Do you need a licence to drive in Houston? - Big Problems for the new Light Rail Line

[Anonymous]

Was reading this article over at the BLE and though it was rather interesting, seems the folks in Houston are having quite the time adjusting to their new light rail line.

Here's the full article
http://www.ble.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=10866

Here are some parts I thought were interesting.....

QUOTE:
Last year, when Houston finally got a rail line, the culture clash became physical. Since testing began in November, the silvery electric-powered train, which slides north and south along the street on a 7.5-mile route, has collided with more than 40 cars.

QUOTE:
The accidents have marred what was to be a moment of rejuvenation for the city. The opening of the rail line was timed to coincide with a major spruce-up of downtown, complete with a fountain that flanks the tracks and sends water leaping high into the air each time a train approaches.

...........So far, 15 motorists have driven into the fountain.

QUOTE:
Houston's accident rate is extraordinarily high.

QUOTE:
The situation has quickly become part of Houston lore. At an annual sand castle competition this month, no fewer than 11 entries depicted trains and crashed cars, with titles like "Metrozilla" and "Weapons of Mass Destruction."

QUOTE:
Officials of the transit agency, known as Metro, do not come right out and say so, but their explanations for the accidents boil down to this: Houstonians are bad drivers. All the collisions, they say, can be attributed to driver error: illegal turns, failure to yield and disregard of signals.
There is plenty of support for that argument. The accident rate in greater Houston, train or no train, is well over double the national average, and it is particularly bad at the medical center. Last year the police issued 8,000 traffic citations along what has become the train's route.

QUOTE:
"Unfortunately we lead the state in every conceivable type of crash," said Ned Levine, the transportation program coordinator for the Houston-Galveston Area Council, the region's planning group .

QUOTE:
Maria Lewis-Sterling, a 46-year-old nurse, says her car was not even moving when its license plate was torn off by a passing train. Her car was protruding into the roadway, though, and she was charged $450 for damage to the train. Her accident was the first of six at one intersection, which has since been given two rail crossing signs.
Ms. Lewis-Sterling said she had no hard feelings, and even rode the train to work this week. "Just give me my $450 back,'' she said, "and admit that you didn't do a perfect job.''

It's nice to hear that Ms. Lewis-Sterling doesn't have any hard feelings.
[:)]

So what's going wrong down there in Huston[?]

[vsmith]

Sorry Ed, but in my experience Texan's are some of the WORST drivers in the this corner of the known Universe. [B)]

Where do they send them to learn? The only place I've seen worse drivers was in Rome and Mexico City. I completely beleive that they would drive into a stationary fountain, then blame the fountain for getting in their way! Disrespectful, aggressive, oblivious to others, I feel sorry for the State Troopers that have to deal with these knuckleheads on a daily basis.

[soapbox][soapbox][soapbox]


Rant over, fell better now...[swg]

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by vsmith

Sorry Ed, but in my experience Texan's are some of the WORST drivers in the this corner of the known Universe. [B)]

Where do they send them to learn? The only place I've seen worse drivers was in Rome and Mexico City. I completely beleive that they would drive into a stationary fountain, then blame the fountain for getting in their way! Disrespectful, aggressive, oblivious to others, I feel sorry for the State Troopers that have to deal with these knuckleheads on a daily basis.

[soapbox][soapbox][soapbox]


Rant over, fell better now...[swg]

Well given that probably a quarter or more of Houston's drivers came from the North, I'd agree. Houston drivers are no better or worse than anywhere else....particularly SoCal, where everyone drives leaning to the right because of the cell phone in one hand. Boston, DC, NYC......just as bad. Not as bad as Saudis or Neopolitans.

[edblysard]

No offense taken, like Dan, I know where most of the people here learned to drive, north of the Mason Dixon line, or in a foreign country, where playing bumpers cars is just the way it is.
Funny fact, almost every downtown street still has it's original "light rail" buried under a few inches of asphalt.
Houston had, until the late 1940s, a really complete trolly line, both to and from downtown, and a electric interurban, the Houston North Shore Line, to and from Baytown and the Humble refinery.

