METRORail
METRORail is the light rail system in Houston, Texas. In, the system had a ridership of, or about per weekday as of. METRORail ranks as the second most-traveled light rail system in the Southern United States and the 10th most-traveled light rail system in the United States, and has the highest ridership per mile for light rail systems in the Southern US. METRORail is operated by the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County.
History
Predecessors
The first streetcar service was a mule-drawn railcar operated by the Houston City Railroad Company along McKinney Street in 1868. Because the company chose a bad street alignment, the nascent line foundered after just weeks in service. It was succeeded by the Houston City Street Railway, which was founded in 1870 and began revenue operation in 1874 with routes following busy merchant districts along Congress Avenue and Main Street, the latter of which ran to one of the first sites of the Texas State Fair; the area was subsequently developed and is now Midtown, Houston. A competing service, the Bayou City Street Railway, was started in 1883 with a single route along Texas Avenue, but it was purchased and folded into HCSR later that year. A new competitor, also named Bayou City Street Railway, was founded in 1889; the new Bayou City was purchased and consolidated into HCSR in 1890 by Oscar Carter, who also announced plans to electrify the system.By 1892, electrification of the existing streetcar lines was complete and extensions began past the immediate downtown/central Houston area, including the Houston Heights suburb, which was developed by Carter and required streetcar service due to its distance from central Houston. HCSR was acquired by the Houston Electric Company in 1901, which was managed by Stone & Webster and continued to expand the service, including the start of interurban service to Galveston provided by the affiliated Galveston–Houston Electric Railway in 1911. However, the popularity of privately owned automobiles began to displace demand for streetcar service and the system stopped expanding after 1927. Several streetcar lines were converted to conventional bus lines in 1936, and the right-of-way for the Interurban was sold in 1940, later being reused for the Gulf Freeway. The last streetcar completed its run early in the morning of June 9, 1940, and the rails were later removed and scrapped during World War II.
A 'sample' monorail line was built in Houston in 1955; the Trailblazer operated over a line at Arrowhead Park with a peak speed of, starting on February 18, 1956. The monorail ceased operation in September of that year and subsequently was moved to Fair Park in Dallas for the Texas State Fair, where it continued to run until 1964.
False starts
, the successor to HCSR and Houston Electric, proposed a rapid transit system as a long-range project under the 1971 "Transit Action Program", developed by Alan M. Voorhees and Associates, largely laid out along the radial spokes centered in the Inner Loop, tracing the city's major freeways. TAP would be implemented in two stages. In Stage 1, of rapid transit routes would be built, including fixed rail lines serving the southwest, west, and northeast parts of Houston, and three bus-exclusive lanes along the North, Gulf, and South freeways. Stage 1 was planned to complete in the 1970s at an estimated cost of $800 million. Under Stage 2, scheduled for completion before 1990, the Stage 1 rail lines would be extended and two more would be added, bringing the total system to. TAP would have been the technical basis for the proposed Houston Area Rapid Transit Authority, but a referendum to form HARTA was "soundly defeated" in 1973. The city of Houston purchased Rapid Transit Lines in April 1974 for $5.3 million and renamed it the Houston Transit System.Houston formed the Office of Public Transportation in January 1975 to plan the region's public transportation system, and began working on an update of TAP. After METRO was formed in 1978/79, an initial Phase I alternatives analysis identified multiple potential transit corridors, and under Phase II, proposed in 1980, the "Southwest/Westpark" corridor was prioritized for further study. The proposed Southwest/Westpark corridor would have run, generally parallel to the Southwest Freeway, with equal lengths west and east of the West Inner Loop. The planned route would run from downtown Houston along Main Street to approximately Elgin, and west from Elgin to West Belt along existing public and rail rights-of-way. Service options that could be operated along the corridor included a dedicated busway on an elevated structure, an elevated light rail system, a light rail subway, or a grade-separated heavy rail system with subway through the central business district. At the time, it was estimated that 9.5 million person-trips were made per day in Harris County; of those, 98.7% were taken using private vehicles.
METRO updated its 1980 Southwest/Westpark corridor proposal and extended the eastern terminus north by, combining it with the proposed North corridor as the "Houston Rail Rapid Transit Project"; the extended line now ran north past I-10 and the North Inner Loop to Crosstimbers. The design called for of elevated tracks, of subway, and at-grade. The system would have 17 passenger stations, and included a new railyard/maintenance facility at Cavalcade. The 1983 proposal was rejected by Houston voters via referendum. Light voter turnout was blamed for the defeat of the $2.35 billion proposal, which included the purchase of approximately 400 new buses and construction of a heavy rail system. The capital cost of the rail system alone was estimated at $1.436 billion, including 130 new rail vehicles.
