sustainable77095

Transit, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Recommendations
for the State Highway 6 / FM 529 Area (Cypress-Fairbanks)

Peter Wang, LCI
League of American Bicyclists Cycling Instructor

Copyright Peter Wang, March 10, 2009

Why Transit, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Recommendations?

There are many benefits to using modes of personal transportation other than private automobiles, SUVs, and trucks.

Businesses would obviously like more shoppers in their stores, but SH6 & FM529 are way beyond design capacity, and approach gridlock conditions during more and more hours. Area residents feel beaten-up and exhausted by the traffic, and tend to avoid going out, sometimes even ordering goods online and letting United Parcel Service fight the traffic.

Families want a way to get around which will improve their health (physical & mental), save the family money, and allow the older kids to get around independently by themselves and allow the parents to escape the burdensome "chauffeur" role.

The Cy-Fair school district, parents, students, and all concerned about real estate values would like to see a stronger school tax base and school system. This will require diversification away from mostly residential property tax sources to a mix of residential plus more high-end commercial. But an investor won't place an office tower in an area which is already experiencing gridlock conditions. The additional employees simply won't be able to enter or exit the premises. What do we do to lure investors away from the Energy Corridor District?

Traffic is a dire public safety hazard. It is impossible for ambulances, fire, and police vehicles to make their way along SH6 / FM529 at times. Such conditions make hurricane evacuation problematic. We tend to not think about it, because it is a "common" danger (therefore we are numb to it), but private automobile travel is dangerous; 37,000 die every year in crashes in the US, and H-GAC reports that our area is extremely unsafe, on a per capita basis, for crash fatalities, injuries, and drunk driving. This is a huge public safety and public health problem.

Everyone wants there to be less pollution and less dependence on foreign sources of transportation fuels.

Everyone enjoys walkable, bikeable community spaces that feel inviting, interesting, and safe. Have you enjoyed the San Antonio River Walk? The Houston Heights? The Woodlands Town Center? Old Town Spring? Vail Village, Colorado? If so, then you've experienced areas that range from a little bit less to a lot less dependent on cars for local mobility than the SH6 / FM529 area. Communities like these usually experience strong property values over time. Notice how real estate inside Loop 610 in Houston has boomed in value, especially along the Light Rail corridor, whereas our suburban property value has languished in value over the years, perhaps not even keeping up with inflation. Since our home is our biggest investment, this is not a good thing.

Just to clarify, these transit, pedestrian, and bicycle recommendations are not "anti-car". They do not mean to "force" people out of their cars. They merely propose that our community try something else in addition to the present 100% dependence on private automobiles, SUVs, and trucks. Eating a salad along with one's steak does not make one a vegetarian; neither would taking a bus or train or riding a bicycle from time-to-time make you "anti-car" or "anti-American" or a "treehugger". After all, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama enjoy riding bicycles.

Transit Recommendations

There are many exciting, useful, and mutually-reinforcing transit possibilities for the SH6 / FM1960 corridor. Mr. Clark Martinson of the Energy Corridor District has already begun engaging METRO concerning the possibility of a SH6 / FM1960 "QuickLine" express bus service. We emphatically support the rapid deployment of a QuickLine bus at this time, in the 2009 - 2010 timeframe. Furthermore, we recommend that the debate over what to do with the continuous median left-turn lanes ("the chicken lanes", or "the suicide lanes") be reframed in the following manner:

Sequester the existing continuous median left-turn lanes as a dedicated, delay-free, transitway for a SH6 / FM1960 transit line from Willowbrook Mall to the north, to Westheimer Rd. to the south. Replace the QuickLine bus with Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) running in this dedicated transitway, then eventually replace the BRT with Light Rail
The transit line in the dedicated transitway will be faster than car traffic at peak times, and people will want to ride it to save time and money
The transit line should stop at the METRO Addicks Park & Ride, so that riders can connect to City of Houston destinations
The transit line will completely transform patterns of land use and development. Formerly badly-aging "ho-hum" strip malls will become highly desired transit corridor properties, and values will escalate, possibly dramatically

