Suffering: The Definition of Sports Insanity.

As a sports fan, endless suffering is often viewed as some weird rite of passage that all most go through prior to experiencing any joy.

"Abandon hope, all who enter here"

But, does it have to be this way?  Is it necessary to have your heart ripped out and shown to you on several occasions before your team finally climbs the mountain to a championship? Does there NEED to be so much pain and sorrow to make a win enjoyable?

The Vegas Golden Knights would say no.  And so would I.

Don't get me wrong.  Suffering can make for some great stories.  The Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the cities of Cleveland and Buffalo.  After long periods of drought making it to the championship oasis can seem like the commutation of sports death. There's a certain catharsis that comes from being in the doldrums and then finding your way out of the desert of loss.

But, in many ways, continuing to spend money in support of shoddy franchises is more of a cop-out than it is a virtue. You support your teams despite the fact that they give you no reason to do so. That they have a stingy ownership group, or incompetent leadership. You support these teams because (the worst of all reasons) they're "from where you're from".

Don't mistake this, I'm not suggesting hopping around from team to team looking for a winner every year. Bandwagoning in other words.  The New England Patriots have a lock on those fans. People in cities such as Houston proudly sporting Patriots jerseys with "Brady" on the back not knowing who in the world Steve Grogan even is, or that he played for the team.

In Houston we have three top-league sports franchises, the Astros, the Rockets and the Texans.

The Astros are defending World Series Champions and have started off the current season pretty well. The Rockets are in the Western Conference Finals in the NBA (although it does appear that they won't be able to beat the Golden State Warriors).  The Texans are coming off a 4-12 season, have never made it past the 2nd round of the playoffs and are, by all accounts, the worst-ran franchise in the city.  Guess which team has the biggest fan support?

This for a team that's played 16 seasons and only had a winning record in six of them. A team that has an owner with no apparent desire to win, who is content consistently selling out NRG Stadium, pocketing his money and saying the occasional stupid thing.  A team that gives fans no compelling reason to root for them outside of "Well, they're the local team".

Or consider the Cleveland Browns. A revived franchise for 19 seasons now who only have two winning seasons during that time, a woeful ownership group, horrible front office and absolutely no reason to make you believe that they're going to turn it around Draft Day style.

Then you have the Vegas Golden Knights. An expansion team that was brilliantly put together by a smart GM hired by an owner who let him select the right coach, and put the right players around him. All they've done is reach the Stanley Cup Final in their first year.

Which of these three teams then is 'worthy' of support?  I would argue it's the team that's doing whatever it can to win, not the teams that are happy being moribund with strong fan support.

The fact is continuing to financially support a bad team expecting differing results is the very definition of sports insanity.  Suggesting that suffering is a prerequisite to winning is just a salve to your supporting a sub-par team.

Yes, you should remain a fan.

No, you should not reward them with your money.

No, you should not try and belittle the fans of the teams that are doing well.

At it's heart this anger toward Vegas and their fans is really just guilt reflected outward. You KNOW in your heart of hearts that the current path your team is on is crap but you won't accept it. It's much easier to point the finger at teams that are doing well and moan about "preferential treatment" or "rigged draft rules" ignoring the fact that many teams did stupid things to allow the Golden Knights to build the team they have (Hi Florida!).

So no. You don't have to suffer to enjoy a win. The fact that we've been conditioned to believe that we do is the lifeblood of bad franchises across the country. Bad owners rely on fans being blindly loyal, to not questioning, to having a local media who are going to do their level best to carry the water for failure.  If you question this the response is "well you just don't know".

Yes, you do know. The results are right in front of you. Records don't lie.

I'm not suggesting that all of you run out and support the Golden Knights or jump on board the Patriots train. You should continue to root for your team, through thick and thin. But that doesn't mean that you have to continue to blindly throw money at them either. Or spend much of a sports day watching them get drilled again by some wide margin, or buying into the excuses for failure.

It also doesn't mean that you should punish the fans of a team who gets it right.

That's just not a good look y'all.  Stop it.

Demand more from your teams before you support them with you time and money.  Absent a promotion/relegation system it's the only thing that will grab the attention of owners.

How did this not exist before now?

The horrible transit agency addition:

Metro starts shuttle to Houston Food Bank today. KTRK.com

METRO is adding a new route today.

 

The new route will include a stop at the Houston Food Bank to accommodate families who have trouble picking up their food

Sometimes the only thing to say is just WOW and shake your head and walk away.

Houston is low on transit availability rankings

Houston Area ranks low on Transit Coverage List. Molly Ryan, Houston Business Journal

Compared to the largest metropolitan areas in the country, Houston doesn’t fare well in terms of public transit coverage. According to a new report from the Brookings Institution, only 57.8 percent of the jobs in the entire Houston metro area are in neighborhoods with access to public transit service.
When ranked against the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the nation, Houston was No. 82 in terms of the share of jobs that were in reach of public transit service.

