Posted on 03/07/2004 5:02:00 PM PST by PeaceBeWithYou
After witnessing a weekend of self-congratulatory festivities marking the January 1st debut of Houston’s MetroRail transit system, the hometown newspaper’s editorial board could hardly contain its exuberance. “Viewed from any angle,” opined the Houston Chronicle, the kickoff celebrations were a sure “sign of good things to come.” To the board, itself a merciless campaigner for rail, the roughly 15,000 people in attendance suggested that a “large helping of crow” was in order for transit critics. Reports from Houston spread quickly causing the Arizona Republic’s editorial page to gloat “critics rail at light rail to no avail.” After all, what worked for Houston would surely also work for Phoenix. An Austin-based advocacy group went even further, hailing their favored transit mode’s “enthusiastic acceptance by the public” though also neglecting the role free tickets played in attracting inaugural weekend riders.
Declarations of this sort typified proponent reactions to the controversial “light rail” commuter train – a system that recently consumed $340 million of Houston’s congestion relief funds. Despite the laudatory responses, an ever-growing volume of evidence plays testament to a certainty for Houston: MetroRail may quickly become an anchor around the neck of the city’s transportation system rather than the traffic relief measure of its original intent.
The problems to date are widespread and growing. Before it even opened MetroRail already boasted the dubious record of five automobile-train collisions in barely a month of test runs, thus relegating transit police to blocking duty along the tracks for opening weekend lest another accident replace rail itself as the top evening news story. Constant technical glitches and another ten automobile-train collisions since service began have placed MetroRail on target for becoming the most accident-prone transit system in the nation.
Far from attaining public acceptance, the flow of passengers at the rail stations came to a crashing halt on Monday morning after the festivities. The first paying train departed with only a crew of reporters, did not gain any passengers until the third station, and remained sparsely ridden for the entire day. Aside from a brief Super-Bowl induced rider surge in early February, not much has changed since day one of paid services. Transit officials recently reported that the main parking lot serving their system has averaged only one-fifth capacity on workdays – a figure that is similarly reflected in dismal ridership totals for its first month of operation.
According to official reports from MetroRail, a total of 558,257 passengers road on the train during the month of January. Though rail proponents claimed the figures were proof of “success,” a closer examination reveals that those claims are premature. The figures for January include over 15,000 boardings during the inaugural weekend when free tickets provided an incentive for curious passengers. They also include inflated numbers from pre-Super Bowl festivities on January 29th through 31st when light rail carried about 120,000 passengers for game related events. Accounting for those two extraneous events that induced non-routine ridership surges and the actual monthly boarding figure would be something closer to 425,000 total or about 14,000 round trips (and thus only 7,000 passengers) a day. Either way, MetroRail’s current ridership figures, if sustained, put it on pace to carry somewhere between 5.1 and 6.7 million passengers for 2004 – only half of the 10 to 13 million originally estimated by some rail proponents. Even worse, MetroRail’s $23.5 million annual operating costs indicate that even with the overly optimistic 13 million passenger figure the system will still be $10 million in the hole at the current $1 fare. Barring a quick turnaround from the current pace, that figure may to fall over $18 million short from simply recovering its annual operating costs at the fare box, all to be taken from public monies.
As if its financial boondoggle status were not bad enough, light rail’s disastrous safety record has become something of a legend in Houston. Affectionately dubbed the “Wham-Bam-Tram” by local conservative activists, light rail has lived up to its nickname. A summary of the collisions and glitches to date reveals the extent of this growing problem:
CRASH 1: November 19, 2003 – Light rail is involved in its first accident, hitting the fender of an SUV as it turned across the tracks.While transit backers dismiss light rail’s shortcomings as temporary adaptation problems for commuters, the issue is substantially more fundamental. MetroRail’s tribulations derive almost entirely from an inherent yet neglected system design flaw: the operation of trains in mixed traffic. Whereas popular transit systems such as the Washington D.C. METRO use grade-separated tracks that do not intersect vehicular lanes, MetroRail runs in the middle of a major thoroughfare along side and in between automobiles. This design is something akin to placing 21st century bullet trains on 19th century trolley tracks and attempting to operate them in a pattern that requires stopping every six blocks.CRASH 2: December 16, 2003 – Train hits the bumper of a car as it pulls out of a driveway on Fannin at Southmore.
