3 replies to this topic

[KevinKorell]

Here we can talk about our time in Houston, from arrival on Saturday evening July 14th, our light rail riding and meals together on Sunday, July 15th, and our "free time" on Monday, July 16th up until our departure that evening.

[KevinKorell]

Those who travelled together from New Orleans to Houston went to our respective hotels Saturday night. Two took a hired car to the JW Marriott, and the rest of us piled into another one for the Doubletree.

 

On Sunday, we accomplished everything we set out to do.  The entire Metro light rail system was aced, including the longer Red Line, and the newer and shorter Green and Purple Lines.  Once more, it was mixed up a bit, in that although the itinerary called for the Green Line before the Purple Line, we did them in the opposite order because a Purple Line train came first.  In heat in the mid-90's, nobody had an issue with that!   

 

Houston's MTA Metro has a few sections where they do get up to speed on reserved right-of-way, but in many places, they run in street traffic sharing one lane with regular traffic as a streetcar would.   Downtown, while limited portions of Main Street even allow vehicles other than the Red Line light rail, there is no signal preemption so the trains labor along observing traffic signals.  On the Green and Purple Lines downtown, it looks like in places the trains do get right of way as they run on the parallel Capitol and Rusk Streets.

 

Unlike our last experience in New Orleans, Houston's light rail trains ran punctually.  If a train was supposed to depart at 10:31 AM, it departed at 10:31 AM. (Of course, it was a Sunday too.) There was only one minor logjam we encountered at the end of the Purple Line at Palm Center Transit Center where we arrived to find both platforms occupied by other trains and had to wait for one of them to leave before we could enter. But since in almost every case the vehicle we had arrived on was also the one we would be departing on, there was no danger of missing the next inbound trip. We did observe several vehicles in non-revenue service marked on the destination signs as "TRAINING", which explains why an extra train was in that last station.

 

As for meals, when planning this, the Northline Transit Center stop near an outdoor mall of the same name looked compact and easy for us to manage for lunch. As it turned out, the walks were a bit longer than they appeared from maps, and it was an effort to get to some of the fast food restaurants especially with the hot weather.   At dinnertime, we ended up not eating all together, but some of us did go where we last planned to dine.

 

Our official transit riding is done in Houston, and now we have a mostly free day to relax before we board the Sunset Limited tomorrow (Monday) evening for a 5+ hour trip to San Antonio.

[saxman]

Despite living in Houston a while back this was my first time really checking out Houston's transit system. Surprisingly, Houston actually has pretty good transit coverage when you're within the 610 loop. They revamped the bus routes to go more in straight lines while stopping at light rail stations if they're on the way. Overall they've increased their ridership because of this. We'll see if a commuter rail system ever comes to fruition though. I'll echo Kevin's and say that it was nice to ace the light rail system there finally. After the rides I went back to my hotel and hopped on the route 40 bus to Houston Hobby airport.

[KevinKorell]

Monday was spent mostly without scheduled activities, and more comfortably spent sitting in air conditioned hotel lobbies since it was in the high 90's outside with humidity and dust in the air.   That was followed by shared rides to the Amtrak station to await the Sunset Limited.