The first howl you're going to hear will come from "transit advocates" who will demand that this study only increases the obvious need for ending the Metro sales tax carve-out and dumping incredibly large amounts of money into light rail.

Of course, they're wrong.  Because Light Rail, even at it's peak build out, is never going to address the largest problem: getting people from their houses to the system.  While MetroRail might, eventually, touch the Galleria, Greenway Plaza and other job centers it's currently doing so at the expense of bus service which is going to be vital to getting people where they need to go.

In short, Houston has 1/2 a plan, the other 1/2 (right now) is being forwarded by David Crossley and his acolytes at Houston Tomorrow whose long-term solution to the problem is for those living in the suburbs to leave their unsustainable lawns and single-occupancy houses and move inside the Loop into condos and other multi-unit dwellings, provided those multi-unit dwellings aren't located to close to their single-family dwellings which are, for some reason, much more sustainable than their outside-the-Loop twins.

The "unsustainable" argument is a lie anyway.  With cleaner cars, improved bus service, better sidewalks and bike/walking paths, the "walkable neighborhood" is just as much a reality (and as eco-friendly) as a LEED certified high-rise in downtown Houston.  In other words, contrary to Houston Tomorrow's ramblings, there are several ways to "go green".

Metro trying to end the carve-out of their sales tax allotment (which goes to 15 cities in their service area, 14 of which are getting the shaft, service wise) is to be expected.  Metro has long been ran by new-urbanists whose mission statement has been to build up the city core of Houston while strangling the outer reaches.  A friend of mine once suggested that, if there's nothing you can do to stop a bad idea, just don't worry about it, and that's kind of my take here.  I'm no longer concerned about what Houston and Metro are going to do with their toy train, I'm just going to laugh as they continue to stumble around with an unworkable plan and gumption.  The point of this post is not to suggest that light rail doesn't need to be built.

Houston is going to build it's toy train. Don't be concerned about that.  What should concern you greatly is that they're going to have no plan (or money) to get people to it efficiently.  And that is a recipe for disaster.

Orlando's train: A mess worthy of Frank "Procurement Disaster" Wilson..

Thanks to a blog post by The Wandering Aramean and the following (quoted) article by the Orlando Sentinal we find out that Houston is not along in making a total rivet out of their mass-transit planning....

Orlando Airport Eyes $470 Million expansion. Dan Tracy & Sarah K. Clarke, Orlando Sentinal

Brown said preliminary talks have centered on All Aboard Florida paying for the station south of the existing terminal near what is now a parking lot for people waiting for planes to land.

The airport, in turn, would be responsible for building a mile-long, elevated monorail to serve the station, at a cost of $181.4 million. OIA also would be responsible for roads and other infrastructure costs of about $78 million

The 3,500-space garage and depot would cost $210.7 million. About 80 percent of that expense would be the garage. But who pays for what part of that bill has not been determined, airport spokeswoman Carolyn Fennell said.

Driving part of the garage expansion is demand from rental-car companies who want more space on airport property, Fennell said. Calls to airport-based rental-car companies for comment were unsuccessful.

Financing has not been figured out either, though a variety of sources could be tapped. They would include selling bonds, seeking federal and state grants, spending cash reserves and using surcharges on airline tickets and rental cars.

If an agreement is reached and financing is secured, the station could open in 2015, Brown said. It would be built in such a way that it could expanded to serve up to four systems, including the SunRail commuter train, he said.

SunRail is set to run in mid-2014, with its closest stop to OIA at Sand Lake Road. A bus would ferry passengers from the stop to the airport.

So you have a one mile section that's projected to cost a fifth of what the entire high-speed rail line from Miami to Orlando is projected to cost? Somebody's gotten their numbers jumbled and I have a sneaking suspicion it's the train folks.  For my reader's who like to tell me to "educate myself" on high-speed rail I offer the following: High speed rail cost overruns.

If there's one thing we've learned about cost projections on rail it's that they typically aren't worth the paper they're printed on.  It is nice to see that Houston's not the only city without the foresight to plan their light-rail to connect at airports.  I'd be curious to see how many potential fliers (as a percentage of all traffic) actual make use of the bus/train/bus option for arriving at MCO. A bevvy of Google searches came up with blanks, which leads me to believe that the number is so insignificant as to not matter.

These types of systems work in Europe because A) the trains have a terminus at the airport, which can then be taken into town where connections can be made to almost anywhere and B) because they are densely packed cities with roads and traffic that make driving impractical. Neither of these situations exist in the US except for New York City.  Because of this it's just not working.