CRASH 3: December 19, 2003 – MetroRail collides with a pickup truck turning left from Main at Alabama. A light rail crash safety drill was occurring a few blocks away at the time of the accident.
CRASH 4: December 20, 2003 – Light rail crashes into a Ford Explorer making a left turn from Fannin at John Freeman in the Medical Center.
CRASH 5: December 30, 2003 – MetroRail collides with a passenger car exiting a private driveway along the tracks on Fannin.
CRASH 6: January 9, 2004 – Light rail collides with a passenger car turning left at Fannin and Binz. The driver was apparently confused over the difficult to read lighted no-turn signs along the route.
CRASH 7: January 19, 2004 – A light rail train collides with a suburban attempting to make a left turn off of Fannin at Dryden. The intersection contains notoriously confusing turning lane signs switch to no-turn signs when a train is present.
CRASH 8: January 23, 2004 – A light rail train obliterates a Union Pacific maintenance truck and severely injures its driver on a test track that runs parallel to the UP track. The train involved in the collision was also traveling at approximately 60 mph on a “test” run – a speed not even remotely approached during the stop-and-go operations of street use that average just over 12 mph.
CRASH 9: January 26, 2004 – MetroRail collides with a passenger car attempting to make a left turn off of Fannin at Southmore in the Museum District
CRASH 10: January 27, 2004 – Light rail hits a Toyota minivan attempting to turn left on McGowen from Main.
CRASH 11: February 5, 2004 – A train collides with an automobile turning left off of Fannin at Dryden in the Medical Center. This intersection is the sight of an earlier accident where confusing lighted no-turn signs may have contributed to the crash.
CRASH 12: February 15, 2004 – MetroRail hits a flatbed truck alleged to have run a light while crossing Pierce near downtown.
CRASH 13: February 19, 2004 – Light rail involved in an accident with an armored car pulling out of a bank parking lot near Fannin and Southmore
CRASH 14: February 21, 2004 – Train collides with a van turning left at Fannin and Montrose.
CRASH 15: February 24, 2004 – Train crashes into a car turning left at Fannin and Dryden – the third collision to date near this intersection.
Electricity Failure 1: January 4, 2004 – A power failure near Reliant Park shuts down the light rail system in its vicinity forcing riders to leave the stalled trains through emergency exits after 18 minutes without air conditioning. The power failure exposed another design flaw in the system by shutting down crossing gates along roadways for the duration of the outage. The result: when MetroRail ceases to move so does everyone else in a car nearby. A frustrated driver and a Metro bus reportedly broke through two of the gates during the outage.
Electricity Failure 2: January 17, 2004 – A small fire at a power station shuts down a lengthy segment of the light rail system for over an hour and a half. Stranded passengers had to be carried by bus to their destinations
Electricity Failure 3: February 6, 2004 – A delivery truck reportedly clipped one of the relatively low-hanging high voltage trolley cables between the Wheeler and Rice stations. Light rail obtains its power from a modern day version of a “troller” – a device invented in the 1880’s that makes electrical contact with open wires suspended overhead. The accident happened at about 9:30 AM and took until 1:30 PM to be repaired. Reports from the scene indicate that it may have taken up to half an hour for repair crews to respond to the downed wire.
Super Bowl Shutdown: January 29-February 1, 2004 – Light rail was originally sold to Houstonians under the claim that it would help carry passengers with ease at major sporting events such as the Super Bowl, yet during the event’s festivities many streets proved too crowded to safely operate the trains. As a result transit officials shut down large segments of the light rail line into downtown, leaving thousands without an easy access to transportation. Persons trying to enter and exit downtown had to wait up to two hours despite the trip’s length of only a few miles.
As with streetcars, MetroRail’s constant stopping prevents trains from completing a journey in a reasonably efficient time. The current 7.5 mile journey takes 35 minutes at an average of 12.8 mph, or roughly the top speed of a Segway Scooter. Three Chronicle reporters recently experienced this flaw the hard way by timing the train against busses and automobiles. MetroRail runs 50% slower than both alternatives and also costs more when parking and fares are considered – all facts that leave little room for wonder about the system’s dismal ridership.
