I know this will be a shock to everyone who drives in Houston, but so far the high price of gasoline does not appear to be having any effect on how fast people drive.
If drivers are slowing down to save money in response to soaring gasoline prices, the evidence was hard to find on the road last week in Houston.Despite the fact that fuel efficiency for most automobiles drops sharply at speeds above 60 mph, a two-day visual survey showed sports cars, luxury cars, clunkers, motorcycles -- even a school bus -- motoring along at speeds that were neither economical nor environmentally friendly.
[...]
"You have to get where you're going," he said.
To check whether fuel costs had lightened motorists' feet as well as their wallets, a pair of Chronicle reporters and a photographer gassed up ($3.60 a gallon, regular) and hit the road Wednesday and Thursday afternoons with the cruise control set at 60 mph.
We covered all but two of the radial freeways, driving between downtown and Beltway 8, plus all of Loop 610, much of Texas 225 and half of the Sam Houston Tollway.
The tally: 1,021 vehicles passed us, and we passed 16, a ratio of about 64-to-1. On Thursday we were skunked 478-to-0.
We chose 60 mph because, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, most cars get their best mileage between 30 mph and 60 mph and because the legal speed limits on most of the area's freeways and tollway system are 60 mph and 65 mph.
[...]
About half the drivers seemed to be going only a little faster than we were, but the other half were really flying, so the average probably was around 70 mph.
Many of those in the biggest hurry drove some of the least thrifty vehicles, including pickups, SUVs and 18-wheelers.
Just a guess here, but I'd bet that a lot of people really haven't internalized the concept that increased speed means worse gas mileage. According to the government, which provides a handy if somewhat generic chart, "you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas". That's based on gas at $3.51 a gallon, so with prices already higher than that, you're sailing past $4 a gallon as well. I think people know at some level that faster driving means less fuel economy, but I doubt many of them have numbers in their head to make it tangible. You tell me - does putting it in these terms change your perception?
By the way, if anyone out there drives an RV, the effect is even more pronounced for those vehicles. You'll see your fuel economy cut in half as you go from 45 MPH to 70. Ouch.
You don't need subtitles to enjoy this pro-bike-riding ad from Hungary:
Now here's the real question: What kind of a reaction do you think an ad like this would get in Houston?
Christof brings news of an update to the downtown alignment of the Harrisburg and Southeast rail lines, which have undergone some major alterations and solved a lot of previously noted problems, though in doing so made numerous compromises that will still cause concern. A couple of points:
One good thing about this alignment is that it works well for westward expansion. The tracks will join over Buffalo Bayou, at I-45 between the Hobby Center and Bayou Place. For now, this is where trains will change direction. But these tracks will point directly towards the city courts and Houston Avenue, where the future Inner Katy Line (also authorized by voters in 2003) could head towards Washington Avenue and/or the Heights on its way to the Northwest Transit Center.
Another compromise: the Main Street line is relatively fast and very reliable because the trains have their own lanes and have traffic signal priority. That won't be true for this line. Like buses do now, the trains will share the curb lanes with cars, both turns and through traffic. [update, prompted by a question from Highway6 in the forums: the track will be on the south side of each street, that is, in the left lane of Capitol and the right lane of Rusk] And the signals will be operated as they are on Capitol and Rusk today: trains will find the lights are sometimes green and sometimes red, and they will stop or go accordingly. There is no doubt that this will slow trains down and throw off schedules: for example, a line of stopped cars in the left lane on one block would force the train to hold in the previous block until the cars moved. It might also be a safety issue, but that's not as clear. In theory, the trains would act like buses, obeying traffic laws and mixing with cars. That avoids accidents that occur because motorists don't expect a train that moves differently than they do, and it does not require unusual turn restrictions. But motorists not used to the area -- like suburbanites going a ballgame or festival -- could get unnerved and drive unexpectedly.
So what we have now may the best we can do, but it deserves scrutiny. Since this exact alignment wasn't included in the previous Draft or Final Environment Impact Statements, it will be included in an upcoming Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, with a public hearing to follow. In other words, there's still time to have a say, and you can start in our forums.
I keep trying not to say "DUH!!!" as I read this story about suburban traffic woes, but it's hard not to react that way.
Traffic congestion, long the bane of downtown workers and residents living near the city center, afflicts nearly all Houston area suburbs.Many city residents lured to suburbs by spacious homes, good schools and the prospect of less stress are increasingly finding themselves on clogged streets linking highways to new subdivisions.
The congestion's causes are many: soaring numbers of residents, a lack of a traffic grid giving them options to get to highways and stores, funding shortfalls to carry out all needed road projects and simple neglect.
"We have focused on the congestion on our freeways. But, really, we have congestion everywhere," said Pat Wascowiak, planning and program manager at the Houston-Galveston Area Council, which seeks solutions to transportation and other issues facing 13 area counties. "We don't have good local mechanisms for responding to problems on these other roads."
[...]
Dreadfully congested suburban roads include FM 529, Louetta, Spring Cypress and FM 2920 in northwest and north Harris County; Bay Area Boulevard and NASA Parkway in the Clear Lake area; Texas 36, FM 762 and FM 359 in formerly rural and semi-rural areas west of Sugar Land; and Woodlands Parkway and Lake Woodlands Drive in The Woodlands.
Texas 6 serves as a wide main street for fast-growing areas in west Harris County. Packed with vehicles, traffic often moves fitfully along a 20-mile stretch from FM 529 to Bellaire Boulevard.
Commuters use it to circle the area, locals to reach stores. "The road was designed to handle 30,000 cars a day. It's handling 60,000," Wascowiak said.
The design of many subdivisions is contributing to suburban traffic woes, she said. Subdivisions typically feature secluded streets and cul de sacs and no major arteries.
Many areas consequently lack a grid of streets that would allow drivers to find alternate ways to the highway, supermarket, schools and day care.
"If you only have one road coming out of a subdivision going to the highway, you're going to be sitting in traffic," said Robin Holzer, chair of the Citizens Transportation Coalition, an area traffic watchdog group.
FM 518 in Pearland and Fry and Mason roads in Katy are good examples of streets being asked to do too much because drivers don't have other options, Wascowiak said. Long stretches of Fry and Mason are handling more than 46,000 vehicles daily -- nearly 20,000 vehicles above the number for which they were designed.
It should be noted, too, that widening these roads only helps so much. No matter how many lanes there are, you're still going to have huge backups at the freeways, where everyone is squeezing into the outer lanes to turn onto the service roads. You're still going to need to have traffic lights at every cross street, and at some entrances to strip centers. I suppose you could try adding in a limited-access option, either elevated or depressed, as an express route, but that has its own set of problems and is way expensive to do, not to mention disruptive. I think the only truly viable solution is to build a time machine, go back to 1970, and pass laws that would prevent developers from building subdivisions in this myopic manner. Let me know how that goes.
When I blogged about the new light rail proposal for Austin, I noted that an argument being made in its favor by one of its proponents on Austin City Council was that as gasoline prices continued to climb, they had a responsibility to offer alternatives to driving. That point hasn't been specifically raised in Houston yet, but after seeing today's front page story, I'm thinking it will.
Area residents, who otherwise would never part with their cars, now feel compelled by record fuel costs to look at alternatives, such as carpooling or telecommuting. Many also are turning to mass transit.Several who were riding Metropolitan Transit Authority Park & Ride buses last week said they were saving wear and tear on their nerves at the same time. The rides are a time to escape with a book, listen to music or catch up on some Zs.
Traffic jams are other peoples' worries.
Last fall, the Chronicle examined two years' worth of monthly boarding data from Metro and monthly gasoline prices in Houston, but found no clear link between them. Both numbers went up and down, seemingly at random. That has changed.
Ridership counts for October through March are up nearly 3 percent compared to the same period 12 months earlier. Metro officials put the actual increase at more than 6 percent when adjusted to reflect more accurate counts made by sensors in the bus and train doors, starting in October.
The price of regular gasoline rose 35 percent during the same period. Boardings for the six months on Park & Ride buses, which travel the long routes that eat deep into commuters' wallets, increased 13 percent over the previous year.