I understand the airport's desire to be included in these plans, I just wish that our transit leadership carried with them some new world horse sense.  Instead we're getting the Frank "procurement disaster" Wilson, George "A company computer?" Greainas model of fantasy Europe. Something that doesn't fit in America's car-friendly cities and never will, no matter how hard you push that square peg.  The round hole is just not malleable.

Who knows? Maybe MCO will pull this off.  Given the pass/fail ratio of other non-dense city's rail dreams I seriously doubt it.

Pro-mass transit word play

It's an interesting game they're playing.....

Metro Chairman Proposes Freezing Mobility Payments, Renee C. Lee, Chron.com

"I appreciate the difficult position they're in, but it (the mobility payments) still takes a significant amount of money from valuable, needed projects and basically puts off completion of the light rail system," Barnum said. "What we want is Metro tax dollars for transit and I think that's what we should be doing."

The pro-light rail faction has chosen to attempt to redefine "transit" as "mass transit" ignoring the fact that roads, cars, sidewalks and the other improvements are transit related.  Just not the type of transit that the smarts desire.

It's also horribly confined to areas inside Loop 610, which renders it useless to much of the area from which Metro is drawing funds.  Again, light-rail activists will call this argument a red-herring, but it's very important to the local communities surrounding Houston who are basically being asked to bankroll a service for which they will receive no benefit.  Ironically, this is almost the same argument, in reverse, that some InterLeft bloggers have made regarding City of Houston residents inside the Loop paying Harris County taxes.  For some reason that is bad, while asking others to sacrifice on a level that they're not willing.

Such is the surreal logic being used in Houston's transit debate.

It has to be understood that there are always going to be players in this debate such as Houston Tomorrow who forward the theory that the solution for Houston's future is to shoe-horn a majority of area residents into a very small geographical area with insufficient infrastructure.  There are also going to be developers whose solution is to build out in ever-wider circles ignoring potential for infill development.  It should also be understood that both of these camps should be summarily dismissed as serious players in future transit discussions.  What's needed is a future vision of Houston that accomodates all transit needs, from light rail (it's here, we might as well find a way to use it) robust bus service and automobile transit.  The debate doesn't have to be one of Inner vs. Outer Loop, or toy train vs. dirty car.  It should be about what is the best way to make all of these work seamlessly together and improve overall transit in the region.

Given the current state of vision possessed by Houston's leadership, the prospects for a real multi-modal transit system that moves people where they need to go is rapidly diminishing.  In fact, this November ballot initiative could be the last, best chance to inject some sanity back into the debate, and get Houston on the path to true mobility.

A fallacy in the pro-high speed rail argument

Picked this up today from Kuffer while catching up on things I missed while in Vegas....

Financing the Dallas to Houston High Speed Rail Line, Charles Kuffner, Off the Kuff

Dallas and Houston are just far enough apart to make the drive unpleasant and inconvenient, but once you factor getting to and from the airport and going through security, there’s not much gained by flying. That’s the main reason why a high speed train connection has always made sense.

This assumes, of course, that there won't be security checks (there will, possibly with Metro PD playing the role of TSA in Houston *shudder*) or travel time to a train station.  The station, if Metro and others have their way, will surely be located to connect to the "transit backbone" of Houston.  That would put it somewhere downtown.  What that means is that it will be a difficult commute (especially during rush hour) for the roughly 80% of "Houston area" residents that reside outside the Loop, parking will be a disaster, and the whole logistics of the thing will be impossible.

I also take the opposite stance of Kuffer and others that the terminus should be located far away from the two major airports in each city.  From airport to airport would be the least worst option for a build.  Riders would then have the option to catch a flight, rent a car, take a cab, or a hotel shuttle to various locations in each city*. Locating withing the city centers would increase reliance on Metro and DART to get people where they want to be.  That's not to bad in Dallas but, with Houston Metro, it's a disaster waiting to happen. Another likely scenario, given the current political attitude, is that the terminus in Houston be located at Hobby.  That would be an even worse disaster. I understand the MetroRail/anti-United public viewpoints right now, I just don't think they should be the basis for financial decisions that are going to affect the region for years to come.

All that being said, the train itself is an unneeded, very expensive waste of money that doesn't need to be built at all. It's another solution looking for a problem.  It's only real draw is that it resembles something on TV that a certain group of people think symbolizes world class.  It's a shiny bauble that would serve no real transportation need at great expense to taxpayers.

Because of this, I'd give it a 50/50 chance of being built. Given the business sense of Houston's current "leadership" I'd say it's a cool 100% that Houston will buy into the financing in some shape or form. If the Parker regime has anything to say about it Houston will buy in with the least favorable terms possible.

If built, once the newness wears off, I predict less than 25% occupancy on most routes within a year.




