Here is the most exciting part. SH6 and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks near US 290 are indicated as a possible 290 Commuter Rail stop on the conceptual map published by the 290 Passenger Rail Coalition (the Cy-Fair Chamber of Commerce). We recommend that the Cy-Fair area lobby hard and aggressively to win the 290 Passenger Rail stop, and then link it to the SH6 / FM1960 transit line. This would give area commuters two ways to get Downtown from SH6: (1) via 290 Commuter Rail, or (2) via Addicks Park & Ride. Furthermore, the 290 Commuter Rail is envisioned as going out to College Station. Conceptual maps have been published recently in the Houston Chronicle which show the 290 rail corridor possibly someday being built out as high speed rail to Temple, Texas, with links north and south to Austin and Dallas ("The Texas T-Bone"), and links east to New Orleans and Atlanta. Imagine an energy executive or engineer working in the Energy Corridor District taking BRT or Light Rail up to the 290 high-speed train, which would then carry them off at 200 MPH to meet with colleagues in Dallas, or to meet with energy researchers at Texas A&M or UT Austin, then being able to turn around and come back home to Cy-Fair the same day after the meeting, relatively refreshed and relaxed because someone else did the driving.

With a connection to high-speed rail, Cy-Fair will become the gateway between the West Houston, the Energy Corridor, and the other Gulf Coast cities on high-speed rail network. It will no longer be merely a bedroom community, although this will be strength for decades to come. It will start to become a business center, and all of the new high value business development will take place in the vicinity of the high-speed rail stop and the SH6 / FM1960 transit line, and it will continue in an unbroken line all the way to the present-day Energy Corridor, taking a pause at the Army Corps of Engineers lands, of course. All of these business will add tremendously to the Cy-Fair ISD tax base.

Transit will bring more shoppers to stores without the use of cars. This will enable the gradual conversion, over time, of non-revenue generating parking lot space into retail floor space (building more buildings on today's parking lots), improving shopping mall performance. This will also make the properties more attractive, by converting some portion of the sun-blasted, stark seas of concrete parking into shopping villages where people do more walking, browsing, and socializing.

There is also an opportunity on FM529 to establish local bus service to bring commuters in from the Grand Parkway area to the SH6 / FM1960 transit line. It could then continue on, dropping workers off at the industrial parks between SH6 and US290, ending up at the currently under-utilized METRO West Little York Park & Ride, where commuters could then travel to many destinations in the City. This would be the (3) third way for area commuters to get into the City via transit. Of course, after work the FM529 bus riders could stop at the major retail location at SH6 to do some shopping before getting home.

Traffic injuries and fatalities will decrease due to the use of transit instead of private cars. H-GAC safety studies conclude that our area is one of the most dangerous in the US for death & injury due to automobile crashes. In contrast, travel by train or city bus is extremely safe. In a collision, mass wins out, and even a Ford F-250 dualie is no match for a bus... or a train.

I, the author, grew up as a "free range kid" riding public buses and trains alone all over Chicago after about age 13. This was a liberating and educational experience, and a great life lesson in self-reliance. In contrast, my children have had no such experience living out here in Cy-Fair, and I believe they are poorer for it. If we put transit in as recommended, our teenagers can travel around in a safe and economical manner, without needing drivers licenses or cars, without being endangered by drunk drivers or road rage (in a collision, a bus or train wins), and visit other areas of our region. For example, a talented pre-driving high schooler could take a summer course at Rice University or the University of Houston, or do an internship in the Texas Medical Center. Then, most importantly, we parents will get them home safe. As a frequent METRO rider myself (park & ride, local bus, and train) I can emphatically state that riding METRO is a safe experience from the point of view of crime against one's person.

Being a transit user means you will do some walking and maybe some bicycling to and from transit stops. This additional moderate exercise is a beneficial side effect of transit use. Also, you get to meet your neighbors. This strengthens our community.