Metro's April data are not out yet, but in March, when gas prices here averaged $3.15 a gallon (32 percent higher than in March 2007), Park & Ride boardings were up 16 percent compared with a year ago.
Metro attributes about 40 percent of that gain to the opening of two new Park & Ride lots in Katy and Baytown, but says the rest is because of higher gas prices.
Metro also saw its boardings shoot up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Much of that reflected the influx of evacuees to Houston. But there also was a nationwide increase in transit use sparked by the higher fuel prices after the storm, American Public Transportation Association spokeswoman Virginia Miller said.
Fuel prices approached $3 in 2006, then dipped during the summer. But transit use did not go down.
"People had changed their travel habits and were staying with it," Miller said.
She said there may be a "tipping point" at which large numbers of motorists will shift to mass transit, at least for their daily commutes to work, but it is not clear where that point is.
"For a lot of people across the country, $3 and just over $3 was a tipping point, since both 2006 and 2007 were record ridership years," she said.
"It may be that $3.50 is a tipping point for a whole other level of people," Miller continued.
So keep this in mind when you hear people say that Houstonians will never change their driving habits, and that the costs of building transit are just too high. Those habits are already changing, and with that the value of more transit increases. We can't afford not to build more.
I'm not sure how big a deal this is.
Metropolitan Transit Authority officials announced Tuesday they have ended talks with Washington Group International to be prime contractor on four planned light rail lines, saying the two sides were "hundreds of millions" of dollars apart.Metro now will try to reach an agreement with Parsons Transportation Group, which ranked second among three candidates for the job when WGI was chosen in January 2007, Metro President and CEO Frank Wilson said.
Wilson said WGI will be compensated $77 million for design and engineering work to date, most of which has been paid. He said Parsons will build on that head start, allowing the projects to move forward on schedule.
The Metro board last week approved paying Parsons up to $12 million for work it will perform through December.
Metro announced the change at a hastily called news conference.
Wilson said Metro and WGI were "hundreds of millions" apart on the cost of the project and on how to share various risks that could affect costs -- such as delays, inflation, governmental action and unforeseen environmental impacts. The two sides had been in negotiations for a year.[...]
A financial capacity analysis prepared for Metro this month put the cost of the entire Metro Solutions Phase 2 plan at $2.6 billion. However, that includes a fifth light rail project, the University line, which is longer and likely to be more costly than the others.
Wilson said Metro plans to start construction on the East End line in June and on the North and Southeast lines in September. Construction on the Uptown line is expected to depend on funding for the University line.
So I'm reading this article about opposition to the Trans Texas Corridor by folks who are living on or near the proposed path for I-69, and a question strikes me.
Although TxDOT has heard a nearly unanimous negative verdict from residents of the area, Dennis Mlcak is not sure how much that matters."They keep pushing this thing, and it keeps marching in a forward direction, so we can't really wait and see if it will die of its own accord," he said.
The Mlcaks' friends, Dane and Maxine Rudloff, whose property lies along I-10 near Sealy, have been through this before. When I-10 was built in the 1960s, the family had to sell 13½ acres for right of way. The road cut off 50 acres from what was left.
"We could see it, but eventually we sold it," Dane Rudloff said. "My mother-in-law went to her grave fuming about that."
Beyond that, I got nothing. I thought the anti-TTC fervor would play a role in the 2006 Governor's race, and maybe it did drive some voters from Rick Perry to Grandma Strayhorn or Kinky Friedman (who spoke the most clearly against the TTC on the trail), but in the end Perry won, and he beat back the toll road moratorium in the Lege. If the Governor's race were this year instead of 2010, that might be an issue, though I daresay other things would overshadow it. If it's an issue in any State House races, I haven't noticed it yet.
Another factor to consider:
It is from there -- the ranches and small towns of Walker, Grimes, Waller, Fort Bend and Austin counties -- that some of the most unyielding opposition has come.
If there was an inviting target for their wrath, it would have been State Sen. Steve Ogden, who represents Walker and Grimes counties and is a strong proponent of the TTC, but he won easily in 2006 over a typically underfunded candidate. (Sen. Glenn Hegar represents Waller, Austin, and Fort Bend; he had no Democratic opponent in 2006.) As I see it, until and unless a statewide candidate taps into this sentiment and converts it into votes he or she would not have already had - which is to say, until and unless a Democrat convinces these generally Republican voters to cross over - the TTC will not be much of a campaign issue. The spirit may be willing, but the numbers are weak.
Good luck, y'all.
A consultant hired by the city is recommending a 14-mile light-rail system for Central Austin, not streetcars as proposed by Capital Metro. The system would run from the airport to downtown, through the University of Texas and east to the emerging Mueller development.The route is essentially the same one City Council Member BrewsterMcCracken and Austin Mayor Will Wynn have been talking about for the past six months or so. The proposal, finished just seven weeks after the council voted to pay ROMA Design Group up to $250,000 to produce it, comes as a "transit task force" formed by Wynn and state Sen. Kirk Watson moves into the final stages ofcreating a process to analyzerail proposals.
No one yet knows how the proposal, which likely will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, would be paid for.
That task force would almost surely analyze this proposal, and the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board (chaired by Watson) would have the final say. But it is not clear whether such an examination could occur quickly enough for the light-rail proposal to be put before voters in November. Wynn has said he would like to have a rail vote this year, but there will be a number ofcomplicated questions about costs and benefits.
Watson, who was in South Texas on Tuesday, had not seen the proposal and had no comment. But Watson said that the process created by the task force "will allow any project to be fully vetted in a transparent, open, complete way."
McCracken, at least, said he think that the proposal can make it through that gantlet to a public vote in November, which he said would probably involve voters being asked to approve some sort of long-term debt.
"Yes, I think that's likely," McCracken said of getting the proposal onto the ballot in time.
Council Member Lee Leffingwell has his doubts. He said that only Wynn and McCracken, to his knowledge, had been briefed on the rail proposal.
"The key to this whole thing has been, how's this going to be paid for?" Leffingwell said. "If you just want to put the concept on the ballot in November, that would be one thing. But if you're talking about some sort of financial commitment by the city, I think it would be very hard to get there by that time."
Leffingwell and McCracken are often mentioned as likely candidates for mayor next year.
A major criticism of the light rail that voters rejected in 2000 was that it would take street lanes away from car traffic. Not so, in this case, McCracken said, although the tracks would be in "dedicated lanes" segregated from cars. The space for the tracks, McCracken said, would come from available right of way on Riverside east of Interstate 35. Downtown, the tracks would run on pavement currently occupied by parked cars, he said.The tracks, McCracken said, might take two lanes from the bridge over Lady Bird Lake, he said, although alternatively it could use the space now taken up by sidewalks. In that case, a sidewalk alternative bridge, such as the one on the South First Street bridge, would continue pedestrian and bicycle access across the lake on Congress.
The dedicated-lane concept was news even to Charlie Betts, executive director of the Downtown Austin Alliance. The alliance has been firmly behind the streetcar plan, in which the trolleys would share lanes with cars. To avoid reducing lanes on Congress would require tearing up the curb and sidewalk extensions that currently delineate the parking spaces.
"That's a new wrinkle, and we haven't had time to think about it," Betts said.
Interesting sidebar, from the News 8 Austin story:
"We have a responsibility with $4 gasoline coming into play in the future, it's the voters' decision whether they want to move forward with that plan," McCracken said.
Miya brings the bad news.
The Kirby re-construction is a four-phase process. Phases one through three are basically going according to schedule. But phase four is a problem. Though work on the final phase isn't scheduled for a while, we've learned the process is getting delayed even more.Construction on Kirby near the Rice Village may be inconvenient, but at least it's underway. A few blocks north near Bissonnet and Kirby, the construction timeline is about to get pushed back.
"You always wish things were planned better," said Ron Pickett, who owns Charisma Car Wash. Pickett and owners of several neighboring businesses just learned that the contractor who did the street survey for the city made a major measuring mistake. To complete the Kirby reconstruction, the city will now need to take 15 feet of his property along the curb line.
"It makes me feel very nervous because it will be highly detrimental to my business," he said.
