2,000 METRO RIDERS DAILY
John Dorsey stood waiting for his bus, glad he was not the one about to drive through a thick fog. If not for the bright spots of headlights streaking along the Grand Parkway, the fog would have hidden the freeway from sight, even though it was just a few yards away.
Dorsey’s job was 26 miles away in downtown Houston. As his commuter bus pulled up, so did four sedans, from which hurried workers scurried to make their connections.
“I wish I’d done this five years ago,” Dorsey said shortly before boarding the bus he has relied on for the past six months.
By the time his bus embarked for downtown from the lot at Interstate 10 and the Grand Parkway, a new line had formed. Lately, the line to get on Metro’s Grand Parkway park and ride route has gotten longer.
Those lines could help transit officials track the next logical step in connecting the suburbs to not only downtown, but job and activity centers throughout Houston.
“We’re certainly thinking about it, are there things that are transferable to improve mobility across the region,” said Metropolitan Transit Authority CEO Tom Lambert.
Since a new 1,650-spot parking garage opened in February, ridership of Route 222 from the Grand Parkway to downtown has increased by about 80 percent, from about 1,100 trips daily to about 2,000, excluding holiday weeks.
“We are running more service out there today because the ridership continues to grow,” said Jim Archer, director of service planning and evaluation for Metro.
Among park and ride routes, the Grand Parkway line is an outlier. It is the only morning and evening route to post increases every month since March, and its growth is outpacing all others as many continue to rebound from changes in downtown commuting. Many commuter buses are carrying fewer passengers because of Shell’s relocation to the Energy Corridor in west Houston and job cutbacks for many downtown companies. Overall, park and ride use remains on the decline, despite an uptick on some routes.
Various reasons
Officials attribute the Grand Parkway growth to a number of reasons, starting around 2015, when the cost of driving toll lanes along I-10 exceeded the cost of park and ride service during peak periods. Still, even as interest in riding the bus reached new levels, demand led to a parking crunch at the Grand Parkway site, where Metro leased parking space from the property owner and shared it with a movie theater.
Growth along the Grand Parkway and farther out in Katy and south in Fort Bend County sent many searching for an alternative to hour-long commutes. Metro saw some of the increased demand coming, Archer said.
“It is the park and ride lots that are the farthest out who are more likely to be stuck in congestion,” he said.
Metro officials just didn’t have an easy, quick solution. Often, the number of cars left during the day by bus riders topped the 423 spaces transit officials leased. A 2016 count found more than 650 vehicles left by park and ride users, some of whom took to hopping the curb and parking on an undeveloped lot across the street.
“That was rough,” park and ride user Dan Harmon said of the pre-garage days. “I used to leave my house at 6 just so I could get here before all the spots were gone.”
Metro eventually agreed to a long-term lease with NewQuest that pays the commercial development firm about $1.2 million annually in return for daytime use of the parking garage. Metro also can brand the garage as a park and ride facility.
Metro officials just didn’t have an easy, quick solution. Often, the number of cars left during the day by bus riders topped the 423 spaces transit officials leased. A 2016 count found more than 650 vehicles left by park and ride users, some of whom took to hopping the curb and parking on an undeveloped lot across the street.
“That was rough,” park and ride user Dan Harmon said of the pre-garage days. “I used to leave my house at 6 just so I could get here before all the spots were gone.”
Metro eventually agreed to a long-term lease with NewQuest that pays the commercial development firm about $1.2 million annually in return for daytime use of the parking garage. Metro also can brand the garage as a park and ride facility.
Also unmistakable as officials look at the growing use is the effects of Hurricane Harvey. After logging zero rides the week of the storm, ridership of the Grand Parkway route surged and quickly surpassed 2,000 riders per day – from around 1,700 just before the storm – and remained steady.
“It has come out of the blue, and it is staying,” Archer said.
Lambert said Metro is happy to have a problem that involves being too popular too fast.
“Our goal is to retain those riders and grow those riders,” he said.
The challenge remains what Metro can do with limited funds to bring more people to the park and ride system. In some cases, such as the Cypress park and ride location, additional parking could be the attraction. Archer said about 1,300 of the 1,500 spaces Metro shares with an apartment complex commonly are in use. The more difficult it is for motorists to find a convenient spot, the more likely they are to skip transit and drive.
In places where parking is plentiful, Lambert said officials need to extol the advantage of commuter buses.
“I think the fundamental issue is the frequency of service, and reliability of service is critical,” he said.
More Routes Considered
In November, park and ride service departed within five minutes of its scheduled time 76.4 percent of trips, inching past Metro’s goal of 75 percent on-time performance. Though that made park and ride service more reliable than local bus service, it may not meet the needs of all riders.
Carol Atkinson, 56, stopped using the Kingsland park and ride lot in 2016 because she said the buses became unreliable. In addition to trips taking longer than expected, she said the buses cycled through with little adherence to Metro’s schedules.
“You’d show up (on time) and wait 15 minutes, and then three buses would show up at the same time,” Atkinson said.
Lambert acknowledged Metro must do more to address timing and options – noting recent conversations with riders and commuters demonstrates a demand not only for more predictable service, but more service to more locations, such as Uptown, the Texas Medical Center, even places outside Metro’s current service area.
“The question we are focused on answering is, ‘how do we connect these service options with where we need to go?'” he said.
Whatever the answer, it will come with other choices Metro did not face with the local bus redesign.
“That was revenue neutral,” Archer said. “With the local network we took a major step forward with zero cost. With commuter service, it is going to cost money to make this change… If you add service, the dollars shoot up pretty quickly.”