Tag Archives: METRO Houston

Houston, Houston Politics

Houston METRO “Approves” System Reimagining Plan

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In a 4 hour meeting that became heated and personal at times, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County took another major step towards the agency’s System Reimagining plan.

With State Representative Borris Miles, and other elected officials and community leaders present, the plan was approved pending a 60-day intensive study with further recommendations to come back before the board in November.  Basically, METRO is now fully committed to System Reimagining, but has not yet finalized the new routes.

“In reality we will not lock any of this in until March”, board member Christof Spieler said.  “We are required to hold full hearings [on the Reimagining Plan] once schedules have been written, and to allow the public to look at those schedules before this moves forward.”

Before the vote, testimony was given with citizens speaking both for and against the new plan.  Joetta Stevenson, a member with Fifth Ward Super Neighborhood Civic Club, had some very specific concerns.  “System Reimagining is going negatively impact 19 percent of Seniors in the Fifth Ward community. You cannot single out minority and poor areas for less service.”  She noted that residents like herself will lose direct coverage routes to centers like LBJ Hospital and Ben Taub. She also had some issues with the new Flex Zone plans, preferring to keep fixed route service in her area.

In response, Spieler pointed out that the new plans will actually help a large number of Houston’s poor residents by expanding services in under-represented, high-density areas.

“The areas that benefit the most from the this plan are minority and low-income areas.  If you look at population density, [Gulfton] is by far the largest concentration of low-income residents in the area, and they have been dramatically under-served by our system for decades.”

Thus the decision behind METRO’s approval today… move forward with Reimagining, but keep making adjustments to the routes.

Houston has the distinction of being the both one of the nation’s largest and most sparsely populated cities.  In recent years, the city has experienced rapid densification in certain areas, but it’s still a long way off from the density of cities like New York, Chicago, or even Los Angeles.  It’s these challenges that have caused the need for System Reimagining, and also the reasons that residents are so worried about the changes.  It’s important that the region move forward and find ways to improve the transit system, so for that residents should be glad for METRO’s step this week.  Change is rarely easy, but as long as the agency and community continue to dialogue, Houston and Harris County will get the transit they need for the 21st Century.

As Board members made clear, this week’s vote is not the final say for the ambitious Reimagining project. But it does make clear that the days are numbered for the area’s current system. Even with difficulty, change can be a good thing.

 

 

Houston, Houston Politics

Examining Houston METRO’s ‘Reimagined’ Flex Zones

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Throughout the summer, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (aka METRO) has been meeting with communities to provide information about the new system reimagining plan. In most cases, the plans have been well-received, and left citizens hopeful that they will see vast improvements in service.

This was certainly the case for a meeting that I attended on July 17th at the Third Ward Multi-Services Center.  Residents mostly listened, and had questions specifically about how the changes would affect their specific travel needs.  Not surprisingly, Flex service was mentioned very little by the METRO representatives, save for questions which I asked after the presentation.  Basically at this point, METRO is not sure how all aspects of the Flex implementation will go.

For starters, there are some questions about the justification for Flex service, especially regarding the 52 Hirsch route.  When combined with its southern counterpart the 52 Scott, this bus service is one of the 10 highest-performing routes in METRO’s current system.  52 Scott does indeed have higher ridership than Hirsch, but between FY 2013 and FY 2014, Hirsch’s ridership actually increased by 3.6 percent, while Scott decreased 0.9 percent.  For a route in what METRO refers to as “an area of declining ridership”, 52 Hirsch is bucking the trend.

Where METRO has seen growth potential with its fixed route services, especially that are already high-ridership, the system reimagining either leaves those routes entirely in place (ex: the 82 becoming the 8), or modifies them with close alternatives centered around major thoroughfares.  But this is simply not the case with the 52 Hirsch… a high ridership route that has been greatly reduced with the Flex system.  Where the 52 Hirsch used to run every 15 to 20 minutes during weekday service, that run time will now be cut back to once an hour.

When I asked the METRO representatives how they could justify such substantial cuts on a high-performing route, they actually questioned their own ridership data about the 52 Hirsch, saying it was probably erroneous due to bus driver entering and exiting the bus at layovers.  Texas Leftist asked METRO board member Christoff Spieler about the disparity via Twitter, but has yet to receive a response.

Beyond the one issue with the 52, it’s just important for communities in the Flex areas to understand that their public transit service will change drastically.  What was once predictable, even if sparse fixed route service will now be replaced by this new hybrid system.  To get a visual of how these changes look, I turn to the transit blog HoustonOnTheGo, which has done some stellar work discussing the proposed Flex Zones, and their potential impact on affected areas. These maps originate from HoustonOnTheGo, but were combined them into a side-by-side comparison.  On the left shows bus coverage before reimagining (overlaid with the Flex Zones), and on the right shows coverage under the proposed changes.  Be sure to view the original work, which includes information about all of the Flex Zones.

Flex corridor northeast changes

 

Under system reimagining, fixed route services will be lost.  

 

 

In some cases, citizens will now be forced to walk several miles if they want to reach fixed route service in the system, and are must follow procedures similar to the mostly home-bound customers that use MetroLift… a call-in service.

To be fair to METRO, they do distinguish Flex from MetroLift in a couple of very important ways.  First unlike a MetroLift van, Flex vehicles would stay in a relatively small service area, therefore giving them the ability to respond to call-in requests in a much faster time frame.  If a customer requests pick-ups from a Flex driver, they should already be in the area, and therefore available much sooner to provide rides.  Even with this likely scenario, it is still difficult to reason how the Flex call-in service will work with people whose travel needs far outweigh those of a typical MetroLift customer.  If the system gets overwhelmed, does that mean the person just cannot complete their trip at all?

These and other questions still need to be addressed before Flex is implemented.  Let’s hope that METRO is doing all it can to see these issues get resolved.