The fifteen accidents to date stem in large part from automobile driver error yet one cannot help but question that their frequency, and thus some culpability, results from a common sense failure in rail design. This circumstance may be demonstrated through a simple comparison. Few will deny that a cliff-side highway with no guardrails poses a danger in its own right to drivers who steer off the road and into the ocean below. Though the error in steering is itself a fault of the driver, the absence of a cliff-side guardrail provides a substantial contributing factor to the accident. The proximate cause for each accident is a negligent design that makes that particular stretch of road accident-prone and an abnormally high frequency of accidents would provide more than ample testament to that design flaw.
Houston’s at-grade light rail exhibits its own abnormally high accident rate and that alone, even with driver error, is cause to seriously reexamine the system’s design. Though light rail supporters, such as the militant smart growthers at Austin’s “Light Rail Now!,” tend to dismiss their favored transit system’s inherent hazard to traffic as the product of Houston having the “nation’s worst drivers” (after all, no wrong could ever be committed by a transit system in their minds), the real issue at hand is once again the fundamentally bad idea behind light rail itself: at-grade mixed traffic operations. Putting a full sized passenger train in the middle of vehicular traffic makes about as much sense as installing a lane of vehicular traffic down the toy aisle at Wal-Mart. It has about as much logic to it as trying to land passenger jetliners on an interstate or conducting navy war exercises at a popular snorkeling spot. All of these situations create inherently dangerous conditions for users who are patently ill-suited for simultaneous interactions. Since the problem stems from design, simply writing tickets every time somebody gets hurt and simply sticking an oversized deer-whistle-for-humans on the front of a train will never lessen accident frequency.
Similar problems will continue to impede the success of MetroRail so long as transit advocates refuse to reevaluate their system’s design. At the unfortunate insistence of these same persons and their corporate cronies who profit from transit construction contracts, Houston voters narrowly approved a substantial light rail expansion before having an opportunity to see phase one in action. An opportunity, though small, presently exists to achieve this end: separate the grade for any and all expansions of MetroRail and take passenger trains off the streets. Instead of bestowing unearned and premature declarations of success on the new system, officials must come to grip with the fact that fundamental flaws exist and correct for them before a 7.5 mile boondoggle in downtown becomes a 60 mile folly for the entire Houston region.
I don't blame the train for the moronic drivers that crash into it. Houston is home to the worst drivers in the country.
Did you write that story?
No. But when I saw it, I thought that it was pretty obvious that whoever did write it had spent some time on the Action America web site. After all, I was the person who coined the term "Wham-Bam-Tram" on the Texas FR page, when I suggested that we come up with a catchy phrase to use as often as possible, in the hope of getting it heard by some of the media types that were going to be in town for the Super Bowl. It seems that it is indeed catching on, at least locally. I'm still waiting to hear it used on a national newscast. Imagine the egg on the faces down at City Hall, if that should happen.
Regardless of all the warnings about not standing on the top rung of a ladder and other safety precautions, people still fall off of ladders. But, if a new model of ladder came out and it became clear that the number of people falling off of that particular model of ladder was 5 to 10 times greater, per ladder sold, than any other model of ladder, the manufacturer would immediately recall the ladder, even before determining what the problem was with the ladder, to try to forestall any potential liability suits, especially class action suits. Failure to issue a timely recall would demonstrate negligence and that would dramatically increase the amount of any judgment. It's called cutting your losses.
But, since the Wham-Bam-Tram is a train that is publicly owned, instead of a privately owned ladder company and the Houston taxpayers, instead of Metro officials, will be responsible for paying the cost of any judgment against Metro, the Metro board just keeps the Wham-Bam-Tram in service, causing more and more accidents, making it much more likely that class action suit will be filed and significantly running up the eventual cost of judgments in such suits. It should be noted that at this time, the Wham-Bam-Tram is having accidents at a rate at least 6 times higher than any other city that has implemented light rail. But, at only 7.5 miles, it is also much shorter than the light rail lines of those others, so the rate per mile is even higher.
To protect the taxpayers, it's about time to start a petition for a special referendum, to do two things: Take the Wham-Bam-Tram immediately out of service, until the problem with it can be determined and repaired and
The Wham-Bam-Tram is a class action suit just itching to happen and if the city and Metro won't protect taxpayers from such an obvious threat, then taxpayers will have to protect themselves, by ousting those responsible.
on average, over four million people ride the subway every day in New York, about equal to the total population of Los Angeles and exceeding the total populations of Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.
