From There to Here
METRO Airport Direct: Houston's best deal that practically nobody uses
When I got in from New York last week, I wasn't keen on asking anyone to fight the afternoon rush hour traffic to pick me up at Bush Intercontinental and I didn't feel like shelling out $65 for a cab ride home.
So I decided to try the Airport Direct service offered by METRO, which recently lowered the one-way price to $4.50 in a bid to attract more customers.
As soon as I got to baggage claim at Terminal C, I stopped by the nearby METRO desk and found out the next bus was headed downtown in 10 minutes. Not sure that my baggage would arrive in time to catch that bus, I was told that if I missed it, another bus would leave a half-hour later. But the METRO worker seemed confident I would retrieve my luggage in time to catch the first bus.
It happened to be my lucky day.
My luggage was the first off the carousel — how often does that happen? — so I easily walked to the bus, right outside the terminal, in plenty of time. Since it makes no other airport stops, we were soon on the freeway headed for downtown.
Around 30 minutes later, the bus made its first stop in front of the Hilton Americas before heading to the Four Seasons Hotel and then near Macy's (and the nearby Marriott Courtyard and access to the METRORail system).
From there, it stopped on the Dallas street side of the Hyatt Regency, where I got off and waited for my ride home. The bus makes one more stop, at the Airport Direct Passenger Plaza (at Pierce and Travis) before heading back to IAH.
Only seven passengers, including a Transportation Safety Authority employee, were on the bus. And no one got on it downtown for a trip to IAH. But METRO is hopeful that good-word-of-mouth will increase the numbers and make the route viable. (It runs about every half hour from 4:50 a.m. until 7:45 p.m. seven days a week.)
It's not a flashy as a light rail system from the airport — that's unlikely to be built in my lifetime — but it provides a friendly entry to tourists and budget-minded business travelers. And if there's anything to entice Houstonians out of their cars — even for a short while — this may be it.
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