Before WWII, you could get on the trolly out in the Heights, ride to just about any building downtown, shop, eat, do the movie thing, drop off a friend at Union Station or the SP's Grand Central Station, and get back home, with out ever needing a car.

The reason we have four to six times the number of auto accidents is simple, we have four to six times the population crammed into the same space as other metroplexs, and over 25% of said population is from somewhere else other than Texas.

The up side is, if you like Vietnamise food, Middle east or Trukish cusine, you have a lot of places to chose from.
And we still have the best Mexican food this side of the Rio Bravo, right Dan?

Ed

[eastside]

Are you aware that this is the same article that I posted a link to on 25 June? [:)]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/national/25rail.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1088181890-269fp9zYT1uwMqGObI05tg
"Novelty of Light Rail Flummoxes Motorists in Houston"

Glad to see that you were able to access it finally.

[Anonymous]

No, I could not access that link to the NY Times because I was not a member.
I got this story off the BLE website after they took it off the NY Times.

Had to wait to get it free, I suppose.

[JoeKoh]

Well problems are not confined to Houston. truck drivers forget how to read when they get here to defiance as yet another truck hits the infamous clinton st. viaduct.
stay safe
Joe

[espeefoamer]

Could someone post a picture of that fountain? Why is it so easy to drive into?
Does Houston have the highest accident rate in the US?

[edblysard]

No, not the worst in the nation, but the worst in Texas, after all, Houston is the 4th largest city in the US, population and physical size.
The fountain is at the end on Main street, you have to turn left or right, the end of the fountain has big concrete posts and retaining walls at the intersection.
The tracks run in the street, and pass between these post.
Drunks seem to just follow the tracks, and drive right into the fountain.
Had one last week, driving at late night, about 2am, at over 100mph, hit the wall, and fliped over it, into the fountain.
Doing the "Fast and the Furious" thing, her passenger lived, if having you face removed by the dashboard is being alive.

Part of the problem is the ratio of police to general population, to keep the crime rate down, HPD concentrates on that, instead of traffic enforcement.
Almost every accident here is attributed to speeding, and failure to yield,(running red lights and stop signs)
City council is considering a cell phone hand free law, no driving with the phone in your hand, which is also a contributing factor in the accident rate here.
HPD tracks the number of accidents where the phone was being just by one or more of the people involved in the accident, and the percent is kinda scary, over 70% of non highway accidents involved the use of a phone as a distraction/contributing factor.

Hang Up- then Drive.
Not to hard to understand.

Ed

[Anonymous]

QUOTE:
City council is considering a cell phone hand free law, no driving with the phone in your hand, which is also a contributing factor in the accident rate here.

But what good would that do if the police are never out enforcing traffic violations in the first place?

Sounds like they need some of those intersection cameras to catch the red light runners.

[edblysard]

New Mayor, Bill White, already has them installing the cameras at the high risk intersections, and has hired a new HPD police cadet class, twice the normal size.

But, with limited budget, which would you rather have your cops doing, investigating and responding to home invasions, rapes, murders and burgular calls, or issueing traffic citations?

For the most part, traffic control has been left up to Metro police(Metro is the Metropolitian Transit Authority, in charge of building freeways, streets and such, along with the public transportation services, buses and the light rail project) and the Harris County Sheriffs Dept, along with DPS,(Department of Public Safety, the uniformed division of the Texas Rangers, State Troopers).

With the new cameras, and the revenue they will bring in, the issue of where to get the funds for the new HPD cadet class was solved.

The Mayor also has started a program where all the traffic lights in the downtown area, and on the most busy streets, will be synchronized to allow a more smooth traffic flow during the rush hours.
Sounds simple, till you realize Houston has somthing like 100,000 traffic lights with in the city proper.

