This story about how there are three possible routes for the east end of the Universities line, all of which have pros and cons, contains the following fascinating suggestion from State Rep. Garnet Coleman, who represents the area:
Coleman offered the most unusual suggestion, a one-way loop running east from Main on Wheeler to TSU, then north on Ennis, east on Alabama to Scott at UH, north to Elgin, back west to Crawford and south on Chartres and U.S. 59 to the start.
The benefit, he said, would be to foster development over the widest possible area while reducing the width of the needed right-of-way.
The drawbacks are that Wheeler and Elgin are 12 blocks apart, and passengers boarding at Dowling, for instance, would have to travel roughly four times as far to reach Main Street as they would on a two-way line.
In other words, instead of a route with two terminals, where the train reverses course and switches lines after it pulls in and passengers embark and disembark, you have a route with one terminal and the other end is a loop where there’s only one track. I believe Chicago has something similar to this, though its loops are self-contained and run both ways. The point here is to ensure that the train goes where it needs to go without causing too much disruption on any of the streets it travels.
I’ve taken a stab at diagramming the Coleman Proposal here. The piece drawn in red is clear based on the description. I’m not quite certain about the last leg, from Elgin back to Wheeler, as the article is a bit confusing. The purple route goes down 59 and Chartres, the blue one takes Crawford all the way (it becomes Almeda south of Alabama), and the brown one is Crawford to 59. Without knowing the area better, I can’t say if one of these is preferable to the others.
The main point, of course, is the loop, which I think would work pretty well. Eyeballing a Google map of the area, I’d say it’s at most a half-mile from Wheeler to Elgin, so you’re never more than about a quarter mile from the track (you may of course be farther from an actual stop). It might take ten minutes or so to traverse the loop if you got on at Wheeler and Almeda or Dowling, with about a half-dozen stops along the way – for sure one at TSU, another at UH (possibly one each at Robertson and Hofheinz), and a couple along Elgin. All things considered, I think this is a pretty darned elegant solution.
“Without all the data, project team members believe that a loop separated by more than one block presents challenges with ridership, construction costs and construction disruption,” [Metro spokeswoman Sandra] Salazar said.
Every party has a pooper, I guess. Honestly, I think Metro needs to give this a serious look. From where I sit, it addresses the main concerns raised in the article, and I don’t think it would make anyone’s ride significantly less convenient. By all means, do your studies, but keep an open mind about it.
I’d love to know what the real transit geeks think about this. Robin? Christof? Tory? What do y’all think?
Of course, none of this will matter if John Culberson wins his pissing contest with Metro. It’s an interesting exercise, but of little more than academic interest right now as things stand. Too bad, because this would be a great way to serve a community that wants the line built. Oh, well, not his problem.
3 problems:
(1) A loop works well for people inside it, who can walk either on one direction or the other to get there. It works less well for people on one side, From TSU, for example, you’d be right next to the eastbound trains, but you’d have to walk over 1/2 mile to get to westbound trains. In the end, those people will have to get on at the closest station and ride around. Sometimes that’s only mildly inconvenient; sometimes it makes a trip a lot longer. Note that the Chicago loop is actually two-way; this proposal is one-way. Say you’re at Elgina and Blodgett and want to get to UH. You have to ride a westbound train to Wheeler, then transfer to an eastbound train there to backtrack to UH.
(2) A loop isn’t well suited to being extended. An eastern extension of the University line to the Eastwood Transit Center (at I-45) and on to Harrisburg makes sense sooner or later, and that would turn the loop into a pair of widely spaced one-way lines instead of a loop.
(3) Building one track in a street costs considerably more than half as much as building two tracks. So building two one-way tracks in separate streets will cost considerably more than building two tracks in one street.
Of course, none of this will matter if John Culberson
Rep. Culberson didn’t write the language that voters approved in 2003. METRO did. It’s strange now for anyone to suggest that if Culberson or legal action forces METRO to adhere to 2003 proposal, it will scuttle rail through the Third Ward. It’s completely within METRO’s power to avoid that scenario, by doing what they said they’d do in METRO Solutions.
Chicago does have a downtown el loop, but it’s quite a bit different than what is being proposed here (because multiple lines use the el loop tracks, which are multi-directional, and the downtown loop serves a very busy/dense area). I love Chicago and its el, but it’s not light rail, and its downtown loop isn’t much like the Third Ward neighborhood loop being proposed here.
It strikes me that the expense of what is effectively a dual footprint proposal is going to hurt it (compared to a single footprint proposal), and that it’s not the most efficient way to move people anyway.
Once again, you mean Culberson’s interpretation of the Metro Solutions referendum, Kevin. But that’s not really relevant at this point. You say Culberson is merely trying to hold Metro to what the voters approved. I say he’s trying to prevent what the voters approved from being implemented, and that his “ballot language” argument is merely the vehicle he’s driving at this time to make that happen. If he loses that fight, or if Metro announces its unconditional surrender and starts working on a Westpark-only line, I say he’ll find another way to stick a shiv in this project. It’s what he does.
Show me an unequivocal, on the record statement by Culberson that says if Metro takes Richmond (or whatever part of it he cares about) off the table, he’ll fight to his last dying breath to ensure that the line gets the federal funding it needs to be built, and I’ll not only withdraw this objection, I’ll call on Metro to quit fighting a losing battle and make Westpark work. Until then, I say he’s working to kill the Universities line by any means possible, and that you’re naive at best to think otherwise.
As for the objections to the loop design, I agree that it’s not always convenient, especially for people who need to go the other way to get where they’re going. I still think it’s workable, and think it’s worth doing the ridership study. If it turns out to have a really negative effect on ridership, then I agree it’ll have to be scrapped.
I’m actually not so worried about the cost issue. If this solves a nasty political problem and ultimately doesn’t cost more than a two-way line on any one street, I say that’s better than nothing. Obviously, getting all the stakeholders to agree on a single route would be best.
The extension issue is a concern. I’m not sure how to address it.
I still think this suggestion is worth looking at, as a fallback if nothing else.
In Tampa, there was a bus line that was a loop for part of it’s route. It was done by necessity because it was running through an area with a lot of one-way streets and had to come up with a route that would lead by as many hospitals as possible (this route being used by many patients and relatives of patients). It worked fine, and was extendable in the sense that a bus approaching the loop part of the route from either direction made the same loop.
Admittedly a bus route and a train route are two different things, but the idea is the same. The issue of the distance from the line I think is minor compared to the conveninece. If you don’t want to walk to the section fo the loop going the direction you want, go to the the other section of the loop. You’ll get to where you’re going eventually–it seems likely that it will only add a 10 minutes or so to the trip, if your map is right.
I think it’s a good plan.
I think Christof’s right about the impracticalities of a loop. I think it could split between Blodgett and Wheeler to the west of TSU if needed, then use the empty rail RoW to get up to Elgin without losing street RoW (or split with Ennis). A stop where it turns onto Elgin would give reasonable walking distance to the destinations to the west on Elgin, based on the map I saw in the Chronicle.