Of course, I wish that I had another option besides the N (Never) and R (Rarely) trains. Time to move to Brooklyn Heights to catch the 2.
Liberals love mass transit - - for the simple chattering class. You won't find Kerry, Kennedy, or any of the other champagne socialists riding on stinking, lousy, graffiti-painted, spit-all-over-the-floor mass transit.
What is even more interesting is that the motoring citizens of New Orleans have little problem navigating St. Charles Avenue and the French Quarter with a streetcar that shares the same space as private vehicles.
People in New Orleans know that if you are making a Left Turn on St Charles Ave. that you must look for both vehicles and streetcars before proceeding. The concept is quite simple and people in Houston must learn the same as the people in New Orleans.
Yes! There are some great parodies that could be done with the Houston METROrail (I think this was discussed briefly on the TX forum). Things like putting little painted cars on the side of the train like a WWII bomber plane with its hit tallies. I think one suggestion was to change the electronic sign on the front of the train that tells the destination to "River Styx." Of course, an obligatory Lee P. Brown photo would have to be superimposed onto the driver seat.
Not necessarily. The most recent string of accidents has happened with other types of collisions and they come from a serious design flaw. There are several locations along the track where normal traffic lights and special train signals give simultaneous conflicting directions (for example the regular light will be green at the same time that a train approaching sign is lit). It's been two months and metro hasn't even considered putting them in synch with each other.
This piece of crap is an obvious liability for the City, and when combined with the $1.5 BILLION (and growing) pension fund shortfall -- well, things don't look terribly rosy for Houston.
BTW, are we a "world class city" yet??
I think it's pretty obvious that The Houston Review is waging a campaign of biased journalism that the media usually reserves for SUVs. Only the big bad local boogeyman that they've chose to demonize is the light rail system.
Good grief, look at that list of accidents. It's all "A light rail train collides with this... A light rail train collides with that" when it looks to me that, more often than not, it's the moronic driver of the other vehicle who's at fault. Dazed and confused idiots trying to make illegal left turns, or backing out of driveways without looking to see if anything was coming down the street --- cripes, anything could hit an idiot like that: bus, another car, truck, bicycle.
How come Houston has so many idiots on the roads?
What did y'all do... give driver's licenses to the illegal immigrants?
Sheeeeeesh, revoke those licenses and keep those morons off the streets.
Make 'em ride the MetroRail and only let competent drivers operate automobiles. It'd be a lot safer for everybody.
You blame the problems with a design on the users. Were you in private industry producing a product, you would make a luscious target for a lawsuit. The job of the designer is to PREVENT problems and minimize the risks. Fixed rail transit systems have been around for a hundred years. The design requirements are well understood. So if it isn't done correctly, blame the designers. Unfortunately for fixed rail as a transportation mode, if there are problems with a fixed rail design, they are hideously expensive to reverse because of their size and cost, indicating yet another inherent flaw with the transit system you advocate.
One of the inherent risks in fixed rail transport systems is the enormous mass of the vehicles, which demands careful design to prevent collissions. Of course, that is more expensive AND disruptive to other modes of surface transportation. That latter problem was clearly illustrated in the discussion of how Houston had to shut the system down during the Superbowl, indicating yet another cost of fixed rail systems you have yet to confront (and carefully chose to ignore in your response). Note also the risks associated with single point failure, the power outages, when the system comes to a total halt. Automobiles, or buses for that matter, have their accidents and breakdowns too, but because it is a multipath system are capable of being re-routed around the problem. Yet another reason buses and jitneys are a better mass transit solution than fixed rail. Buses are vastly cheaper to buy, more reliable, more flexible, and employ more people, BUT they too have a single point failure mode, union work stoppages.
How come Houston has so many idiots on the roads?
The designers of the system knew that there were idiots on the roads before they built the system. The job of the designer is to account for stupidity because it is a factor in any mode of transportation. Fixed rail carries inherent risks that do even more to prove that they are not worth their outrageous costs. Buses are a far better solution.
There is NO SUCH THING as an idiot-proof design.
Hang the lawyers.
They argue for "smart growth" (sending everyone downtown on commuter systems and in high-density living). I say we need smarter growth. A decentralized work sector means that we won't have some of these congestion problems.
Even Mayor Bob-White has asked downtown companies to look at letting their employees work at non-downtown offices because of the closure of Spur 527 (59 exit into downtown closed for 3 years).
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