Transit Tangents

Has Houston's Mayor Sabotaged Light Rail?

• Louis & Chris • Season 2 • Episode 93

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Houston’s Red Line lost its signal preemption, and reliability unraveled across the city’s busiest transit corridor. We trace what changed, why it matters for speed and safety, and how riders and advocates are pushing to restore a lifeline.

• Red Line’s high frequency and ridership
• How signal preemption sustains reliability
• Sudden delays after downtown retiming
• Confusion over city versus Metro roles
• The real cost of lost minutes and bunching
• A foot race that tied the train
• LINK Houston’s advocacy and petition
• Equity in Transit findings on frequency
• Concrete steps to restore preemption
• How listeners can get involved locally

Sign the petition to restore Red Line signal preemption at linkhouston.org and join our Community Action Network. Follow us at link underscore Houston on Instagram and on Twitter/X. We’ll make sure the links are below for Houston riders who want to help.


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SPEAKER_01:

This week on Transit Tangents, we take a look at Houston's Red Line Light Rail, which has been a shiny example of what light rail can do even in a state like Texas. But now it's almost as if the city itself is sabotaging its busiest rail line. This week we'll get to the bottom of what is happening. When Chris and I went to Houston last year for our Houston using only public transit episode, there were quite a few things that surprised us. The most notable though was how frequent and reliable the Red Line Light Rail was. And look at that, we haven't even left the station, and another train another red line train is actively pulling in. Which is pretty that's pretty good. With service every six minutes at peak and high ridership numbers, you would think that this would be something that the city would want to continue to make better. Unfortunately, based on the news of the last few weeks, that is not the case. Being that the Red Line is a light rail running at street level, to function well, it requires signal priority, making sure that the trains can move through intersections quickly to stay on schedule. A few weeks ago, however, that signal priority, it just stopped. With no warning, riders began dealing with delays and unreliable service as a result. I just last night I called Metro Customer Service to be like, what's going on with the red line? And they said talk to the mayor. This week I had the chance to speak with Peter Eccles, the policy director of Link Houston, to get up to speed on what exactly is going on in Houston. So today we're fortunate to be joined by Peter Eccles, who is the director of policy and planning at Link Houston. I've been following what's been going on in Houston in the news recently with the Red Line. Uh so if you don't mind giving us uh get getting us up to speed on what exactly is going on uh with the red line in Houston the last couple weeks.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So Houston's Red Line, our busiest transit route light rail line in Houston, Texas, as part of the metro system, um, is really a shining star uh for frequency ridership connecting, really dense activity centers in Houston. Um, for when it was first introduced, the initial operating segment from downtown to the medical center and then down to the stadiums, um, was the second highest ridership per mile light rail system in the United States for um for a good period of time, um, which I think comes as a big surprise to folks who might have an image of Houston in their mind as I didn't realize the riders.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I didn't realize the ridership levels were so high. So I've I've uh Chris and I, uh when we were down in Houston six or eight months or so ago, we're really surprised with how frequent the red line was. I mean, I feel like while we were there most of the day, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Feligo's running around six minutes or something during the day.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. The weekday, like daytime hours from start of service till about seven or eight p.m., depending on direction, it runs every six minutes throughout the day, which is among the most frequent transit lines in North America, period. More frequent than some lines in the New York City subway, for instance. Um, and the way that it's been able to run so frequently and so reliably at grade is through traffic signal preemption. Um it runs at grade for basically the entirety of its route, other than um a few grade separations over freight rail lines. But for the large part, it's crossing city streets and pretty busy city streets at that. Um, but through traffic signal preemption, it the signal hardware will sense that the train is coming, give it a green light, allow the train to pass through, um, you know, maybe move up the red cycle for the car traffic on the cross streets and cause them to wait another 30 seconds or so. But in the process, moving it a lot faster and reliably every six minutes with proper train separation all the way throughout. Um and it's it's it's a very impressive system. It's taken a lot of work to calibrate and to get right. Um, but as a result, we have this fantastically reliable transit line that runs at grade um between two of our busiest job centers in Houston. Um on September 20th, we learned that the train was stopping a lot more red lights than it usually had. Um we heard this from riders, um, from people who were like, why is the train so late? Why is it taking so long to get certain places? We also saw some uh published service alerts from Metro saying due to a mechanical malfunction or track conditions, um, the train is subject to delays. And um, after a few days of this going on without being resolved, it it was a little curious. Dug in a little deeper, um, noticed that the train was stopping at red lights that it typically did not um and was taking much longer to traverse even short quarter half mile segments than usual. Um at one point, I I use the red line every day. I take it from um where I live down by Herman Park to um downtown where our office is. And at one bit, out of out of frustration, I was like, I'm just gonna walk and see how far I can get. I was able to walk like the entire length of downtown until a train came, um which previously never would have happened.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And we started to, we, we and um other riders who were frustrated started to reach out to Metro's customer service and say, what's going on here? And what we learned is that the traffic signal preemption had indeed been disabled. Either the city had done it or Metro had done it. There was sort of confusion in the responses that we would get from these public agencies. And then finally, Metro came out with an official statement saying that this was part of a broader retiming of downtown, which we can get into in just a moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so so just for folks who, I mean, uh essentially before all of this, you would get on at a stop, and it would be very unlikely that you would come to a stop until you reach the next destination on the red line. Um, you would get mostly green lights. And you know, uh Peter already mentioned how frequent the rail route was running, uh especially with these light rail systems in you know denser urban areas in the city. Having the frequency and then also having that that uh red light preemption makes it so that the service can run reliably. And even if it's not going extremely fast station to station, you're still moving, which keeps the service reliable.