There are some details that have to be taken care of in the corridor. The spread-out nature of the suburbs means that people may be driving to the transit corridor, not only walking or bicycling as they would in a dense urban setting. METRO has to work out a parking agreement with local malls, so that transit patrons do not get towed. Carpoolers and vanpoolers are transit users too, so they have to have towing immunity as well. The local businesses should benefit from the captive audience. Also, Harris County must make sure there are working pedestrian crosswalks and signals at all intersections near a transit stop. Suburban transit stops need bike racks, because the distances to the stops are often too great to cover by walking. Private funding has already been found for a bus stop bike rack at SH 6 & FM529, on the NW corner of that intersection.

Families who replace car miles with transit miles save money. Lots of it, especially if they can decrease the total number of vehicles that the household operates. That money can be deployed into other areas of the economy besides sending it overseas to oil-producing regimes that would like to see the United States and our ideas fail. The money saved can be used to send a child to college, bolster retirement savings, pay medical expenses, or spent on luxury items or vacations.

Detractors of transit complain about pollution caused by "stinky buses", but the reality is that even a partially full transit vehicle pollutes much less than if the riders were driving cars. Local buses get about 5 MPG, so even if you have only four passengers on the bus, they are each getting 20 Miles Per Gallon per Passenger (MPG/P), which is about the same as the average private vehicle carrying only the driver. Only two passengers on the bus about equals single-occupant H2 Hummers in terms of fuel economy per person! Less fuel burned means less tailpipe emissions, there is a direct correspondence between fuel use and pollution.

Transit use reduces congestion. The total road footprint of a bus (3 bus lengths) with just six passengers is the same as that of six cars (18 car lengths), and as the transit vehicle gets more full, the improvement increases.

Pedestrian Proposal

The US Constitution talks about "the Right to Peaceably Assemble". In the 18th Century, this meant the ability to walk to the town square for a political meeting. In the 20th Century, in suburbia, you often can't safely walk anywhere. You can't have Freedom of the Press without printing presses, copy machines, and the Internet; you can't have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms if you can't buy a gun & ammunition; you can't have Freedom of Religion if there are no places of worship; can it be said that you have the Right to Peaceably Assemble if you can't walk anywhere? We don't think so; therefore, we think that human access to public places by walking is a human right.

But we don't need to build sidewalks everywhere. That would be wasteful. We want to build sidewalks along SH6 and FM529 in order to fulfill the following critical missions:

To allow access from every subdivision entrance where it meets the arterial to major activity centers (schools, retail, churches, work locations, government buildings, and most importantly, transit stops)
We need to cover routes up to two miles in length from the subdivisions to these activity center. Two miles represents a ten-minute bike ride that a child, teenager, or beginner adult bicyclist might make on a sidewalk. This two mile radius planning concept is widely accepted by the TxDOT "Safe Routes to School" program.

The City of Houston annexed portions of SH6 / FM1960 in order to acquire the commercial tax base. It has a responsibility, through its Bicyclist & Pedestrian Program, to help make sidewalks happen. Outside of the City limits, the jurisdiction would be TxDOT for SH 6, FM1960, and FM529.

Just as a point of information - bicycle riding on the sidewalk is not always safe, even though it is perceived as safe. There is a continual risk of conflict with cars at driveways. The League of American Bicyclists has concluded from decades of teaching experience that the safest place for the older teen and adult cyclist is the roadway, when they conduct themselves and are treated as vehicle operators. This case is addressed below.

On-road Bicycle Proposal

Children, younger teens, and beginner adult bicyclists need to stay on the sidewalk for their own safety. But there is a class of riders who need to go faster than is safe on a sidewalk, in order to get to their destination, or for recreation. They may very well be riding medium-to-long distances (5 - 15 miles) where there are no sidewalks. For example, it is a perfectly valid use case for a user to want to bicycle from Bear Creek (SH6 & Clay Rd) to the Addicks Park & Ride, or from Copperfield to the West Little York Park & Ride. In these cases, there has to be a plan to accommodate older teen and adult skilled bicyclists. Also, adult sidewalk bicycling is illegal in the City of Houston in business district. This would include those parts of SH6 / FM1960 that the City has annexed.

Residents are very fortunate that TxDOT has completely planned FM529 for bicycle use from US290 all the way to SH99 (Grand Parkway). The plans are quite satisfactory as they are. We urge that the Hempstead Highway Managed Lane project with its bicycle component and the FM529 widening project (Greenhouse to SH99) be initiated with all haste.