In the wake of the 1983 defeat, METRO began work on a regional transit plan, integrating inputs from city, county, and state governments and developing three options for implementation: A, B, or C ; after approximately 250 meetings were held in 1984 and 1985, citizens overwhelmingly supported Option C, with planned light rail service to operate along Main Street within the inner loop. Longtime Houston Mayor Kathryn Whitmire appointed Bob Lanier to chair METRO in 1988; Lanier shepherded a voter referendum that year which passed, approving the Phase 2 Regional Mobility Plan which included of fixed guideway transit. Under the 1988 referendum, METRO would devote of its sales tax revenue on roads, on improving bus service, and the remaining on developing the fixed guideway plans, but Lanier showed reluctance to follow through on developing plans for a fixed guideway, questioning the projected ridership numbers, and Whitmire fired him in late December 1989. Incensed, Lanier released a memorandum attacking the mayor's rail transit plans, and Whitmire responded by holding a press conference on Lanier's front lawn during his annual Christmas party.
Houston was the largest city in the United States without a rail system after the 1990 opening of the now A Line in Los Angeles. After issuing an RFP in July 1990, METRO received five proposals for the design and development of the fixed guideway system. In March 1991, METRO approved a plan to develop a monorail system similar to the one operating at Walt Disney World in Orlando at an estimated cost of $1.27 billion, operating along the extended Southwest/Westpark corridor between the Houston Galleria and downtown Houston. The proposed monorail system would operate with an initial segment servicing western residential regions west of downtown to Beltway 8, with construction planned to start in 1993 and revenue service to begin by 1998. Future planned expansions included one leg that would connect downtown with the Texas Medical Center and Astrodome to the south, and another leg connecting downtown to Texas Southern University and the University of Houston. In 1991, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay removed $65 million in federal funding for the rail line and after Lanier was elected mayor of Houston in 1992, defeating Whitmire, the plan was stopped. Lanier's election was seen as a second referendum on the monorail plan; the funding was diverted to road projects and police patrols instead.
Main Street Line
After these setbacks, Houston drew up a rail plan without federal subsidies and published it in 1997 as the Houston METRO 2020 Regional Transit Plan. The Houston city council approved the light rail project in November 2000 and set a January 25, 2001 date for a groundbreaking ceremony, but councilmember Rob Todd filed a lawsuit opposing construction, claiming the METRO organization was a "private business" and subject to Houston City Charter provisions requiring a public vote on business use of its streets; the ceremony was cancelled following a temporary restraining order, issued by Judge Tony Lindsay on January 18. Todd was joined as co-plaintiff by Allan Vogel, one of 1,100 residents who signed a petition seeking a public vote on the light rail plan. Judge Lindsay later recused herself from the case due to her personal ties to Todd and her husband's public opposition to METRO. She was succeeded by District Judge John P. Devine, who issued an injunction on February 2, halting work on the light rail project and holding up contract awards. A second lawsuit was filed by four property owners.The injunction issued by Judge Devine in Todd's lawsuit was reversed on appeal on March 9, 2001. Ground was broken on the original, 16-station portion of the Main Street Line on March 13, 2001. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the appellate court ruling on June 28. That November, voters approved Proposition 1, which allowed the light rail project to continue, but required public referendums for future extensions, and rejected Proposition 3, which would have initiated a public referendum on continuing the initial project.
The initial segment runs between UH–Downtown and Fannin South. The opening of METRORail, which took place on January 1, 2004, came 64 years after the previous streetcar system had been shut down. At the time, two extensions to the north and east were already in planning, and a concept was advanced for a third extension west.
The cost of the initial segment was $324 million. Tom DeLay strongly opposed construction of the METRORail line and twice blocked federal funding for the system in the United States House of Representatives. Thus the Metrorail was built without any federal funding until November 2011 when a $900 million grant was approved for expansions, under an executive order issued by President Barack Obama.
In spite of the opposition of some groups to the Metrorail, surveys conducted by Stephen Klineberg and Rice University have shown consistent increases in support of rail transport and decreases in support for bigger and better roads/highways in the Houston metropolitan area in recent years. Klineberg considers these changes a "paradigm shift" or "sea change" on attitudes towards mass transit.