SPEAKER_02:

It keeps it reliable. Um, it allows it to maintain a uh a higher average speed. It might not reach the top speed all the time, but the average speed is what really matters to folks. Like what is the duration of my journey? Um, and it's also a safety issue when you're running a light rail line at grade um on busy streets. Um, the operators want to be on time, they want to move their passengers fast, um, and they may feel a pressure to maintain the schedule and um try and get up to a higher speed, get through yellow lights. And I'm not trying to pin this on one operator in particular or anything like that, but um, one of the reasons that they put this preemption in place was to maintain that higher average speed and to improve safety as a result. Um, and that's one of many reasons why the preemption was so important.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right, right. And I mean, we when we mentioned the safety, the reliability, all of this ultimately leads to can people get to their destination on time without having to really pre-plan for it? Because if you can get to your destination on time, you can get to work on time, get to your doctor's appointment, picking up your kids from school on time, you're more likely to use that piece of transit again. And in a city like Houston, which is well known for its traffic issues, having those reliable systems in place is the way to solve it. So this system is is essentially was turned off. Uh and in looking into this a bit, it seems like it was turned off by by the mayor, folks in the mayor's office. I guess can you talk about that dynamic? Because for a lot of folks, you know, who maybe are not familiar with Houston, uh hearing that the mayor in some cases is the one who is making the transit worse for transit riders is not something you're used to hearing. Um I guess can you talk a little bit about the decision that was made? Was it maybe am I correct in saying that it was made up at the mayor's office? Is it Metro? You know, what's going on with that?

SPEAKER_02:

So I would say at this point it's not entirely clear why this happened and what the decision-making process was. Um, this is kind of a unique situation in terms of jurisdiction where there's a lot of overlap between multiple agencies. The light rail lines run on city streets, so that's right of way of the city of Houston, and that's traffic signals and control boxes that are owned and maintained by the city of Houston. Still, traffic single preemption for transit vehicles is a complicated thing to maintain, and it um is to be expected that the technical staff that know how to maintain something like that are housed inside Metro. Um, so to sum it up shortly, this is there's a collaboration between both of these agencies. There had to be to make a change this big. Um but it's not entirely clear who uh asked for it or why. What we do know is that when you reach out to Metro Customer Service, they'll say this is a decision made by the city of Houston using their signals. Um an official statement from Metro suggested that this was a collaboration between the city of Houston as part of a larger retiming effort of traffic signals downtown, which we knew was going on for a few years right now to try and optimize traffic flow through downtown to maybe synchronize some of the lights better. Um that's a that's a very complicated kind of project with trade-offs. You know, you can speed up traffic in some direction, but um maybe reduce it in another. Um, but in this particular instance, there's really no need to turn off traffic signal preemption for the red line to substantially improve traffic flow in other areas. The the most dominant traffic flow in downtown Houston is north-south because of the freeways that feed into um those streets at either end. Um and the red line also runs north-south. So there's no interference there. You can synchronize the lights going northbound. So if you're maintaining 25 miles an hour, you're always hitting the green without touching the red line. Um it can be beneficial for the vehicle traffic and the red line.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. Um, and in terms of trying to spread the burden of light delays, um, this really does not make any sense. Um, the delays in the red line that were resulting um from the traffic signal preemption disruption, at its worst, we're um averaging around 10 minutes in each direction. Um Light Rail line, the red line carries about 34,000 boardings um on weekdays. So that's a collective 5,600 hours of wasted time.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, so it's now taking 10 minutes longer than it was before to get through this stretch of downtown. That's right. And when you multiply that by all folks have the idea too, like what I guess what was the rough time before?

SPEAKER_02:

Because I'm my guess is this would have been like two or three minutes before to get through this section, and now it's 12 or 13, just to give folks an idea of what you know, even if it's um it's yeah, so uh I mean the segment from it was in downtown and midtown, so from like roughly Commerce Street down to um Wheeler or Alabama. Um, that trip, I would need to look up the schedule exactly. I know that my commute was taking about 15 minutes before, and after this, it was taking in the neighborhood of 25, sometimes 30. Um, so that's uh the that should help put into context. And then the overall runtime of the red line is 52 minutes, so you add 10 minutes or more onto that, um, then that becomes 62, and that throws off lots of things. You know, these schedules are carefully calibrated to get the next return trip to go around to ensure vehicle availability, to ensure brakes for operators and all sorts of labor laws and stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

It um really Yeah, yeah, and just from afar. I mean, you can you can see even in, you know, I'm seeing all sorts of images on social media, uh, and I'm sure you're seeing it in person where it's like, you know, you've got two or three red line light rail vehicles bunched up, stuck together in a row, which then leads to more issues down the line of, okay, now the schedule is off, now we have all of these at once, and you end up with a gap where you did have every six minute frequencies, and now it's you know, one train right after the other, and then a gap for 25 minutes or whatever it may be, which makes the service unreliable, which makes it so that folks don't want to, you know, can't rely on it. And now they're looking for all other alternatives on how to get to where they need to go. Um, I saw some of the things that I've got to do.