On another note, we just had a public meeting, where the citizens were encouraged to help decide on the rest of the light rail system, slated to begin late summer.
They are trying to decide wether to continue with street running, shareing freight rails,(UP and BNSF have indicated their interest) or in high traffic density areas going to elevated tracks, or a combonation of all three.

We already have a huge park and ride bus system, which works quite well, and the new plan will include the same concept, drive to a outlieing "commuter station", park the car, catch the train into town, with the same basic service as buses, you buy a monthly pass, or pay per ride, with transfers from route to route into the dense business sections of the city, with regular stops on the downtown sections.

Kinda revising the old trolly system we had.

Ed

[daveklepper]

When I used to visit Houston regularly, in connection with work at Jones Hall, the Alley Theatre, the Dome, and Palmer Memorial Church's C. B. Fisk organ installation, rail transportation of any type whatsoever was farthest from anyone's mind. So I guess it is that every silver has a cloud attached, and I hope this accident business doesn't stop urban passenger rail progress, whatever shape or form the good Houstonians decide it should take. Houston had an inferiority complex, culturally, with respect to Dallas, but with its Alley Theatre becoming world famous and Sir John Barbarolli, one of the great music conductors of the World becoming its orchestra conductor, it caught up magnificently, and I hope it does the same with rail transportation.

[edblysard]

About the only thing Dallas has that Houston dosn't is snow during the winter.
And we still have better Mexican food....

Ed[8D]

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

About the only thing Dallas has that Houston dosn't is snow during the winter.
And we still have better Mexican food....

Ed[8D]

Dallas has Mexican food????? Oh you mean Taco Bell..........that don't count......

Houston has just as many idiots per capita as any metro area. Light rail is a huge culture shift in Houston and will take some time to evolve. Unlike NYC, Boston, Chicago..etc which grew vertically and centered with that public transportation evolved with it, cities like Houston and Dallas expanded laterally and have business clusters that do not center on downtown. Public transportation could not effectively cover the expanse..leading to the car culture that dominates. Now it has become a necessity, but will take some time.

[RudyRockvilleMD]

One possible explanation for high accident rates between autos and startup light rail systems is at least one or two generations of drivers in those cities have had no experience in driving among streetcars.

Not only do you have drivers making left turns across the tracks they often hit passengers trying to board streetcars where there are no platforms or safety islands; this is because there is no "streetcar" law which requires drivers to stop 7 - 10 feet behind the nearest entrance or exit when the streetcars take on passengers. Sometimes where there are only safety islands the drivers hit passengers standing in them.

[Mookie]

and drinking and cell phones and inattention and just plain lousy drivers.

[Anonymous]

Metro's futuristic Light Rail trains are lit up like Christmas trees. If you were to model one, you'd need several packs of LED's and some really advanced DCC to control the rolling light show. All the stations are also lit up. Most of the street trackage is bordered by speed balls which if hit, ought to make ordinary speed bumps feel like a waterbed. Understand that here, we have idiot drivers that run into freight trains. I don't mean trying to beat the train across (they do that, too), but plow right into a train that has already been crossing the highway. Of course, how can you steer with a cell phone in one hand and a pistol in the other. That means the passenger must also act as bartender. Yes, it's that bad! I get worked up almost everyday I drive to work. Over half the newer vehicles are Sluggish Unnecessary Vehicles driven by Yuppie fools that haven't figured out that there is horsepower under the hood. Then there are all those overloaded trucks whose cargo ought to be moving by rail. Add to this the military convoys from Ft Hood moving to the Port of Houston to go fight in another oil war. Don't forget the veiled women whose husbands are trying to turn our country into the same kind of Third World country they left behind. Houston's streetcar system was shut down before World War II. The North Shore interurban lasted longer, in fact the diesel railbus remnant lasted into the 1960's. The Houston-Galveston Electric was bought out by a consortium of oil companies in 1936. It never ran in the red. My only complaint about the light rail line is that it is so little, so late. I wrote Metro 20 years ago and told them that 10 of the 14 rail routes radiating from Houston are suitable for upgrading into a Chicago style commuter rail system that could be electrified later. They gave me a "not invented here" answer.
Stephanie Stout

