3-hour commute?
City Mobility Plan explained
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The average commute time in Houston in 2035 will be just under 3 hours, according to a City of Houston mobility study presented to the Greater Houston Partnership’s Transit Planning Committee by Ray Chong, outgoing Deputy Director of Public Works for Traffic and Transportation at the City of Houston.
Chong said that the new City Mobility Planning effort used the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s (H-GAC) traffic modeling capability to produce the future assessment. He stipulated that all of the programs listed in the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan were included in the model. That includes all of the Metro Solutions Plan, the region’s Transportation Improvement Plan, and the City’s Capital Improvements Plan, as well as the new regional commuter rail system described in a recent H-GAC study.
H-GAC forecasts say population in the City will increase by 26%, but in the Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) it will grow by 127%. At the same time, jobs will grow in the City roughly two and a half times growth in the ETJ. The resulting job/housing balance improves by 10% in the City, but degrades by 13% in the ETJ.
This imbalance will significantly increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the region. Chong said the H-GAC model shows that VMT in the City will increase by about 25%, while it will increase about 85% in the ETJ, and over 90% in the region. Average vehicle hours traveled will expand by 250%.
Chong said that the transit ridership share of commuting trips will drop from 3.8% to 3.3%. Metro board member George DeMontrond said things are changing and that young people want to live near downtown and along the urban corridors that will be defined by the 67-station light rail neighborhood system that will soon come into service.
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David Crossley said:
It appears that the extraordinary rates of growth in the unincorporated areas of Harris County are largely caused by Harris County’s aggressive rural road-building program to build the Grand Parkway in order to open up new areas for what is called sprawl development. Area forecasts show this will produce massive residential population increases far from jobs, which Chong said are clustered in the urban core.
There is strong evidence that Americans are changing attitudes about living far from jobs and services. Travel behavior appears to be changing, and for the first time in history, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) decreased for more than 14 months. People are losing interest in long drives.
Houston Tomorrow has noted that all of the City’s growth could be accommodated in the 67 neighborhoods along the new high-capacity rail system without using any new land. A few of those neighborhoods would be massively urban (Downtown, UpTown/Galleria, Medical Center, Greenway Plaza) several others would look like the areas around DuPont Circle in Washington, or in much of Paris. Others would be much smaller neighborhoods than the DuPont Circle model.
The City has begun work in the Urban Corridors program to prepare for that growth.
Posted on Apr 09, 09 at 10:11 am