The city will now split up phase four of the project into two parts. The portion south of Bissonnet will go on as scheduled with no delays. However, the area north of Bissionnet needs to be redesigned, and that could take a while.
"We'll continue to maintain it and patch it, but we'll redesign it to take into account the additional right of way," said Houston city councilmember Anne Clutterbuck.
This could get very ugly. And man, are things snarled in the Rice Village area, where the northern end of construction-induced lane blockages are. I have officially sworn off driving in the area for the foreseeable future. Those of you who have no choice in the matter, you have my deepest sympathies.
A few weeks back, Metro ran into a roadblock with its East End light rail lines, in that it was denied permission by Union Pacific to cross freight rail tracks at grade on Harrisburg, thus cutting it off from its intended destination at the Magnolia Transit Center. Shortly thereafter, an agreement was reached in principle to do a grade separation for both road and rail traffic at that crossing, with the costs shared by Metro, UP, and the city. Here's an update on that situation.
The East End light rail line will cross over or under Union Pacific railroad tracks and extend to the Magnolia Transit Center, 6948 Harrisburg Blvd.That decision put the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District, Union Pacific and City Councilman James Rodriguez's office on the same track.
The elevated or underground grade separation will be a boon to the East End community -- and a relief to anyone who has ever sat and waited for the railroad cars to pass, said Sandra Salazar, Metro spokeswoman.
"This will be a very welcome enhancement to that neighborhood -- crossing without having to wait for the train to clear," she said.
[...]
The objections raised by Union Pacific in letters to Metro in 2006-07 are being resolved and Metro has been working with the Federal Railroad Administration to appeal Union Pacific's decision.
After the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District was created last year, it became a party to the negotiations between Metro and the city of Houston to determine how the light rail line would cross the Union Pacific tracks and roadways on Harrisburg Boulevard.
[...]
Prompted by calls from community leaders concerned that Metro might simply shorten its light rail line, ending about six blocks before the Magnolia center, Rodriguez brought the matter before the local community and the city.
The city has since committed to cover one-half of the costs of the grade separations, with Metro and Union Pacific agreeing to pay the remainder of the costs at that crossing, Salazar said.
"The different parties are now coalescing," Salazar said. "The costs haven't been figured out yet, but at some point it will be determined what the project is going to be and assigning costs to the (partners)."
A "ballpark figure," she said, would be about $20 million, though it could change drastically once the scope of the project -- such as whether the crossing will be an overpass or an underpass -- is determined.
[...]
After hearing complaints and concerns from constituents and noting the lack of a Metro map showing the Magnolia Transit Center as the terminus for the East End line, Rodriguez issued a statement April 7 about the importance of "bringing rail to the table" among all parties involved.
The statement helped to kick off the series of community and city meetings that resulted in the agreement where the city assumes 50 percent of the grade separation costs and Metro picks up 25-30 percent.
"We're about 15 percent [short] of getting this thing funded," Rodriguez said.
Mayor Bill White has "gone above and beyond," the freight rail district has been a good partner and the primary parties in the agreement have made promises to the East End community regarding the grade-level separation project that must now be kept, Rodriguez said.
I don't think I realized that the matter was still being litigated.
In a summary judgment issued last week, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes called Safe Clear "a rational safety program" that does not over-regulate the towing business, or restrict the free speech of wrecker drivers who are not part of the Safe Clear program.[...]
Some wreckers who were not part of the contract joined together to file a lawsuit in 2005, but lost. The recent decision pertains to a second suit the group filed in 2006 that claimed Safe Clear takes away their right to free commercial speech by restricting their ability to solicit business on the freeway and creates a regulatory taking by controlling tow rates.
The judge sided with the city's arguments that safety concerns prevailed.
Suzanne Poole, president of the group that sued, the Houston Professional Towing Association, said an appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is "a very strong possibility."
"It's not that we want the contract to go away, it's that we simply want to participate in it," Poole said.
Tory has responded to my previous post on the costs of light rail and LRT versus BRT. I appreciate the discussion, and want to add a few extra points to the mix.
- I'm not claiming that transit, rail or otherwise, will cure Houston's congestion problems. I am saying that I believe it can help keep those problems from getting worse as we densify, which current trends and public preferences say we're going to be doing. Right now, I'd call Houston's surface streets crowded but for the most part tolerable. It may take me longer than I'd like to go between Allen Parkway and Rice University on Shepherd/Greenbriar, but it's (usually) not so bad that I'll seek any viable alternative to it. But there's no doubt in my mind that traffic on that route is worse than it was, say, ten years ago, and there's equally no doubt that it will be worse in ten years' time. The only hope I see to keep it from becoming intolerably crowded is to provide alternatives to driving.
- In the meantime, as conditions degrade on thoroughfares like Shepherd, I think the first place where you'll see the effects is on parallel streets like Dunlavy. To some extent, we've already seen those effects, which I believe is why streets like Woodhead, Hazard, and Mandell all got those accursed speed humps installed back when that was the craze. When I lived near Woodhead and Richmond in the early 90s, I used Woodhead as my north-south road whenever possible; I avoided Shepherd if I could. Then the speed humps were installed, and I started using Shepherd instead. I'm sure that was the intended result back then, as Woodhead is basically a residential street that was never supposed to be used for that kind of driving. Same thing with Morningside, which was once my preferred option to Kirby. I note this to point out that to a large degree, some alternatives to these increasingly crowded arterial roads are already essentially foreclosed, and if people start to choose them anyway, I'd expect the residents who once lobbied for those speed humps to demand further action in the name of keeping their streets as quiet as they're supposed to be.
- Which brings me back to the point that I believe it is vital to start planning and implementing rail transit extensions now, because I believe we will come to a point where all this new, dense development will make that kind of addition sufficiently more difficult and expensive as to render it impossible. Basically, the more that can be done before there's a lot of high-end stuff already in place, the more feasible it will be. Note that I think the same constraints will eventually hinder freeway projects. How much harder do you think the next Katy Freeway widening will be to do, after the new feeder roads have been thoroughly re-developed? This is one of the sticking points for the I-45 widening, after all, because it's a much greater burden to have to condemn properties in established neighborhoods and retail areas. What are we going to do when we can't easily add capacity to the highways?
- Finally, just to reiterate, I am not opposed to BRT. I am more than happy to consider BRT as a vital part of any future expansions of the Metro rail solutions plan. For the existing 2012 plan, however, this is simply not an option due to the political reality of the situation. The people who voted for the 2004 referendum were very clear on this point when BRT was first substituted in. When the time comes to vote on the next phase - because as we know we only ever have to vote on rail construction - then we can make sure BRT is explicitly part of the plan. Until then, it's LRT all the way.
I'll have some more thing to say on this topic in the future, but for now, I appreciate again the discussion that we're having. Please let me know what you think.
As you may recall, the West U ordinance that banned the use of cellphones in moving vehicles while in school zones had received preliminary approval from its City Council, but needed to be passed a second time to become law. Despite the best efforts of AT&T, it is now official.
West University Place City Council unanimously approved a ban on the use of hand-held and hands-free devices in active school zones at its meeting on April 14, despite concerns the ordinance would violate the First Amendment and could lead to racial profiling.Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and AT&T, two local lawyers and a resident spoke out against the ban while five residents and the principal of West University Elementary School spoke in favor of it.
Those speaking against it said they would be OK with the ban if it did not include hands-free devices.
"If I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the safety of those kids," said Mayor Bob Kelly.
Based on its own study of cell phone usage in the West U. school zone and studies by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, The New England Journal of Medicine and the AAA Foundation for Traffic and Safety, West U. police chief Ken Walker said, "both hands-free and hands-held (devices) are distractions."
As this was the second and final reading, the ordinance will go into effect on Aug. 1. It carries a $200 penalty for a first offense and $500 penalty for repeat offenses.
All cell phone usage -- including talking on a hand-held or hands-free device, text messaging or viewing images -- would be illegal in the three-block school zone in front of West University Elementary School, 3756 University Blvd.
Resident and attorney David A. Furlow said he would prefer West U. police be more vigorous in enforcing traffic ordinances if they are concerned about safety instead of infringing on free speech."I'm concerned about this ordinance being over-broad," he said, adding he believes it would not stand up to first amendment case law. "The city would pay major attorneys' fees if it loses this."