[philnrunt]

C'mon Steph, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel! Whats so sad is your points are so darned valid!
My 2 times driving thru Houston convinced me that everyone was mad- at each other, at the world, at anyone not from Houston and at anyone from Houston.
Being a country boy, I don't cotton to that high falutin' city life, but Houston made me realize that way too many folk were living in a way too small area.

[edblysard]

Ten years ago, I suggested to the DOT that, instead of widening I10, the Katy freeway section, use the old MKT tracks beside it for a commuter train.
Imagine a train load of people, every 5 minutes, being taken out of the mess!
I pointed out that the line went all the way to down town, through Eurka yard and could drop off passengers at the Amtrak station.
Was informed that comuter rail would never work in Houston.
Go figure.
My wife has to drive into downtown every week for court duty, and her only complaint about the light rail is the fact that the trains themselves are quite, and she thinks they should ramp up the horns.
But. like Stephaine pointed out, you'd have to be blind not to see one of these things.
High intensity strobe lights on all four corners, brighter and more intense than cops have.
Last time I was downtown, I looked at the speed bumps which line the street side of the route.
Four inches tall.
How can you drive over one and not notice is beyond me...

Of course, you might be distracted by the bartender asking if you want it shaken, or stirred.

Ed

[Anonymous]

Hey, Ed--

You can't distingui***he speed bumps because they feel just like the potholes!![banghead][banghead][banghead][:D]

[mudchicken]

Houston has Denver's sympathy:

Denver's Saturday morning paper did a fair job of addressing the issue (how dumb can tney be?, 136 out of 136 accidents are the driver's fault, not the train [X-)]) and Houston is now discovering the same problem when trains cars and x-ing peds are mixed together,,,http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3009273,00.html

Still firmly believe that any person lucky enough to survive an encounter with a train and is found at fault ought to lose their driver's license for life! ( and any lawyer that files a frivolous lawsuit afterwards ought to be dis-barred as well, or at least pay triple the associated court and associated costs!)

[}:)][}:)][}:)]

[Anonymous]

MC--

Why don't you suggest to RMN that they do a similar article on high-incidence non-LR roadways and intersections and compare the accident rates. Of course, they'll find that bad driving has little or nothing to do with the presence of a track-guided vehicle.

It's tiring to keep hearing the time-worn mantra about how unsafe rail is, using data like this taken out of context.

[Anonymous]

And I thought LR and NLR's (and all of Central Arkansas) drivers were bad. EVERYDAY I see some one cross all 3 lanes of traffic (in front of them no less) to take the exit or gain entry onto the interstate. Either way it is a bad deal but much worse for the traffic already going 60 mph when someone going 30 tries to cross over in front of all three lanes. We have a poorly designed entrance/exit system by the Arkansas River. It is a miracle we don't have more accidents here. AND I have noticed HOW MANY people talk and drive at the same time. I listed talking first BECAUSE it is their main priority, driving comes second. Stupid is as Stupid does. [:(!]

This country does need a "hands free cell phone" law. But I am not sure that even THAT can help those who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Way too many people are driving who should not be driving. I better stop and put the soap box up before I get myself in BIG trouble. [;)]

[edblysard]

Sure you can...
When you hit the speed bumps, your car bounces up into the air, when you hit the potholes, your muffler dissapears...[:D]

Ed

QUOTE: Originally posted by drephpe

Hey, Ed--

You can't distingui***he speed bumps because they feel just like the potholes!![banghead][banghead][banghead][:D]

[Anonymous]

Every work day I cross light rail on separate right of way and share streets with light rail in the street. No problem, they don't jump the tracks and come after me. I only focus on surviving the buses, bike messengers, SUV's, and delivery trucks coming at me all the time.

