Sure, introducing a new form of public transport in a sprawling, car-obsessed city like Houston seems like a tough feat to pull off. However, since the METRORail debuted in 2004 (or at least since it stopped colliding with cars so often) it's been hailed pretty regularly as a success for the city, carrying almost 40,000 passengers daily even in it's limited route. But after a trip to Houston, blogger The Antiplanner, who writes about city planning and lists himself as an "avid railfan," describes the system as "the definition of failure." His argument? That though light rail ridership is high, total ridership in the transit system has not matched the levels of growth pre-light rail.
"I learned that, before light-rail construction began, Houston’s transit ridership was growing very fast. Between 1996 and 2001, ridership grew at 4.4 percent per year and passenger miles grew at 8.4 percent per year. The faster growth in passenger miles suggests that Metro was making improvements that made buses more convenient for long trips.... By 2006, passenger miles were nearly 9 percent less than in 2001. Remember, they had been growing by more than 8 percent per year. If they had continued growing at a mere 5 percent per year, by 2006 they would have been 40 percent greater than they actually were.
Antiplanner also sites decreasing bus routes, higher bus fares, and rising operating costs as evidence that the light rail has been a bad investment.
"In short, for a $300 million capital cost, light rail significantly increased the costs of operating Houston transit while it killed the growth in transit ridership and significantly reduced passenger miles. If you are an empire-building bureaucrat, transit employee seeking higher pay, or rail contractor, then you would probably consider Houston’s light rail to be a success. From the point of view of taxpayers and transit riders, if this is a success then I would hate to see a failure."
Is he right? It's been too long since college statistics for us to make sense of his graphs and data, but he does raise some interesting questions. All we know is the light rail sure beats paying to park at the Texans games.