Kelly said he understands a lawsuit would be the next step if someone challenges the ordinance, but "I know that's not going to deter this council," he said during a break in the meeting.
By the way, Rick Casey's column documenting the AT&T lobbying effort, was pretty amusing. I think they're going to have to step it up a few notches if they hope to persuade the Lege to pass a statewide law. Check it out.
In light of our recent discussion about the costs of transit, I thought I'd flag this story about the general rise in construction costs and how this is affecting capital projects.
Rising prices for steel, concrete and oil are swelling the city's capital improvement budget, forcing the delay of dozens of projects, city officials said Friday."Steel and cement are crazy," said James Tillman IV, director of the city's Capital Improvement Program. "In previous CIPs and previous years we could build a pretty nice fire station for $3 million. Now, we're having trouble building one for less than $5 million."
Tillman said there are many reasons for construction delays and cost increases, including unforeseen problems that appear mid-project or changes in codes and laws. But material construction costs seem to be a prevalent problem challenging both the private and public sectors nationwide.
Rebar prices have risen from $700 per ton to $1,000 in four months, said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, a construction trade group. Diesel prices are rising faster than gasoline prices, he added, forcing governments to pay more to operate dump trucks, concrete mixers and cranes.
[...]
Construction costs have been rising faster than consumer prices. Between late 2003 and this February, the Consumer Price Index has gone up 15 percent. But the Producer Price Index, a measure of raw materials, grew 25 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Harris County has not seen a spike in construction costs for road building, but the county has not bid many projects recently, said Ron Krafka, head of the construction programs division of the county's Public Infrastructure Department.
Krafka said the county could see an increase in the next couple of months, as more projects are bid. But he said the economic slowdown also could work to the county's advantage if contractors are willing to submit lower bids because there's less work to go around.
"A couple years or so ago, we were being told that there was so much work in the pipeline that we might consider deferring some of our projects," Krafka said. "Now, we've got at least a couple calls from contractors saying they're very interested in the upcoming work."
So far, the only places to ban cellphone use while driving through school zones have been small cities-within-cities like Highland Park and West University Place. That's about to change in a big way.
Soon you might not only have to slow down in a school zone, you might also have to hang up that cell phone with the push for the cell phone-free school zones in San Antonio.The ordinance is set to go before the City Council within the next few weeks. If it passes, those caught breaking the law could end up paying a $200 fine.
If you can drive 20 mph and talk on the phone, city leaders say you probably won't be multi-tasking for too much longer.
"It's a matter for a lot of folks of changing their behavior, putting the phone down or using a hands-free device, so that when you're going through school zones and there's kids out and about, you have the full focus on the road," District 7 City Councilman Justin Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said he has the ball rolling on the law. The ordinance already took effect in Dallas and surrounding areas, and if supporters have their way, you can bet to see it in San Antonio, too.
The proposed law includes reasonable exceptions, including parents trying to locate their children."If you're in a school zone and you're not driving, then this isn't going to apply to you, if you're not moving," Rodriguez said.
So last week, the Chron's Rad Sallee wrote about a jump in cost projections for Metro and the Southeast and Harrisburg light rail lines, which were reverted back to LRT from BRT late last year. That column got some people up in arms, as one might expect, and now Sallee is back with a conversation with Metro CEO Frank Wilson, who tries to assuage us that it's not as bad as it looks.
Wilson said Friday that the apparent increases are misleading for several reasons. First, the mode was upgraded from Bus Rapid Transit to light rail, and since Metro had intended to put rail in the ground anyhow, the initial estimates (which did not include that) were too low.Second, he said, the higher figures include purchases of trains, which now cost $3.5 million each, through year 2030.
And finally, Wilson said, inflation in the coming years has been factored into the stated costs. A Federal Transit Administration report said Metro's assumed inflation rate of 3.5 percent was "optimistic" and probably should be higher.
The new projections show the two lines increasing from $434 million to $1.34 billion, with Metro's share being $684 million. Wilson said Friday he expects the actual cost to be substantially less after a new contract is negotiated with Washington Group Transit Management Co., but he would not state a figure because the talks are ongoing.
Let's assume that the FTA will agree to pay half the cost of all five lines being planned. (That's not exactly what Metro proposes, but it works out to the same thing.)
Let's also be optimistic and assume that costs will rise only half as much as the new numbers from FTA and Metro indicate.
If earlier projections for the University, Uptown and East End lines rose by the same multiple, the total would be about $3.3 billion for all five lines, with a Metro share of $1.7 billion.
Wilson was emphatic Friday that the five lines together will cost less than $3 billion, but he wouldn't say how much less.
I've harped on this before, but I feel like this discussion and the comparisons of Metro's costs to those of TxDOT's freeway widenings is missing a crucial point. We spend money on freeway widening, and minus the usual carping for cost overruns we generally agree that we should spend money on freeway widenings, because we can and because we have to. We have to because our population growth and the expansion of the Houston metropolitan area outward means we have rapid increases in the amount of vehicular traffic, and the alternative is endless, wasteful gridlock. We can because there's room to add extra lanes and HOV capacity; though some property gets condemned, a lot of the needed right-of-way already existed before the expansion in question got started.
And that's the key. We can add lanes of traffic, whether free or toll, to our highways, at least in most places. But we can't do that for the surface roads, because the right of way doesn't exist, unless you want to condemn every property that currently stands alongside that road. You can't add extra lanes to Kirby, or Richmond, or Montrose, or Westheimer, or any other thoroughfare like them that thousands of people a day depend on to get them from the highways (or wherever) to their destinations. It's simply not an option.
But these roads are getting increasingly crowded, and there's no sign that trend will slow down, much less reverse itself. Kirby, for example, has two high-rises being built at Westheimer, one of which will feature a ton of ground-floor retail; there's also the Sonoma project on Bolsover, and a new high-end apartment complex on Richmond next to Pappadeaux's. How much impact do you think that will have on Kirby's traffic? Especially at Westheimer? And Montrose/Studemont is getting busier, too. As we know, there's a ton of dense development going on Montrose/Studemont between Gray and Washington; already, this is going to mean the installation of another traffic light to handle all the entrances and exits at Memorial Heights. The stretch between Allen Parkway and Center Street already suffers nasty backups at times due to flaky timing on the lights; adding another to the mix isn't going to make that any better.
The point I'm trying to make here is simple: Traffic in Houston on the non-freeway roads is bad, it's getting worse, it has the same negative effects has gridlock on the freeways (pollution, lost productivity, etc), and it cannot be mitigated by adding capacity. The only possible solution is getting some of those cars off the road, and that means transit.
So if we accept that we have a problem - and if you don't, please make your case in the comments, because I'd like to hear it - and that we can't solve it by the same means with which we're tackling the freeway congestion problem, then the question becomes what kind of transit should we have? What can we do to actually get people out of their cars and deal with the short-term and long-term effects of denser development in Houston's core?
Well, there's always buses. They're relatively cheap, and they don't require any construction. They're also slow, unpredictable, not particularly comfortable, and they themselves contribute to congestion because they use the same road lanes as everyone else. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this because I just can't see how any investment in more buses is going to get enough people to stop driving to make the increase in bus traffic a net win. Again, if you think I'm wrong about this, please say so. Note that I'm not talking about commuter bus service here, which is a fairly popular but highly cost-inefficient (*) solution for getting people off the freeways; I'm interested in reducing the number of drivers on the streets, not just on the highways. From where I sit, we already have buses, and very few people who have a choice in the matter choose to take them.
Then there's bus rapid transit (BRT), now also known as guided rapid transit (GRT), which is a big improvement over ordinary buses in that it has its own right of way and has multiple points of ingress/egress, which speeds up the getting on and off process; this also allows for direct boarding by people in wheelchairs and with bikes or strollers. It's more expensive than buses because you have to build that right of way, but less expensive than light rail because you don't have to build the tracks. In many ways, it's a fine system.
It's also not what the people want. This comment on Tory's blog sums it up very well.
