Metro scaling back future transit plans to one light rail line to Hobby airport

The Satellite
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Metro CEO Tom Lambert said staff will study the options and return to the board with a suggestion of which line to advance. Based on board comments, however, the Green Line had an edge. Terri Morales noted after driving the Purple Line’s proposed route, she felt there were many more clusters along the Green Line that made sense as potential stations and places where people would want to go.

Metro chairwoman Carrin Patman agreed, noting the economic potential of an East End line.

“I do not think the Purple route as currently designed to Hobby makes sense,” Patman said.

The primary selling point of the Purple Line is it would directly connect the University of Houston and Texas Southern University to the airport.

That potential left the Purple Line some life, in one scenario officials will examine. At the pressing of board member Sanjay Ramabhadran, Lambert said officials will also study if there is an intersection point where it makes sense to extend the Green and Purple light rail lines, then have one of the routes continue the trip to Hobby. That way, both neighborhoods have easier access, without the higher cost of two distinct rail lines.

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This makes no sense. The only place a rail line from Hobby should connect to is downtown.

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Agreed. The Metro Board is too concerned with personal interests instead of what makes sense most of the time.

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I hope the city stops the Green line idea. The article said that there were more “clusters” along the green line to attract stops. What clusters, Fiesta? No, anything but a direct line downtown from Hobby is crazy.

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Dunno what the rail plans are to connect the new Med School to TMC, but it oughta be a straight shot down OST to the Med Center

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Are you talking about a direct NONSTOP line from Hobby to Downtown? If so, not sure how much demand there is for that line. And routing that line would be difficult. What would you do, take real estate from I-45? There’s a lot more demand and use from two lanes of freeway than converting them to rail (at great expense).

So you’ve already got two existing light rail lines extended at least halfway from downtown to Hobby. Much more cost effective to extend those lines than build something brand new, especially if it’s going to run down I-45 Right-of-Way.

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No plans at all for rail on OST. Not in the foreseeable future…I think it’s a great idea but I would bet it is decades away.

Just the nature of building light rail along existing street ROW. It’s complicated, difficult, and expensive to construct.

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The rail line will eventually go where the politicians and the money guys decide they can make more money by forcing out small businesses that can’t stand the low or no traffic while the rail is built at a snails pace. They can then swoop in and buy the places at pennies on the dollar and build when the rail is finished.

There is a reason so many spend an arm and a leg to get elected to a job that pays fingers and toes.