SH6 is another matter, however. This roadway is unsafe for bicycles along most of its length throughout the entire study area. Worse, there are no north-south trending quiet side roads that can be taken as an alternate bike route for SH6. This is in stark contrast to SH6 south of I-10, which is bike-friendly due to its wide shoulders, which TxDOT and the Energy Corridor District are planning to retain into the future because of the safety & utility to both bicyclists and pedestrians. SH6 is completely unusable north of I-10 in the study area because of no shoulders and curb & gutter drainage.

We recommend that five foot designated bike lanes and associated signage be implemented along SH6 / FM1960 for the entire study area. An alternative would be a Wide Outside Lane (WOL) with a width of preferably 15, but no less than 14 ft. There is special significance in the 14 ft. number; any lane skinnier than this the bicyclist does not have to share (Texas Transportation Code 551.103). If drivers want those "pesky" cyclists to move over and get out of the way, first the cyclists have to be given a lane greater than 14 ft in width, then they will be obligated by law to share it, and they will.

Additionally, if the Right Turn Lanes (RTLs) exist at intersections, the the bike lanes must be routed to the left of the RTLs, so that the bicyclist going straight does not get hit by cars turning right. The City of Houston handles this problem well at Beltway 8 and Clay.

The City of Houston annexed portions of SH6 / FM1960 in order to acquire the commercial tax base. It has a responsibility, through its Bicyclist & Pedestrian Program, to make bicycle improvements happen. Outside of the City limits, the jurisdiction would be TxDOT for SH 6, FM1960, and FM529.

Red Herrings, Distractions, Myths, and Reality Checks

The only thing that doesn't change is change itself. The world is constantly changing, and will continue to change. Unfortunately, people have a hard time with change. Those who are against change often resist change with illogical and unsupportable arguments. Let us examine a few of these, and expose them to reason and to the light of day.

Claim: "Sidewalks and transit will bring crime. People will come from other neighborhoods to prey on us."

Response: In all my years of riding transit, I have never seen a thief carrying a stolen TV on a bus or train or walking down the street. Such a person will arouse great suspicion! When criminals want to rob homes, they use vans and trucks. They load up the victim's belongings, then they drive away. This was the very scenario in the famous Mr. Joe Horn of Pasadena case.

As parents, we have all gotten letters from school warning us about potential and attempted child abductions and molestations. These usually involve a predator who is trying to lure or force a child into a vehicle, whereupon he will take the child away from the neighborhood to commit the crime (sadly, the victim's odds of survival go way down if she ever gets in that vehicle, by the way).

Go to The Woodlands or Sugar Land Town Centers - are these walkable, pedestrian friendly zones high crime? Of course not! High crime zones have crime for reasons other than sidewalks or transit.

Claim: "Everything is this white paper (sidewalks, bike lanes, transit) is a wasteful subsidy"

Response: All streets, roads, and highways except for toll roads are 100% subsidized. No user fees are ever collected, therefore they are in a 100% loss position, on a 24/7/365 basis. Public libraries, police and fire departments, and Cy-Fair Schools are also, by that same definition, wasteful subsidies, because service is provided to all regardless of ability to pay.

Claim: "Bikes don't pay gasoline taxes. They don't deserve to use the road"

Response: Texas Transportation Code Chapter 551 considers bicycles to be vehicles, and this law gives them the right to use the public roadways; the payment or non-payment of gasoline taxes is completely irrelevant. There are now fully electric cars in existence, like the Tesla Sports Coupe; by this wrong argument, it would have no right to use the road, because it does not use gasoline or diesel.

Also, walking and biking make real, tangible economic contributions that everyone benefits from. Bicyclists and pedestrians tend to be healthy, therefore they have less diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so health insurance premiums and health claims are reduced for the entire risk pool. Walking and biking reduce pollution, reduce dependence on foreign oil, and bikes and feet don't destroy and wear down infrastructure the way heavy vehicles do.