When Metro decided to go with BRT the first time, who liked that idea? Well, a bunch of people on this website, for starters (no surprise there). Who didn't like it? I'd estimate a couple hundred thousand (million?) disappointed Houstonians -- in particular, those along the lines who would be most directly affected by this grand investment. And I'm guessing those same large swaths of population would become agitated yet again if we switched modes on them another time. I'd be willing to bet more so, this time.And you know what the kicker is? This is THEIR taxpayer money. A little bit yours, a little bit mine, sure -- but mostly that of everyone else out there. Some posters here like to point out that "oh, back in academia I had a shrewd professor who taught the difference between revealed preference and stated preference, etc, etc, etc (for about 10 or more paragraphs)".
You know what? It doesn't matter. We "elites" don't have the ability to tell others what they should spend their money on just because we "know" that they don't actually want to spend it on this or that. I "know" that BRT is great, but if Houstonians want light rail and want to spend their hard-earned money on it, then that is their prerogative. We're still at least pretending this country is a Democracy, right?
So that leaves light rail, which brings us back where we started. We know from the Main Street line that people will use it, and we know from the BRT kerfuffle that people want it. The cost is a concern, though the irony is that if we'd not delayed and dilly-dallied so much after the 2004 referendum was passed, we could have built a lot of the 2012 plan for a lot less money; the longer we take to start construction on the remaining lines, the more expensive it will ultimately be. But hey, let's talk about it for another six months anyway, just in case.
The conclusion that I hope this will lead you to is that there isn't a cheap and easy fix for this problem. It's going to cost money, just like all that freeway widening did. We know about the Katy Freeway and its $2.8 billion price tag, which was originally sold to us as being a mere one point one billion. There's the massive upcoming makeover for US290, which Christof pegged at $3.5 billion; that may yet go up, as the same inflationary costs that are biting Metro are also taking a chunk out of TxDOT. The still-in-the-works I-45 widening was last guessed to be $1.5 billion, which is no doubt ludicrously out of date now. Then we've got the aesthetic and acoustic triumph that was the 59 widening/lowering, though it hasn't actually done much for mobility, for whose cost I can't find a citation, plus previous widenings south to Sugar Land and north to Kingwood, the West Loop project for another $344 million, the upcoming 288 toll lane project for which no costs have yet been calculated...we're talking some real money here, maybe $10 billion or more total. Whatever the number may be, it's certainly more than we were originally told it would be, yet there's only ever a freakout when it's transit costs that go up. Funny how that works.
But in the end, all this is an investment. It's an investment in getting people from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. And the options we have for how we make those investments aren't the same everywhere. We need to be careful in how we compare these investments to each other, because we don't have the same choices everywhere.
(*) - I say commuter buses are cost-inefficient because they're empty on their return trips, and idle during non-rush hours. Neither of those is true of regular buses or light rail trains.
Despite the pushback they have gotten from AT&T over the proposed ban on cellphones in school zones, with or without hands-free gadgets, the city of West University Place is holding firm in its desire to pass that ordinance.
West U Mayor Bob Kelly said he has "absolutely not" gotten any adverse reaction to the council's decision."From my pharmacist to the people I work with, to residents of West U, I have heard nothing but praise," Kelly said. "I did get one e-mail from a West U resident who said, basically, that we shouldn't have a cell phone ordinance."
Kelly said he remains convinced that a ban on all cell phone use in school zones -- whether the phones are hand-held or hands-free -- is in the interest of public safety.
Scientific studies show the issue is the distraction caused by conversations, whether a driver is holding the cell phone or using a hands-free device, Kelly said.
"Unless AT&T comes up with something to refute the scientific evidence, I don't see any reason the council won't go ahead and pass the ordinance," Kelly said. "I think AT&T is a fine company. I just think it may not be in their best business interest."
West U Mayor Pro Tem Bob Fry said he's received more e-mails about the ordinance than any other issue during his first year on the council. Those e-mails have been "overwhelmingly" supportive of the cell phone ban, Fry said.
As the city's representative on the Houston-Galveston Area transportation policy committee, Fry said officials from a number of other area cities have commented positively on the West U ordinance.
"It is being watched very closely, so closely that AT&T has come down on us," Fry said.
"It did bother me, I have to admit it did," Fry said. "But you think about it, and it's just right."
Recently, Metro ran into a roadblock - more of a tracks-block, actually - with its East End light rail line, which was denied permission to cross a freight rail track at grade on Harrisburg. That meant that the East End line would have to terminate short of the Magnolia Transit Center, which everyone agreed was a sub-optimal solution. Fortunately, the optimal solution of grade separation, which was proposed but didn't have a funding mechanism, is now looking like a realistic possibility in the near term.
After a meeting on Friday brokered by Houston City Councilman James Rodriguez, the plan to extend the route is back. An expensive grade separation, with light rail going either over or under the freight rails, is now the likely end result."This whole Metro Solutions works if you're able to connect to a major transit center, so going to the Magnolia Transit Center is key for the mobility in the area. We were able to get together and stress that the city does have some funds to commit to this. We'd like Metro to commit some funding and also the Freight Rail District. The Freight Rail District agreed to take the lead in organizing all the governmental agencies."
Mark Ellis is chairman of the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District and says a grade separation could cost upwards of $20 million.
"It's my understanding that Metro is committed to 25-percent of the cost of the grade separation at Harrisburg. The Mayor has committed to 50-percent. I suspect that UP will step-up and do their 5-percent. We still have a little bit of a gap, but we're trying to work with just about everybody in the region, Harris County, the Port, the railroads, the city and Metro to see if we can't find the funding."
[...]
Metro's Sandra Aponte Salazar says it's too early for Metro to talk about specific costs, but does say the progress is encouraging.
"Metro is committed to taking this light rail line to the Magnolia Transit Center and we've said it's not a question of if, but when. It's good to see this cooperation, absolutely."
I've said before that I don't have a problem with the concept of congestion pricing, but there's something about this that doesn't feel right to me.
Four toll lanes that will open on the rebuilt Katy Freeway in October will become clogged with traffic unless Commissioners Court imposes congestion pricing during peak travel times, county and state officials said Tuesday.County Judge Ed Emmett said congestion pricing likely will be needed to help the county fulfill an agreement to keep traffic moving at least 45 mph in the toll lanes.
"We don't know how to maintain this (traffic flow) without congestion pricing," said Gary Trietsch, district engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation's Houston district.
The court is expected to set the rate in the coming months. The Harris County Toll Road Authority recommended that passenger vehicles pay $1.25 to travel between Texas 6 and the West Loop during nonpeak hours and that the price double during peak hours and other times when the traffic is moving slower than 45 mph.
[...]
Six years ago, the county, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and TxDOT agreed to cooperate on widening the 11-lane Katy Freeway to 18 lanes. As part of that pact, the public bodies committed to operating toll lanes that move at least at 45 mph, providing people an incentive to pay to use them.
I understand that HCTRA set this threshhold in order to ensure a return on its $500 million investment. Metro would like for its commuter buses to travel at a decent speed as well. I get that, I'm just saying that it would be better to let the toll lanes slow down to 40 or even 35 if it meant the free lanes got an equivalent bump in speed. But that's not the priority here, so this is what we'll get.
The new toll lanes on the finished I-10 product may cost more to drive during rush hour.
The Harris County Toll Road Authority is recommending the court set a rate of $1.25 during nonpeak hours for the trip between Texas 6 and the West Loop and double that during the morning and evening rush hours.The court voted last June to double tolls on the Westpark Tollway during rush hours but overturned its decision days later following a public outcry over the plan.
The court is expected to set the prices for toll lanes on the Katy Freeway in the coming months.
[...]
The decision on imposing peak-hour pricing rests with Commissioners Court, [Peter Key, HCTRA deputy director,] said.
"We think (peak-hour) pricing is the most effective way to keep traffic flowing and the safest way," Key said.
County Judge Ed Emmett said, "We have to maintain a certain speed in those lanes, and congestion pricing is supposed to do that."
If a $2.50 toll did not keep traffic flowing at a minimum of 45 mph, the toll road authority could recommend that the court raise the price, Key said."If we don't maintain that flowing traffic in that (Katy Freeway toll area), we will have to make changes," he said. "One potential change would be the toll rate."