*Not that "catch a flight" would offer much in the way of cost savings, but it could be a viable third option for route planning.  A rarely used third option however because the DFW/IAH ticket difference would have to be considerable for a train connection to make sense. I don't see that happening more than a handful of times, but it COULD happen.  The main reason for locating each terminus at the airports is because the continuing travel infrastructure is already in place.

Dead horse....beaten.

You have to give them credit, they keep trying...

Rent to ride....We like it, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Chron.com

Of course the Gang likes a bike share program in Houston.  I just can't help but wonder if they'll like it as much during July and August when the seat temps are so high they fry riders thighs?  For that matter, I wonder if we'll get any meaningful reporting on the usage levels of this when the temperature levels rise to brutally hot instead of the current hot, humid but the breeze makes it tolerable?

My gut feeling is no.  We won't.  We'll get a passel or reporting saying that while ridership is "disappointing" they have high hopes for the future.  Then they'll roll out this tired old canard:

But now, on the heels of theKinder Institute's survey, which stated that over 50 percent of area residents would prefer to live within walking - or biking - distance of work

Sure they do, if they don't have to give up anything.  But let's ask these same study participants if they'd like to do that if they live in a multi-family domicile, if they are willing to give up their cars, their lawns, their privacy and their freedom to move about.  All things people have now, and which real estate patterns are saying more and more people are taking advantage of.

The big problem with the Kinder Institute survey is that it assumes there are no trade-offs. In life, we understand that their always are.  It started as a graduate project and it never developed anywhere past that level.  It's a neat little toy to allow lazy journalists to take data that can be spun to say that "Houstonians" want the things that the Gang wants for them.

They'll then beat that dead horse into submission, until reality once again intervenes and tells them that this great Utopia is not taking place.  Then they'll spend print inches telling us why it just needs more time (and money).

It's the Houston way.

An odd obsession with inantimate objects.

Houston saddles up for downtown bike-share program. Allan Turner, Chron.com

"People want to live, work, play and eat close to one another and not be in their car as much," city sustainability director Laura Spanjian said, citing a recent Rice University study that found most respondents wanted to live in compact, walkable communities. "The love affair with the car is finally over, and providing alternatives to help people get around in the urban environment will be increasingly important."

I don't have a "love affair" with my car*. I'm pretty sure you don't either. It's an odd proclivity of the LibDem left to categorize public refusal to see things their way as being the result of some unusual, unnatural, unreasonable human emotion.

You see the same thing on a National level when we're told that we're "addicted" to oil. Of course, we're not "addicted" to oil. We use petroleum products because they are, currently, the cheapest and most plentiful option available for the continuation of modern society. If something more useful were to come along, we'd move to it. Because we're unwilling to play along with the LibDem's green games, where we would pay a LOT more for a LOT less, then they have to design a construct where it's our "addiction" that's keeping us from making a self-damaging decision. This also allows them to keep the intellectual high-road, lest they realize that making decisions whose sole purpose is to make life harder really only works for Trappist monks. And hell, even they make really good beer.

Why do Houstonians prefer to drive around in their cars? Because, in 100 degree heat, during the middle of Summer walking or riding a bike is not feasible. Cars have air conditioning, bikes don't. It's also more practical given the way Houston is designed. For 99.99% of Houstonians, the bike as a daily commuter is not a workable solution. It's got very little to do with "loving" one's car and more to do with wanting to get somewhere in a decent amount of time, not caked in sweat and slime, and not smelling like you just ran a marathon through a pig sty.  Don't get me wrong, the wife and I ride our bikes recreationally all the time. After which I can jump off, take a shower, and then hop in my car to go grocery shopping etc. Were another, more economical, option available (say: neighborhood circulator bus routes) then I would certainly be willing to take advantage of that. As a matter of fact, my last four vacations have been 100% car-free. I've ridden buses, taken pedi-cabs, ridden on metro systems and walked. We actually walked, a LOT. Of course, the weather hasn't been in teh 90-100 degree range at our destinations either, so walking was a workable option.

All of the previous being said, I have no doubt that this bCycle program is going to be wildly successful, once it expands. To really take advantage of the systems full potential there should be immediate talks of expanding to MidTown. As a jaunt around downtown service bCycle is a novelty, something that allows appointed Statists to say that Houston's "love affair with the car" is coming to an end. It's the light-rail of bike options, expensive, flashy, but with no real utility. It's pretty and new however so enough people that are impressed by this type of thing will ride around from bike rack to bike rack, not realizing that they're going nowhere of import.

Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to drive where we need to, in our cars, and not one man/car wedding will be on the table.





OK, Let's be fair. If I owned an AMG Mercedes CLS 55 I'd be desperately in love with my car, but that's a different matter entirely.

Houston Metro starts framing, will the opposition be organized?

