, cost-efficient transit service in the US.

Now we are hearing that we might not be able to afford to build the centerpiece of this system, the University Line. That line, of the five that are slated to open in about 2014, is the key to a 65-station system that will have more ridership than any other light rail system built in the last couple of decades. It will connect two more of our 7 giant activity centers (Greenway Plaza and Uptown/Galleria) to the two on the existing Main Street line (Downtown and the Texas Medical Center).

These 65 light rail neighborhoods will occupy an area just a little bigger than Manhattan, which has two million people living in it. All those neighborhoods constitute the Houston region’s urban zone. They are the real estate basis for the City’s opportunity to compete for quality of life with other places. It is hard to imagine another city with so much real estate available for transit-oriented development, which is the hottest market there is right now.

We are probably going to grow by millions of people, and it is just going to be impossible to maintain access and mobility if we pull back on high-capacity transit and try to add millions of additional cars and trucks to the City instead. That paradigm is over because it doesn’t work.

But beyond the local mobility issues, the light rail system as promised is the key to Houston’s early acquisition of high-speed rail service to Dallas and eventually to Austin and San Antonio. High-speed rail requires decent local transit service connected to the high-speed rail station. The planned light rail system here is one of the reasons that one of the top high-speed system manufacturers are scoring the Houston-Dallas line higher than almost any other in the country.

I think we in Houston aspire to greatness far beyond that we already enjoy. Are we going to be a model green city with the happiest, healthiest, most prosperous people in the US in 25 years (or 26, when the City will have its 200th birthday)? Or are we going to look at Dallas or our other competitors in that role, while we sink back into the past because the can-do city had a stupendous failure of nerve at exactly the wrong time?

Full story: The University Line is key to Houston’s greatness
Source: The Houston Chronicle, March 14, 2010

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