June 01, 2004, 01:19 PM
Rail Changes
At Chronically Biased, we've certainly directed some criticism at Chronicle columnist Lucas Wall, and we think it's been deserved.
However, I'd like to call attention to this bit of honesty in today's column, in which Wall discusses the reworking of downtown bus routes and what it's intended to accomplish:
The changes to 65 bus routes, mostly designed to beef up ridership on MetroRail, will take an estimated 1,200 bus trips out of the Main Street corridor each day. Some of those spare buses were to be positioned at transit centers today for use in case of glitches on the rail line, where trains will start operating every six minutes during peak periods. They had been running every 12 minutes.
The bolded portion is a bit of editorializing on Wall's part that probably shouldn't be in the column (something for which we've criticized him before), but I don't disagree with him substantively. It does seem that METRO is more interested in herding additional passengers to the train (to boost its ridership numbers) than necessarily making life more convenient for downtown mass transit patrons (in a private business, those would be called customers, but METRO doesn't seem to think of them that way).
Some of these riders aren't very happy, and Wall gives them column space:
Most commuters were likely to notice only slight changes to their routes. Nine bus routes, however, have been shortened and now end at rail stations. Riders must transfer to the rail to complete their commutes.
Some bus users have complained about having to make the switch, potentially increasing their travel time.
“With these route modifications, Metro is forcing commuters to use the train by providing no other routes to downtown,” said Zac Nelson, a Route 15 rider. “This is a terrible idea and is nothing but an inconvenience.”
Route 15 previously ran from southwest Houston through downtown to Northline Mall. It has been split into two routes, with the south section (Route 14) ending at the Texas Medical Center Transit Center and the north section (the new Route 15) ending at the Downtown Transit Center. Both have rail stations.
Nelson, who rides from Main Street at the South Loop to Houston's north side, will now have to ride the Route 14 bus to the Medical Center, walk across a sky bridge, hop on the train to downtown and then transfer to the Route 15 bus.
“This is just a way to force people to use that train,” he said. “Then they can say, `Wow, look at all the people who ride this train every day. Houstonians love the train. Let's build it all over Houston!'”
The city's other news sources who chose to cover this issue were much more upbeat about METRO's changes (see News24, ABC-13, and KHOU-11). This may well be a case in which the Chronicle, one of rail's biggest cheerleaders, inadvertently cast a little doubt on METRO's intentions.
(Update) In the short time since the story first appeared in morning editions, the Chronicle has updated the story online and removed the passage cited above. Good thing we grabbed it before it disappeared.
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