[edblysard]

Just to even the score, and show it isnt so lopsided a deal.
Today, accident 48 with the Metro light rail.
Auto driver made a LEGAL left turn, on a traffic signal indication, in front of a light rail train,
but failed to complete the turn, leaving his rear bumper hanging over the rail.
According to Metro, the train driver(their term) had more than sufficent time to see, and react to the autos bumper fouling the track.

The train struck the auto, removed the rear bumper, caused appox $1000.00 damage to the car, scratched the train.

Metor driver removed from service, pending his completing a safety course.
Auto driver was not ticketed.
Metro reached the conclusion that their driver was at fault after reviewing the event recorder and video camera footage from the train, and the eyewitnesses statements.

Just so yall know, we dont allways blame the car driver as a matter of course or policy.

Ed

[Anonymous]

Don't get me started on those bike messengers....

Talk about breaking all the rules, some of those guys (and girls) run right through red lights!

They figure because they are on a bike they don't have to follow the rules, it's amazing more of those bikers don't get killed.

[Anonymous]

And when you see a bike messenger hurtling through traffic like an unguided missile check out his bike. A track bike, no gears, no freewheel, no brakes. It cuts down on bike theft.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

Sure you can...
When you hit the speed bumps, your car bounces up into the air, when you hit the potholes, your muffler dissapears...[:D]

Ed

QUOTE: Originally posted by drephpe

Hey, Ed--

You can't distingui***he speed bumps because they feel just like the potholes!![banghead][banghead][banghead][:D]

Nah!!

When you hit the speed bump, your car bounces up in the air, hits the ground hard, and the muffler disappears.

When you hit the pothole, your muffler disappears, then your car bounces up in the air, hits the ground hard, but the muffler can't disappear because it's already gone.

Just a matter of sequencing.[:P][(-D][(-D]

By the way, got a copy of the Austin paper this AM where they were going after rail because of the accidents in HOU. Insanely out of context and misleading.

[88gta350]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

Ten years ago, I suggested to the DOT that, instead of widening I10, the Katy freeway section, use the old MKT tracks beside it for a commuter train.
Imagine a train load of people, every 5 minutes, being taken out of the mess!
I pointed out that the line went all the way to down town, through Eurka yard and could drop off passengers at the Amtrak station.
Was informed that comuter rail would never work in Houston.
Go figure.
My wife has to drive into downtown every week for court duty, and her only complaint about the light rail is the fact that the trains themselves are quite, and she thinks they should ramp up the horns.
But. like Stephaine pointed out, you'd have to be blind not to see one of these things.
High intensity strobe lights on all four corners, brighter and more intense than cops have.
Last time I was downtown, I looked at the speed bumps which line the street side of the route.
Four inches tall.
How can you drive over one and not notice is beyond me...

Of course, you might be distracted by the bartender asking if you want it shaken, or stirred.

Ed

Ed, you're idea is a good one and has probably been considered by every sizeable metropolitan area in the country. The problem is you can't just build a rail line and expect people to use it. Most people are not rail enthusiasts like us, and are not willing to give up their car for a train. Most people see boarding a train as a hassle compared to the "freedom" of driving yourself to work.

Mt area is considerign a light rail line to connect several local cities to reduce the number of commuters on the roads. The only problem is these aren't very urbanized cities and people would still have to drive to a station, board the train, ride the train, get off the train, take a bus, cab, or walk from station to work, then reverse it all to get home. Just to avoid sitting in traffic for 10-15 minutes. That's way too much work for most people. The only people attracted to that are either rail enthusiasts, people really committed to reducing polution and traffic woes, and those who would rather spend the drive time on their laptop.

For these reasons the plan is meeting heavy opposition around here, as some don't expect it to be finacially sound. Even in more urban areas where people may not have to ride to/from the station, you still get a lot of the same problems.