Vehicles with three or more occupants will be able to travel for free in the eastbound toll lanes from 6 to 11 a.m. and in the westbound toll lanes from 2 to 8 p.m., year-round.Besides high-occupancy vehicles, only vehicles with EZ Tags will be allowed to travel the toll lanes.
UPDATE: Michael Jones explains it in the comments:
My understanding is the three "tolling plazas" will be manned during the AM and PM rush to monitor compliance. Each toll plaza will have multiple lanes, and drivers will be told to use the one closest the monitoring station if they have 3 or more.Less than three in the "three or more" lane, and the monitor pushes a button, and your EZ tag is charged.
During non-rush periods, the lane will be closed (forcing everyone into the full-time toll lanes) or will be switched to full-time toll.
In December of 2006, we heard about how the Harris County Toll Road Authority was using cameras stationed at toll lanes to identify and nab serial toll-skippers. The Chron story at the time also said that "the technology [is] useful for other purposes as well, including tracking stolen vehicles". If, like me, you wondered what those "other purposes" might be, now we know.
"We're going to be catching a lot of bad guys," said Assistant Chief Deputy Randy Johnson, of the Precinct 5 Constable's Office, who also serves as the incident management administrator for the toll road authority.Eleven cameras already are in place and another 24 will be installed by the end of the month. The toll road authority plans to install cameras throughout the toll system by the end of the year. Five similar cameras are mounted on deputy constables' patrol cars, Johnson said.
The system, which has been operating for about a month, has proved so promising that the Houston Police Department wants a piece of the action. Harris County leaders next week will consider an agreement that would include the HPD in the county system at no cost.
"This is a good law enforcement tool," HPD spokesman John Cannon said. "It's a technology we would be foolish to ignore."
The license plate recognition cameras are perched on toll booth canopies. As a car passes, the cameras focus on its plates. That information is then checked against a database of chronic toll road violators, as well as more serious criminals. License plates of automobiles involved in child abductions or other missing persons' cases also are on record.
If the system detects a match, a county dispatcher will be alerted and notify the nearest law enforcement officer.
"If that car is flagged, if it goes through a particular toll or EZ Tag lane, it would immediately be brought to the attention of county employees and constables who patrol the tollways," Cannon said. "That gives us a better lead than if we did not have that type of technology."
In case you were curious:
Red-light cameras installed at 50 Houston intersections will not be used in the same way as the tollway authority's cameras, Cannon said."Red-light cameras are strictly used for traffic enforcement," the HPD spokesman said. "That's not what they were designed to do."
I received the following email from AT&T spokesman Kerry Hibbs in response to this post about their opposition to the West U school-zone cellphone ban ordinance:
Just to clarify our position on wireless safety, AT&T has begun working with legislators on a statewide law that would provide consistent, enforceable rules concerning cell phone usage for drivers. That would be the best way to address the issue. However, we're also more than willing to work with local governments such as West University Place on ordinances that allow hands-free calling in school zones.
The West University Place no cellphones in school zones ordinance has attracted some organized opposition.
AT&T is reaching out and touching the West U City Council over its vote to prohibit cell phones in the city's only school zone.The telecommunications company has organized a campaign to oppose the ban by distributing "talking points" and "sample letters" for community leaders and residents to send to Mayor Bob Kelly and the City Council.
AT&T materials aimed at reversing the ordinance characterized Walker's position as "wishy-washy."
"I think I was very clear in my comments to council," Walker said. He noted that 1,034 children attend West U Elementary School, saying: "I am very surprised that a corporate giant like AT&T would take a position that does not support the safety of our children."[...]
AT&T spokesman Kerry Hibbs said the company is concerned about the safety of children.
But Hibbs said AT&T is oppposed to the West U ordinance because it outlaws hands-free attachments.
"We think a total ban including hands-free goes too far," Hibbs said. "There are a lot of ordinances like this starting to spring up. The point is, we would prefer that there be a statewide law that would be consistent, rather than a patchwork of different city ordinances."
Asked whether AT&T would oppose such a state law, Hibbs said, "Well, yes."
"There are a lot of things that distract drivers besides cell phones," Hibbs said.
Some good news and some not-so-good news for Metro.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority got federal permission last week to move forward with preliminary engineering on its planned North and Southeast lines, work that was halted in November while Metro revised its funding applications to reflect the switch from Bus Rapid Transit back to light rail.
That was good news. The bad news was the soaring cost estimates that came with it.The Federal Transit Administration, using data provided by Metro, said in its letters that the estimated cost of the North line, which would run 5.5 miles from north of downtown to Northline Mall, has risen to $677 million, from $276 million. The Southeast Line, 6.8 miles from downtown to Palm Center, has risen to $664 million, from $158 million, the FTA said.
By comparison, the 7.5-mile Main Street line cost $324 million and needs $104 million in new rail cars and improvements.
The FTA also sent a review of Metro's proposals that attributes the increases largely to the higher costs of light rail than BRT, which uses special buses running on guideways. The increases also reflect light rail's higher ridership projections, extended through 2030, which would require 29 new rail cars and other infrastructure.
Then there are the rising costs of fuel, labor and construction materials. Although Metro's estimates assume 3.5 percent annual inflation, the FTA reviews describe this as optimistic and say Metro should "refine and update" its figures.
Letters from FTA regional administrator Robert Patrick advise Metro that the go-ahead on engineering is not a promise to fund final design or construction, and that Metro must still fulfill all federal requirements. Both lines are rated "medium" as candidates for the funding, FTA said.
"We are excited about the positive report," Metro said in a statement. "A 'medium' rating endorses the North and Southeast Projects as competitive for federal New Starts funding."
Bill King, who could be the city's next mayor -- and appoint five of Metro's nine board members -- says he can't see how Metro can afford its ambitious plans, which include three other light rail lines, two or more commuter rail lines, an intermodal terminal on the north side and a major expansion of bus service.Numbers released by Metro varied. In February, the agency said that "by an order of magnitude," not exactly, all five planned light rail lines would cost about $2 billion, shared equally between Metro and the FTA, with the North and Southeast lines accounting for $500 million of that.
A month earlier, King says, Metro told him that the two lines would cost $854 million out of a $2.2 billion total. "A million here, a million there ... ," he quipped.
One more thing:
But just remember that transit, unlike some toll roads, loses money. Little if any of this would come from profits from transit service itself.
And freight rail wins, for now.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority may cut six blocks off its planned East End light rail line, leaving passengers short of the Magnolia Transit Center and much of the developing commercial area around Harrisburg and Wayside.Metro board chairman David Wolff said Thursday that the roadblock is the former Houston Belt & Terminal Railway tracks, now owned by Union Pacific Railroad. The crossing, on Harrisburg between 65th and Oldham, is familiar to motorists and pedestrians delayed by freight trains.
Wolff said Metro had considered crossing the double tracks at street level.
"But it doesn't seem the railroad is too enthusiastic about that."
Metro spokeswoman Sandra Salazar later said UP would not agree to share its right of way with Metro trains.
[...]
Metro has been planning the line almost since voters approved it in a 2003 referendum. Asked why the issue is surfacing now, Salazar said Metro initially hoped to obtain permission from the railroad for a street-level crossing.
In 2003, when Metro changed its plans from light rail to Bus Rapid Transit, thinking that was necessary to qualify for federal funding, the issue was moot because the buses would cross the tracks with other street traffic.
"The issue became critical again in 2007 when we changed back to light rail," Salazar said.
A prepared statement from Metro said the agency is "committed to taking the line to the Magnolia Transit Center, even if it may have to be at a later phase. Our long-range plan (to go to Gulfgate and beyond) makes it necessary to resolve this sooner rather than later."
Wolff said he hoped the city of Houston would build an overpass at the tracks. That may enable Metro to extend the line to the transit center within two to four years after its scheduled completion in 2012. Until then, he said, Metro would bridge the gap with a bus shuttle.
[...]
Frank Michel, spokesman for Mayor Bill White, said the city and Metro have not discussed an overpass yet, nor is funding for such a project in the city's current five-year capital improvement plan. "But shortly, we are going to start a major mobility study and we could consider a grade separation at that point," Michel said.
