Big Train meets Little Train.

Big Train wins...

(from Rad Sallee of the Chron)

The Metropolitan Transit Authority may cut six blocks off its planned East End light rail line, leaving passengers short of the Magnolia Transit Center and much of the developing commercial area around Harrisburg and Wayside.

Metro board chairman David Wolff said Thursday that the roadblock is the former Houston Belt & Terminal Railway tracks, now owned by Union Pacific Railroad. The crossing, on Harrisburg between 65th and Oldham, is familiar to motorists and pedestrians delayed by freight trains.

Wolff said Metro had considered crossing the double tracks at street level.

"But it doesn't seem the railroad is too enthusiastic about that."

Metro spokeswoman Sandra Salazar later said UP would not agree to share its right of way with Metro trains.

UP officials could not be reached for comment, but the railroad often has cited the dangers of mixing freight operations with street traffic and pedestrians.

Metro has been planning the line almost since voters approved it in a 2003 referendum. Asked why the issue is surfacing now, Salazar said Metro initially hoped to obtain permission from the railroad for a street-level crossing.

In 2003, when Metro changed its plans from light rail to Bus Rapid Transit, thinking that was necessary to qualify for federal funding, the issue was moot because the buses would cross the tracks with other street traffic.

So, Bus Rapid Transit would have worked, but Metro pushed ahead with a plan that, it sounds like, they knew would have serious hurdles. Yet we're still being sold on the idea that at-grade rail is the "best and only" transit solution for Houston?


1 + 1 = negative three blocks. Nice math Metro.


OTHER EYES:

BlogHouston: A rail impasse.