| I don't think that Houston is unique; it is my focus because it is the article's. I think there are many places in the US where transit infrastructure is hopeless. I don't say impossible because I have no doubt that we could get Houston to the point of functioning if, for example, we diverted 10% of the military budget to fixing Houston for the next 10 or 20 years. But I would agree that it is functionally impossible, because there exists such a multitude of places in the US where money would be better spent. I also don't state that you have to drive. Looking back: >That in turn means that you have fewer riders, because they have to drive (or walk several miles in ditches or dangerous sidewalks along the sides of boring, high speed roads with no shade in Houston climate) to the station. I portray the walk to would-be transit as really unpleasant. I wholeheartedly believe that it would be. Given the option, I expect a lot of people would choose to drive to transit. You could refuse to build parking around the stop. As a general rule, you should do just that, but in Houston I think you're going to lower your ridership even further by doing so. To be clear, I don't think all walking to transit is unpleasant. Not even in hot climates. I've spent months happily walking to the subway in Madrid on 90-degree days. I've spent weeks happily walking 20 minutes to work along highways in Dallas on 105-degree days. What's different about those two places? In Madrid, there were interesting things to look at along the way, trees, and other ways to stay cool.
In Dallas, those 20 minutes were the entirety of my journey, and the heat was dry (as in Madrid). There were sidewalks that felt safe, despite the fact that they were scarcely more than an accessory to keep the bike-ped people happy when the new roads went in. Incredibly unpleasant with the lack of trees or anything to look at, sure. But they felt safe. Surely there are parts of the Houston area that could go walk-able. Those places could pick up density, and people could choose to move there. But you'll always have the scars on the landscape from these past 70 years where people were unleashed to lay waste to whatever nature surrounded the city, pushed ever forward by cheap oil and subsidized parking and driving. With the options available in America, I don't think you'd ever get enough people interested in Houston to make significant headway on undoing all the bad development. If you're interested in further explanation, let me know and I'll try to put up a blog post, where I can use pictures to further explain myself. |