UPDATE: Christof has more.
I would classify this as good news.
Red-light camera citations have decreased steadily since Houston police boosted their monitoring at intersections six months ago, newly released records show.The number of citations declined by a third, to 17,000 last month from a high of 27,000 in October -- all after police added an extra 20 cameras and began fining motorists for illegal turns.
The rapid decline at the 70 camera locations is a sign, city and police officials say, that more motorists know they are being watched and are more cautious about getting nabbed.
"If a person is going the same route day after day, and then they get a ticket because they ran a red light, they are less likely to run the light," Mayor Bill White said Monday.
And that was the point of the cameras, wasn't it? Not just to catch those who ran red lights, but to discourage everyone else from doing so as well. The data suggests that they're doing a good job of that.
Overall, the cameras have nabbed more than 230,000 vehicles since they went online in September 2006.About 60 percent of those motorists have paid their fines, resulting in more than $11.5 million in revenue. The police department has spent $4 million operating the system, including $2.7 million to its vendor, American Traffic Solutions. Another $2.1 million must be shared with the state, leaving a profit of about $5.4 million, records show.
While the citation figures show that fewer motorists are breaking the law at monitored intersections, it remains unclear whether the intersections actually are safer."The simple fact that the cameras are giving out more citations at intersections, that doesn't mean that Houston is safer," said lawyer Paul Kubosh, a critic who unsuccessfully sued the city over the legality of the red-light camera program.
Researchers from Rice University and the Texas Transportation Institute are conducting a statistical study on accident trends at the monitored sites, but it was unclear when the results will be released.
Kubosh said that study could show that minor accidents actually increased at the intersections as motorists make abrupt stops to avoid citations -- a dynamic other cities across the country have seen.
"The whole purpose of the cameras is to decrease accidents," he said. "They sold this thing on accident prevention."
Officers who monitor the program say the study should show that accidents have decreased, said Sgt. Darrell Prince, who supervises the program and monitors video.
"Honestly," he said. "I've seen very few accidents."
The proposal by the city of West University Place to ban cellphone use in school zones has been unanimously adopted by their City Council.
The ordinance must be approved a second time to become law.It would go into effect on August 1 and carry a $200 penalty for a first offense and $500 penalty for repeat offenses. All cell phone usage -- including talking on a hand-held or hands-free device, text messaging or viewing images -- would be illegal in the three-block school zone in front of West University Elementary School.
Police Chief Ken Walker said the ordinance is intended to keep drivers alert and children safe.
"It only takes a split second for a child to run out in the street and be injured," Walker said after the meeting.
This ordinance would make West U. the first city in the nation to ban hands-free devices, Mayor Bob Kelly said.
"We would be way out front on that," Kelly said.
While Walker ackowledged that enforcing the ban against hands-free devices will be difficult to enforce, he recommended them in the ordiance.
"Occasionally it will be enforced. I can see officers working on foot in the area might observe something like that," he said.
Councilman Michael Talianchich said he believes including hands-free devices makes the ordinance stronger.
"I think it is important that it sends a message," he said.
Councilwoman Phyllis Cohen said even if it is difficult to enforce that portion, "I think most people are going to comply voluntarily."
Councilman Chuck Guffey said he wanted to be sure the law applies to moving vehicles only.
"As long as (drivers are) sitting still in the carpool line, I don't think they should be given a ticket," he said.
Walker said police would not enforce the law against drivers who were stopped and that language will be added to the ordinance to make that clear.
The question now, which was raised before but not addressed in this article, is whether Houston will follow suit. I'd guess that it will, but probably not for a few months so our City Council can see how this gets implemented in West U. May as well see what problems arise and how they can be fixed before diving in. Assuming nothing terribly unexpected pops up, I fully expect this to be adopted by Houston in the not-too-distant future.
The proposed ban by the city of West University Place on cellphone use in school zones that we heard about last week gets some more coverage in the Chron.
Houston-area officials are watching West University Place as elected officials there consider banning cell phones in the school zone near the community's lone elementary campus.The move would put the affluent suburb on the map as the first Houston-area municipality to take a stand against drivers talking on their phones as children travel to and from school. The community is following in the footsteps of Dallas and several North Texas suburbs that have recently approved bans.
"We'll be watching with interest to see what happens," said Linda Clarke, director of education and special projects for Houston Mayor Bill White. "We'll certainly be looking and wanting to know more about it."
West University proposed the ban earlier this month after conducting a study to determine how often drivers were spotted chatting on their cell phones in active school zones. Over three weeks in February, police counted 297 drivers on their phones.Six of the drivers violated traffic laws by creeping into intersections while children and crossing guards were present, West University police Lt. Thad Olive said.
Although neither Olive nor HISD police officials could recount an incident when a child was seriously injured in a school zone because of a driver on a cell phone, they said this type of ordinance could prevent tragedy.
"There's been a lot of near misses," Olive said. "It definitely has distracting effects. If I can take one element of risk away from the children in that school zone, then it's a good thing."
Oh, and what exactly does "creeping into the intersection" mean, at least in terms of moving violations? I seem to recall in Driver's Ed that one was taught to stop at the stop line, then move forward as needed to verify that it was clear to proceed. Am I misinterpreting the law, or are we really talking about roll-stopping here? Just curious.
Last year the Dallas-area city of Highland Park banned the use of handheld cellphones while driving through school zones. Now the city of West University Place is considering the same thing.
Council will consider a draft ordinance at its next regular meeting.The West U. Police Department studied the school zone in the 3700 block of University Boulevard in front of West U. Elementary School Feb. 4-22 to determine the frequency of cell usage and its relation with traffic violations.
Police found an average of 13.5 drivers were on their phones in the active school zone each day and 297 drivers were seen from a single vantage point using their cell phones during the study.
During morning dropoff, there were 48 traffic violations, six of which were attributed to cell phone use. Most of the violations had to do with drivers entering intersections when children and crossing guards were present.
Police also consulted studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, New England Journal of Medicine and AAA Foundation for Traffic and Safety.
"All of the surveys we consulted with had the same result -- cell phone usage does restrict drivers of motor vehicles," [West U. Police Lt. Thad M.] Olive said.
Mayor Bob Kelly said he believes council should consider a possible ordinance."The cell phone usage has just gotten phenomenal in the last few years," he said. "The usage of cell phones is so significant you can't just ignore it."
Kelly said he spoke to the mayor of Highland Park in the Dallas area, which adopted a similar ordinance carrying a $75 fine for citations.
The idea for West U. would be similar in that the ordinance would not be to raise money, but awareness.
"He said the (Highland Park) ordinance has worked beautifully," Kelly said. "They had 10 citations in the first week, 10 in the next month after that and now there are very few citations."
There was some debate on whether an ordinance also should prohibit use of hands-free devices in the school zones."The handless ones are still very distracting," Councilman Michael Talianchich said. "I'm in favor of banning all cell phone usage."
Councilman Chuck Guffey said he agreed with banning hands-free cell phones because he believes most people will comply with the law even if it is hard to enforce.
Olive said that sort of restriction would be difficult to enforce because police cannot necessarily tell whether a person is using a headset or merely singing along with the radio.
"We'll get with the city prosecutor and look at it as far as viability in being able to enforce it," Olive said.
The Federal Transit Administration is committed to helping the Metropolitan Transit Authority qualify for funding of two light rail lines by the end of the year, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Tuesday.Hutchison's statement came after a closed-door meeting in her Washington office, where FTA Administrator James Simpson and Deputy Administrator Sherry Little talked with Mayor Bill White, Metro President and CEO Frank Wilson, board chairman David Wolff and a bipartisan congressional delegation from the Houston area.
Hutchison, R-Texas, said Simpson was committed to the same goal as the delegation, "and that is a full funding grant agreement by the end of the year."
Such an agreement would ensure that Metro could complete the two lines, provided it followed required federal procedures.
So far, Metro has pushed the projects forward with a series of small grants for preliminary studies.
Metro has applied for $500 million in federal aid to build the North and Southeast lines. Hutchison said the full funding agreement is important because "once that is committed to by the FTA, then it automatically goes into the budget and we don't have to fight for it."