Metro in a quandary as transit funding heads to voters, Mike Morris, Chron.com

The Metropolitan Transit Authority is preparing for a referendum, likely to be on the November ballot, asking voters to decide whether to put millions more of their sales tax dollars toward transit or continue diverting part of it for road projects in their cities and Harris County.

...and that's where Houston Metro would like to stop the argument, without providing voters much detail as to how they choose to define "transit".

It's light rail of course, with little or no service going to the periphiary cities in the Houston region, but taxes continuing to be collected at static rates while bus service decreases. If Metro is allowed to frame the issue in that light, and you can bet that Christoph Spieler, George "It's not child porn" Grenias, David Crossley, ChronBlog and the InterLeft will coordinate to ensure they do, then there's a very good chance this referendum is going to pass.

As with many Metro elections, it's all going to come down to the credibility and organization of the opposition.

Can they make the case that getting rid of the 1/4% diversion will LESSEN transportation for all but a few regional citizens residing within the Inner Loop? Can they recieve enough funding and support to get their message out? Most importantly, can they supporess the "UN Agenda 21" nonsense that seems to flow unchecked from their foot-soldiers?

These will be the questions in the upcoming election. Ironically, Grenias & Co. admit that the issue at hand is the issue they fear the most:

Cindy Siegel, the former mayor of Bellaire and an appointee of the 14 small cities in Metro's service area, agreed. She and Metro CEO George Greanias worried the discussion would drift into the shorthand of highways versus rail lines

Metro doesn't want that argument, because it's a loser. Metro wants to keep offering a pie-in-the-sky regional transportation system that's not on the drawing board. That's the argument the opposition should be making.


But, will they?

Time for More Houston Area Survey Nonsense

It's the silly season in Houston as the Kinder Houston Area Survey is being released and all of the bad analysis along with it.


Mass Transit Gains Momentum in Houston Area Survey, Jeannie Kever, Chron.com

This year's Kinder Houston Area Survey found strong support for mass transit and a growing number of people who say they want to live within walking distance of work and shopping, reflecting what survey founder Stephen Klineberg predicts will become a fundamental shift in one of the nation's most car-centric cities.

I agree, people DO want more mass transit in Houston. But what the survey doesn't (as a matter of fact, NEVER) asks is what they are willing to give up for it, or whether they think that "Metro Solutions" is the correct mass transit plan.

It's easy to say "I want more mass transit" and then not apply a cost. That's what the survey does every year, ask people questions with no eye on the cost of the solutions. It also doesn't ask people if the transit they want is the at-grade light-rail system that's currently being built. My guess, admittedly fueld by anecdotal evidence, is that what people are asking for is a multi-modal system that includes decent bus and rail options to get them to a variety of locations within the Houston region and not just to some aging, wheezing romaticized version of "downtown" as Houston's current brain-trust envision it.

Residents of The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Katy etc. don't want to move inside the Loop. What they want is to have workable transit options to job centers in the Metro area, then to be returned to their walkable suburbs to spend time with their kids, go to Skeeters games and generally live their lives outside of the circle of Houston Tomorrow's urban planning group. Unfortunately Metro is continuing to move forward with a plan that doesn't meet the transportation desires of the community. The result of all of this is a lightly-ridden Danger Train that's not doing anything to alleviate congestion. This, for the most part, is because Metro's current transportation design doesn't take a majority of the people where they want to go.

Finally, let's address the "congestion" fallacy: The idea that congestion will magically dissappear once Metro has put into place this great, Multi-Billion dollar, mass transit system that will instantly whisk all of us where they want us to go. This is the great lie of urban planners everywhere. Ever been to a "great transit" city say...Paris, London, Madrid, New York? Have you ever noticed that they are some of the most congested traffic cities in the world? Don't buy into the "light rail will cure Houston's congestion" fallacy. It won't, and all of the shoddy analysis of the Kinder survey won't change that fact. If anything, it's making things worse.

There will still be TSA agents for bullet trains

Judging from the comments to this story, many people seem to think there won't be:

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee pressing for bullet train between Houston and Dallas, Stewart Powell, Chron.com From the comments:

As dirty as I feel for saying this, maybe this isn't such a horrible idea. Providing bidding for contracts is fair, and that the costs of building it does not make it unaffordable for ORDINARY citizens to use. Not to mention, I don't want to deal with getting molested in line by a bored, overzealous TSA goon, like at the airports......
(ughh,,,,I need a shower now)

That's a nice fantasy, except that high-speed bullet trains will have TSA security check points just as airports do. The hope that you can just hop a train and head to Dallas passing through zero hoops is a happy fiction. Even in Europe most inter-city trains have metal detectors and security checks. The Eurostar has all of these and full customs to boot. Yes, there are less security hoops to jump through on the train, but you still go through an airport-like security scan pre-boarding.

