Well, it seems that Houston is wanting to increase the rates on the toll roads yet again. Just what I want to do -- pay more to sit in more road construction delays. Considering the speed of the traffic in some places, perhaps they should advertise it as an increase in the parking lot rates.
They say that they're already experiencing gridlock over on the Westpark Toll Road during certain hours. This is a very new road. Sounds about right for Houston though. The problem here in Houston is that the idiots that plan and design these roads base their plan on the current traffic flow at the start of the design phase, not on what the projected flow might be once the project is finally complete, much less what the flow will be within a few years.
Houston does not have an effective mass transit design and I seriously doubt that they ever will. As such, it will be very difficult to ween people from their use of their automobiles. Part of it has to do with out Texas desire to go whereever we want whenever we desire. We don't want to wait for a bus or train to take us there -- we want to just get in our cars and go. Never mind the fact that we might just be sitting in our car in a traffic jam -- at least we're in our car, not crammed into some public transportation bus with people who haven't quite discovered the proper use of body deodorant or women who believe that if they pour enough cheap perfume on themselves, they can disguise the fact that they didn't take a shower that morning. If you want to get Houstonians to use mass transit, you need to create something that is significantly faster than busses and automobiles. It needs to go every place that our current highways go. It also needs to be stylish enough that the urban professionals in the outlying communities will be willing to ride in it instead of using their cars. It also needs to be cheaper than what it would cost to actually drive someplace. Personally, I think we should develop an elevated high-speed monorail type system that parallels our existing hub and spoke highway system. It needs to be visible from the highways so that the people who are stuck in traffic will see it zoom over their heads while they are stuck breathing the exhaust of the car in front of them. Once people realize that they could already be at their destination instead of stuck in traffic, they'll start using it. You would need one along all the freeways leading into downtown (US-59, I-45, I-10, TX-288) in addition to a line around each of the loops that go around the Houston area (I-610, Beltway 8, TX-6/FM-1960, US-99). There would need to be stations where people could switch trains at every intersection of the hub and spoke system in addition to downtown. Houston is not a compact city like New York, so any sort of mass transit plan that wants to be effective needs to think big. Small stopgap measures like buses and light rail trains that don't go anyplace where people want to go just won't cut it. Think big or go home...
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