[...]
Federal officials had questioned the level of public support for the light rail system, and the meeting was intended as a show of unity. Hutchison said the delegation "made quite an impression."
The city of Lubbock has discontinued its red light camera program.
[Lubbock City] council voted 4-3 to remove the cameras. Mayor David Miller and Councilman Jim Gilbreath, who supported the program last year, cast the deciding votes to kill it. They joined Councilmen Todd Klein and John Leonard, who have consistently opposed the program."Statistics are in favor of keeping them, but if you listen to the citizens, I believe the majority of them would prefer this issue go away," Miller said. "I'm elected by the people; I'm going to try to do their will every chance I get."
The cameras have been installed at 12 intersections in Lubbock since last year. A report detailing the cameras' first six months of use, released in January, showed a spike in rear-end collisions at intersections with and without the cameras.
Opponents of the system have said studies show the cameras are affecting drivers' behavior for the worse. But the company, ATS, said six months of data is not enough time to judge them. It also said the cameras are working - accidents with injuries have dropped at the 12 locations.
ATS collected more than $295,000 in fines from drivers caught by the Lubbock cameras in the first six months of operation.
[...]
The city had collected about 70 percent of the fines from thousands of tickets issued last year, but it admitted it had no teeth in its ability to enforce collections. The city also had yet to make more money than ATS billed, meaning all the money had gone to the company. The city was not responsible for the difference.
Still, most council members have been adamant that the cameras are about safety, not money.
"It's against the law to run a red light," Councilman Floyd Price said. "I don't care if a bird sees you or a camera sees you - it's against the law."
Price, along with Councilwomen Linda DeLeon and Phyllis Jones, supported keeping the cameras up to gather at least a year's worth of data.
Miller said he thought the program was working as well but that it was distracting from other projects at City Hall. The number of red-light violations the cameras recorded were cut almost in half in the first six months.
Christof returns to the matter of the proposed location for Dynamo Stadium and its potential impacts on traffic. He notes that while the matter of east-west light rail transport is being addressed, the much larger problem of further discontinuities in the east-west street grid portend trouble for the future, and I have to agree. Reluctantly, because I think this is a fine location for Dynamo Stadium absent those concerns, but agree I must as those concerns are real and troubling. I don't know what to do about it, but I do hope it gets as much consideration as the Metro issue does. If we really are "extending the boundaries of downtown", then we'd better be sure we can handle it.
I should note that not just automotive and rail transportation will be affected by stadium construction on the proposed site. As was pointed out to me by reader Mase, the city's planned Columbia Tap Trail bikeway would also need to be rethought if Dynamo Stadium gets built where they're looking at. (You can see a map of the trail and its relation to the stadium location here in PDF format.) I don't think any of this is insurmountable, but all of it is going to require forethought and deliberation. I'd hate to see us rush into something that we'll regret later because we didn't take the time to plan for the easily-anticipated consequences.
And it appears we are going to be taking some action this week, as the City Council agenda suggests:
The first item on the agenda for Wednesday is a public hearing on a plan to have a downtown special taxing district -- called a tax increment reinvestment zone -- pay up to $20 million for "cultural and public facilities" related to a six-block tract being targeted for the stadium.Which means, in effect, the city is looking to use property taxes to finance the purchase.
In the east part of downtown, those taxes are collected by a tax increment reinvestment zone, TIRZ 15, which includes the possible stadium tract.
Under a TIRZ, property tax revenues generated within the boundaries are frozen at a specified level. As development occurs and property values rise, tax revenue above the set level -- known as the increment -- is funneled back into the zone to pay for infrastructure and capital improvements to help attract further economic development.
TIRZ monies also could be used to secure bonds to pay off the purchase of the land.
[...]
"This really is property tax revenue that's just being diverted into another account; it's public money," [Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul] Bettencourt said. He said he would not be surprised if the city ends up investing far more than the $15.5 million offered for the land.
Bettencourt said having public input on a soccer stadium would be a good idea, even if it is not legally necessary.
"As the complexity and scope of the deal expands, the obligations of the city increase, and the need for having a public vote grows," he said.
"I'm OK with our tax dollars being used for it," said Greg Kusiak, general manager of Lucky's Pub on St. Emanuel, one block from the proposed site. "I think stadiums bring people and money, and we're one step closer to the Olympics."Raul Casarez is building a nine-unit townhouse complex on Hutchins and McKinney. Two of the three-bedroom units already have sold for $350,000.
"I'm very excited," Casarez said. "Within a few years this is going to be better than Midtown."
One thriving business that would be displaced by the land purchase is JANCO Food Services, which supplies food and paper goods to restaurants.
"We've been here 10 years, and it's going to be difficult for us to move," said P. Alex Mousoudakis, one of three brothers who runs the business. "It's going to be expensive, too."
His brother said the city was making the right move.
"The Dynamo deserve it for what they did, winning two championships," Jimmy Mousoudakis said. "If they're going to clean it up and make it nicer to live around here, then I'm OK with tax money being used for it. But it's going to be a pain to move."
A stadium could create more noise and congestion for the nearby Lofts at the Ballpark rental complex, but residents did not seem concerned.
"I moved here because I want the social scene," said Crystal Poarch, 31. "It's always crowded here when the baseball games are going on and when there are conventions, so adding one more stadium to it is probably not going to even bother me."
Having harped on the issue, I'm glad to see the question of where the light rail lines east of downtown will run if the new soccer stadium is built on the land now being considered by the city is being discussed.
Bob Eury, president of Central Houston and executive director of the Houston Downtown Management District, said Tuesday that the probable front-running option being considered is to approach downtown's east side on Texas Avenue.Currently, maps on the Metropolitan Transit Authority Web site show the East End and Southeast lines coming together on Capitol, a block south of Texas, and continuing into downtown on Capitol.
Also on the site is a Final Environmental Impact Statement, completed when Metro still intended to use Bus Rapid Transit rather than light rail on the lines, which shows the route split between Capitol and Rusk. The new proposal employs that tactic, Eury said.
By approaching downtown on Texas, he said, the tracks would "pass by the front door" of the soccer stadium between Dowling and Hutchins. Then they would angle south under U.S. 59 toward Avenida de Las Americas.
From there, a westbound track would continue on Capitol, passing a block from Minute Maid Park, while an eastbound track would run on Rusk, passing the convention center. Each would follow the direction of street traffic and cross the current Red Line at Main.
Eury cautioned that "various options are available," and that "none of this is final." Metro, he said, "is going to make the determination." Metro spokeswoman Sandra Salazar would only say that Eury's description was correct "and most importantly, that the plan has not been finalized, as we are working through the Federal Transit Adminstration process."
Christof and former City Council member Carroll Robinson have an op-ed in the Chron that's a response to the Bill King piece that called for Metro to do away with the fare box. They make some excellent points.
Eliminating the fare to ride Metro buses and the light-rail line will not increase options for transit riders, improve service or necessarily reduce congestion. Even if transit ridership were to increase, there is no evidence that every new rider would be someone getting out of their car to ride a bus or the rail line because it was free. Metro is already less expensive than driving.Moreover, a significant portion of the commuters using the Metro Park & Ride buses already ride for free. Their fare is fully or partially subsidized by their employer, so it is unlikely that Park & Ride ridership will increase significantly by making Metro "free." Many university students can also ride for free. As Metro moves to an electronic fare card it is making paying to ride easier and reducing delays.
"Choice" riders -- the ones with a car at home -- won't ride transit simply because it is cheap. They also want high-quality service.
As our region continues to grow, even if there is no cost to ride Metro buses or rail, there will be more cars on our roads and highways. Over the next seven to 27 years, we will add 3 million people, and most will own a car. Without the option of an integrated regional rail and bus system, they will add to congestion.We also need to look at congestion more holistically by adopting public policies that balance protecting our neighborhoods with enabling and managing increased residential and commercial growth in the neighborhoods inside Loop 610 and Beltway 8. These neighborhoods are already becoming densely developed. Without an integrated light-rail and bus system in Houston and the increased mobility it will provide, local roads will soon become as congested as our lo