There's no way people are going to be allowed to board a multi-Billion dollar transportation system filled with dozens (or hundreds, to not start a tiff over projected use) of people without going through a security screen. Because the TSA is nothing more than a glorified jobs program they'll assuredly be the ones administering it. I wouldn't even be surprised if the makers of the full body scanners don't apply a full court lobbying press to get their expensive toys installed.

It will be the same security theater, at about the same cost (I would imagine) just slightly longer in duration.

Of course Sheila Jackson-Lee thinks it's a great idea.

All that being said, if the State would consider opening up the easements to bid and allow the system to be ran by the private market (regulated, much the way air travel is) I would support a high-speed train network in Texas. Preferably a system that connected the cities in the Texas Triangle. That way there'd at least be a profitability filter ran on the system before it got off the drawing board.

But a glorified AMTRAK system? Blech.

Why Houston Metro is a failure

The screenshot above is my option for public transportation to work. If you're not familiar with my previous blogging I typically do this when I start work in a new location just to see if Metro can get me where I need to go.

So, in order to get to Greenway Plaza (on the Southwest side of Houston) from the Addicks Park n' Ride (the Northwest side of Houston and the closest to my house) I have to go downtown, change buses and then head back out to 59.

So the answer is obviously no, at least not in a logical manner. In other cities transportation systems there would be something from the Addicks P&R over to the NW transit center which would then go down to Greenway. I recently got back from Madrid, and I could get within a 1/2 mile of almost anywhere I wanted to go with a 5 day tourist pass and public transportation. The same went for London, Paris, Dublin, Seattle, Honolulu and, of course, New York.

Of course, none of these (truly world class) cities were wasting time building at-grade light rail whose primary design function was to socially engineer people toward a certain, preferred, lifestyle. Houston Metro is less about transit, and more about new urbanism and smart growth.

This is why they fail.

(New) Metro solution: We'll just wait until the furor dies down

Gotta hand it to the new Metro: They get the whole 'news cycle' thing:

Expect delays: Metro pushes back route changes until February, Caroline Evans, West University Examiner

Bus riders will have a little more time to adjust their travel plans before Metro goes through with route changes and eliminations. Metro announced via Twitter and Facebook Thursday that the proposed changes, which include eliminating the 35 Fairview and the 49 Chimney Rock, will be put off until February so staff can meet with affected communities and try to come up with other options.

What Metro's bloated PR department understands is that, by the time February rolls around, many in Houston will have forgotten that Metro was planning these 'service adjustments' altogether.

If there's any real difference between 'new' Metro and 'old' Metro it's the former's superior ability to properly handle a friendly media. You can be sure that, by February, there will be a laundry list of new, positive, stories about how Metro is squandering spending $900 Million of taxpayer money on an expanded toy train system designed to move the pretty people from haute location A to haute location B thus ensuring that these 'service enhancements' are buried on page 27.

The Houston Transit Paradox

On the one hand, Houston "world-class transit" proponents LOVE that Metro is being given the keys to the car of $900 Million dollars to do with as they please:

(Metro gets its money (finally, $900 million), The Apple Dumpling Gang, Chron.com)

Houston Metro's success in landing $900 million in federal funds for expanding light rail here is little short of a miracle given the national climate of towering deficits and partisan gridlock.

Congratulations to the transit agency's leadership team of Gilbert Garcia and George Greanias for getting it done. And kudos to old pros inside the agency like John Sedlak for doing their part behind the scenes. Hard to believe, but these are the first federal funds granted for Houston rail. Ever.

On the other hand, shiny new apps are being lauded for that old-fashioned, creaky bus service:

(An app for Houston's bus system, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Chron.com)

The app, which Metro says will be available by the end of the year, will list all the bus stops and schedules. We hope this comprehensive view of the system will help Houstonians see that, yes, their city does have a functioning mass transit system.

The problem with this is that, unmentioned here, Metro is currently slashing that very bus service in order to free up money to pay for the red-ink that has become the new 'transit backbone'. Imagine just how expendable those bus lines will become once the expense of an expanded network is factored in.

The solution? You will not be surprised to hear that Peter "plan" Brown*, feels that Houston just needs a plan:

(Get a plan, Peter Brown, Chron.com letters)

Essentially, there is no coordinated plan; not for the city, not for the region. Without a goal-oriented plan, backed by clear, sustainable growth policies, Houston tax-payers will be the losers, because scarce public dollars will be wasted.