Claims: "Bikes get in my way and slow me down"

Response: The next time you are going 0 MPH in grid-locked traffic, look around and see how many bikes are causing the problem. Your traffic problems are being caused by too many single-occupant vehicle (SOV) cars, not by bikes. You might pass a few bikes a month in the Cy-Fair area and experience fleeting delays. They are not the problem; instead they are a partial solution.

Claim: "Transit is too expensive, a waste of our tax dollars"

Response: The Grand Parkway Segment E will cost $500 million for 15 miles, or $33 million per mile. In a 2003 GAO report to the U.S. Senate, the cost of bus rapid transit in their own busways was put at $13.5 million per mile ($15.49 million per mile in 2009 Dollars), or about half the cost of a Grand Parkway-style tollway. Even the city of Bogota, Colombia has an award-winning BRT system, the TransMillenium system... but Cy-Fair has no such facility. Is that a point of pride for us? Or of shame?

One debate we never want to enter into: we don't want to get caught in the Light Rail vs. Bus debate. We need to build whichever one we can afford and which will provide the desired level of service. The key is to have a dedicated transitway for the vehicle, so that it cannot get caught in traffic jams. Whether the vehicle has steel wheels or rubber tires is a detail and a distraction. We need to focus on the mouse (moving people with adequate service levels) not the mousetrap (what kind of vehicle).

Thank you for accepting comments from citizens.

About 100 people showed up at Labay Middle School tonight to debate TIP Amendment 20, which would shelve the plans for a SH6 overpass at FM529. The residents seem overwhelming (80-90%) in favor of the Amendment (no overpass). People got up and spoke about their concerns about the livability of the neighborhood if an overpass were built, their emotional attachments to their sense of place, their desire to keep underground utilities and low, discreet signage, concerns about small neighborhood businesses that serve the community.

It seems to me that the community was trying to voice concerns that go beyond the question of an overpass or no overpass. It sounds like people were trying to grapple with issues of "How shall we live in this place? How do we make meaningful spaces? How do we make and keep community?"

On the way out of nearby Lone Star College Cy-Fair last week, Jay Crossley remarked that the next big American project could be the re-making of suburbia into something different. This is happening now with the remaking of Tyson's Corner, Northern Virginia, which was perhaps the archetype for car-oriented Galleria-style 1970s-1990s development, which is in the process of a complete makeover.

Now, Tyson's is a huge place. But on a smaller scale, we have SH6 and FM529 (which, by the way, has been annexed into the City of Houston). It's surrounded by residences on all sides, and the retail is heavily used by the residents. It is also almost completely unwalkable and unbikeable... but it could be walkable and bikeable. There is no transit... but it could have transit. The proposed 290 commuter rail line will run from Downtown Houston to College Station and maybe to Temple, and then could T-bone to either Austin or Dallas, and someday this could be high-speed rail. Would not a light rail link from the 290 train all the way to the Energy Corridor along SH6 be amazing and transformative for the entire corridor?

I mention this now to plant and keep watering the seed that maybe we can start rebuilding suburbia at this place, which is choked with congestion and where access is threatened. FM529 and SH6 is the poster child for Houston suburban sprawl, and even so, residents like myself struggle against the odds to hold on to some tenuous sense of place here. This spot at the edge of where the prairie used to be and just south of Horsepen Creek, where wolf pelts used to be nailed up on posts, has potential to be something better, and people struggle to express what the place means to them, but maybe they just haven't found their voice yet. Maybe they will soon.

sustainable77095

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Does anyone read this blog?

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Deja Vu All Over Again

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Grand Parkway - I was on TV!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

DRAFT Transit, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Recommendations

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Copperfield Overpass Meeting

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Sustainable Living Houston kicks off National Bike Month 2009!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Copperfield Highway 6 / FM529 Overpass Meeting

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sustainable77095

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Does anyone read this blog?

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Deja Vu All Over Again

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Grand Parkway - I was on TV!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

DRAFT Transit, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Recommendations

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Copperfield Overpass Meeting

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Sustainable Living Houston kicks off National Bike Month 2009!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Copperfield Highway 6 / FM529 Overpass Meeting

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Important Links

About Me