Of course, the counter-argument is that 'plans' such as the ones that Brown is championing, are big money wasters that involve massive resources but which actually get little done. Fittingly, groups with high-minded names such as Brown's Better Houston and David Crossley's Houston Tomorrow love to promote plans that ultimately involve groups of like-minded people (especially people who think EXACTLY as do they) making life's decisions for the rest of us. These are the same groups of people who promote so-called "green" housing construction standards that make home prices even more prohibitive for the poor, and plans to rip up all freeways that run through cities which would make it prohibitive for the poor to get to work.

After all of that, if you can't see the paradox here it is: Proponents of so-called "world class" transit solutions are actually proposing mass-scale solutions whose real end goal is to push the poor outside of the city center and to the suburbs. The more they call for "transit" the less they are actually hoping to provide.

The core of any urban transit program should be allocate resources to ease the most common type of commute, while also providing transit who are most reliant on it. In Houston that should mean ensuring that car transit is primary, and poor neighborhoods have good strong bus service that gets them to places such as job centers, grocery stores and other community centers. Houston's transit future, as envisioned by the cool kids, is actually a plan that's designed to move upper-class urbanites with excess disposable income from their nice lofts to entertainment areas. Successful cities are not typically planned this way.









*That's Peter "plan" Brown, who garnered the support of a mere 22% of the electorate in the 2009 Houston mayoral election. That's means that just about 4 out of every 5 Houston voters disagree with him, and since his ideas closely mirror those of Houston Tomorrow you could say that they disagree with them as well. Despite this, the Apple Dumpling Gang (the editorial board of what was once the newspaper of record for America's fourth largest city)are willing to ignore the will of a strong majority to back plans like this.

I reject your reality.....

...and substitute my own.

That seems to be the mantra of City Controller Ronald Green when dealing with S&P:


(City dropping S&P as its investment-rating agency. Chris Moran, Chron Houston Politics blog.)

The city of Houston will drop Standard & Poor’s as the rating agency for its investment portfolio as a result of getting downgraded earlier this month, said City Controller Ronald Green.

The rating only applies to Houston’s investments, not its debt, so it has no effect on the city’s borrowing costs, Green said.

I get it, there are a LOT of things wrong with S&P as a ratings agency: They blew it on the sub-prime mess, haven't found a bubble they didn't like (or missed it's coming POP!) The problem is people are using these examples as factual arguments for why S&P is wrong NOW.

It's just more logical fallacy argument-making posed as fact. It only makes sense that, if the US Government is downgraded, that the investments stemming from US Government sources would be downgraded as well. Despite Green's claims, there's really nothing arbitrary about that. Political? Possibly, but not arbitrary.

The problem is, like Metro, City of Houston finances are on increasingly shaky ground. At times like these the main focus should be on efficiency and cost-cutting, not funding trinkets and expensive light-rail lines that don't serve those who need transit services the most.

The focus by Houston City and area elected officials (as well as appointed quasi-governmental bureaucrats) on trinket governance would be considered incompetent if you removed the understanding that today's government is not about citizen service. Put in their proper perspective, these decisions make perfect sense*.





*We'll let you decide the proper perspective for yourselves.

Food Trucks Brought to you by MetroRail

Hey, Houston already has a "mass transit backbone" that requires 99.9% of residents to drive into town in order to ride it. (makes sense right?) So who's to say that we can't destroy the idea of food trucks by creating a central location where 99.995% of Houstonians would have to drive to them?

Possible Spot Where Food Trucks can Flock, Nancy Sarnoff, Chron.com

A local entrepreneur wants to turn the parking lot she leases near downtown into a gathering spot for the city's growing fleet of food trucks.
Lauren Barrash, owner of an Inner Loop shuttle service, is circulating a survey to residents around her Washington Avenue- area property to gauge interest in the proposed project.
She already leases space to one food truck and has started approaching others about the idea.

Of course, the whole appeal to food trucks is that they are mobile, and that (in an ideal world, outside of the mind-suck that is inner-loop Houston)they can drive close to where people work and serve up some tasty food.

Not in Houston however. In Houston the idea of food-truck Nirvana is a place where people would have to drive, pay the owner of the lot a fee to park, eat, and then drive BACK to their offices (or homes, after a night of drinking on Washington Ave.)

If MetroRail doesn't sponsor this Metro is overpaying for their bloated PR department.

Behind the screaming headline

ChronBlog's editorial headline department parrots the meme:

Red-light cameras reduce crashes, Texas study suggests, Paul J. Weber, AP via Chron.com

But a closer look at the survey itself reveals something slightly different.

Yes, during the first year or two there is a (slight, and uneven) decrease in traffic accidents after the installation of RLC's. At 14% (with little controls, this could easily be mostly made up of noise. But, since we're taking the numbers at face value without factoring in noise*....)

You would also be wise to notice that accidents started to INCREASE at almost all intersections after the 2nd year RLC's were in effect. What this suggests is that the "safety" benefits from RLC's are transitory at best, and the intersections will revert to the mean over time as people get more and more oblivious to the RLC's and continue old driving patterns.

What any of this means is uncertain, but it certainly doesn't "suggest" that the installation of RLC's provide any sustained reduction in accidents. If anything, it suggests the opposite. It's just another incomplete data point in the on-going debate over RLC's, which the voters of Houston have rejected in an election the areas former newspaper of record refuses to recognize as valid.

A far better solution could very well be reinforcing already ingrained behavior by lengthening yellow light times. Unfortunately, this option does not drive revenue for the City so it's being rejected out of hand.







*Noise could also relate to reduced traffic volumes due to the economy. The raw number decreases are way too small vs. the general population to be considered statistically significant, especially considering the lack of control intersections (i.e. intersections without RLC's) in the study.

Sex on the bus (Updated)

or...toy train, in this case....

Metro chief Greanias suspended, Carol Christian, Chron.com

The Metropolitan Transit Authority board has suspended George Greanias, the agency's president and chief executive officer, for accessing adult content on Metro's computer system, board chairman Gilbert Garcia announced today.

Greanias, who has led Metro for less than a year, will be suspended for one week without pay for violating Metro's electronic communications policies, Garcia said.

My thought is he could say he was doing research on how to increase sagging ridership numbers on Metro's 7 mile transit backbone.


Update: Houston Press provides site-by-site detail.

If these are true (and coming from the Press (more a shock shop than a 'news' shop these days) with no verification or sourcing I'm not saying they are) then there seems to be another issue here. Some of these sites (by name) appear to be relating to child pornography or prostitution. I would think this is something Metro would want to look into. Although maybe not. Judging from the commenters in the said Houston Press piece underaged porn is 'no big deal'.

Why not just wait for the final numbers?

Chron.com and Metro* are beside themselves with glee over a "study" by local Democratic activist and University of Houston Poli-Sci professor Richard Murray that suggests new members won't have to be added to the board.

(Study: Metro board not in need of new members. Carol Christian, Chron.com)

A study by a Houston political science researcher shows that suburban population growth, relative to the city of Houston's, hasn't been enough to require adding two seats to the Metropolitan Transit Authority board.
The conclusion by University of Houston professor Richard Murray is significant because if 2010 census data had met a threshold that requires expanding the board from nine to 11 members, the city's five appointees would no longer be a majority.

The emphasis is mine, and really cuts to the heart of the issue. What scares Metro to death is the prospect of losing the majority for the urban core and being forced to consider providing service to non-smart growth proponents. What this would undoubtedly mean is *gasp* NO MORE TOY TRAIN. That's something that the world-classiness crowd can't stand.

To my thinking waiting for the final census results to come out, and then taking a hard look at the final numbers, is the best way to satisfy this. In a very "old" Metro way however, Metro is choosing to get out in front of the issue by using their bloated PR department to spend taxpayer money in order to prop up 7 miles of train service that's accomplishing a lot of nothing. Not only is it bad public policy, but it's accompanied by more bad identification of local figures and will soon be followed by a bad editorial cheer-leading the results. It's the Houston Way.






*Please don't call them the "new" Metro. That's a PR ploy to cover up the fact that Metro is operating as they always have. They don't listen to large swaths of the voting public and they aren't all that interested in providing meaningful transit service to the Houston Metro area.

Market needs....

Perhaps you were surprised by today's report that Houston Metro's ridership is declining despite the rising cost of fuel? You could have been surprised, but I wasn't. As a matter of fact I'd be surprised if ridership had increased.

The reason?

It's been a well-discussed top on this and other blogs that Metro is not providing services that get people where they need to go. Instead of focusing on moving people from neighborhood to business center, circulating bus routes and focusing on the people who most need their service, Houston Metro has decided that a very expensive toy train that goes nowhere is the future of transportation. As more and more people decide to move out to the suburbs, Metro has decided to become even more focused inside the Loop. If you build it where the people aren't, the people won't ride on it. That's not opinion, it's a fact. A fact that's been borne out by Metro's own numbers.

Sure, they'll try to spin it any way they can. That's what they do and what they have to do to keep their jobs. At the end of the day, and I would suspect in their deepest thoughts, they realize that not providing adequate bus service to key areas is a long-term recipe for disaster. Their hope is that gas prices get so high that people ultimately are forced to change their lives, drastically.

Fortunately, for Metro, there is a political party in America whose goal is exactly that. Unfortunately for Metro, it appears that the other party, the one that doesn't share these goals, is destined to win again in 2012. Until then we're stuck with seven miles of a glorified amusement park ride masquerading as a transit-backbone, and a group of useful idiots who are riding the system straight off the rails.

Want to ride the bus into work? Or to the Galleria? No luck for you.