SPEAKER_02:

This podcast are probably familiar with bus spunching, but not usually on a rail system.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's it's happening on the rail system, right? Not good. Um something interesting that I thought you all did that was a a really you know creative piece of advocacy to kind of raise awareness was uh you all actually kind of raced the red line by walking alongside the the route. Can you talk about that and kind of the results of that in terms of any additional attention, um, reactions from the city, anything like that as a result?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So um we last Thursday we held an advocacy event to draw attention to how much slower the red line was running and how less reliable it was. And it was a foot race of the train. Um where we were gonna see for a two-stop segment if we could beat it on foot. That trip is about it's like six or seven blocks. Typically takes about three minutes for the train to traverse. Um, and especially if we were racing the train from the moment the doors closed and following all traffic laws, no jaywalking, then it should have been no question that the train would have beat us cleanly. Um and that's what we did. We waited for the train to come, waited for the doors to close, waited for green lights for both of us, and we set off. Um, and over that uh six or seven block segment, we tied the train at the end, and for multiple points, we were in the lead. Um the our overall trip time from Preston Station to Main Street Square um was about 10 minutes. And again, this is a trip that regularly takes three minutes and is scheduled to take three minutes on the red line. Right. Um, so that was uh we were um fortunate to get um some media attention to this to help more Houstonians hear about how this was impacting people. Um and yeah, it was a uh useful kind of visual exercise for people to understand exactly how much longer this was taking. And if it's faster to walk, what's the point of having the train in the first place? You know, the train is supposed to serve a purpose for people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. Uh I'm curious. So this is happening now. What sorts of steps are you all taking to get a sort of resolution to this? Is this uh something that can be solved in city council? Is it you know, metro board type stuff? I guess what what are the the steps that need to happen to kind of get this resolved?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so as I was describing earlier, this is a complicated issue in terms of who's responsible and what the jurisdiction is. Um so we're trying to take an all of the above approach. The typical channels here are to file um official complaints with Metro Customer Service and to 311, the city's main service request line. So we've been doing that and we've been encouraging other riders to do the same. Um, but we've also been trying to speak directly to city council. We had people show up last Tuesday afternoon around two to come and voice their concerns directly to City Council and the mayor to say, please, this is really delaying people's trips. Um we also plan to uh uh mobilize people to speak at the Metro board um in the next few weeks. They have committee meetings the third week of the month and then a full meeting of the board the fourth week of the month. Um and ideally, traffic signal preemption will get turned on tomorrow, and this won't be a problem anymore. And that's what they could do if they chose to. Um, but still we find that traffic signal preemption is off. Um, and that's not acceptable to the tens of thousands of people who ride Metro Red Line every day.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

We also have, I should mention, um, we also have a petition to the mayor in Metro, um, which has in a little over a week attracted 500 signatures um to get um to demonstrate to the agencies responsible that people really care about this, they're noticing and they want it fixed.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. We'll we'll make sure that that is linked for folks from Houston who want to get involved with that. Um, and we'll make sure there's links uh to your organization as well for folks who want to get more involved there. Um I'm curious what like the reaction at City Council. Did you have some city council members reacting positively? Is this an issue that you know a handful of them are really caring about and working on? Or, you know, I guess I don't I don't know the the dynamics of Houston City Council as well as I as I did in Austin. So I'm curious the reactions there.

SPEAKER_02:

Um I the the mayor spoke briefly to one of the people who came to um speak a public comment saying, Did you know that this was a metro issue? Um which again demonstrates the finger pointing that's going on around this particular issue because metro saying one one thing, mayor saying the other, yeah. I just last night I called Metro Customer Service to be like, what's going on with the red line? And they said talk to the mayor. So, you know, it's it's this is what this is what we're dealing with, where nobody will take responsibility for for what's happening here.

SPEAKER_01:

I I want to touch on a couple other things here. Um, before I kind of bring up any other recent projects, what other sorts of things does Link Houston focus on? I mean, obviously this red line issue you all have uh really taken on as it's fresh and is just kind of happening, but I'd imagine there were lots of other things you all were working on before September 20th when the switch was flipped uh on this. I'm curious to learn more about some of the other advocacy work you all are doing in Houston.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. So Link Houston has been around since 2017. Um we advocate for a robust and equitable transportation network in Houston so all people can reach opportunity and with a focus on equity is really a focus on those who have been left out of the transportation system in Houston, which has been so centered around cars for many decades. Um, people who walk, bike, use public transit, have limited vehicle access, either no vehicle or only one vehicle at home. Um, and even people who drive who have suffered the consequences of our at times very dangerous car um centric city. Um, Houston has a huge traffic safety crisis. Over 300 people killed um every year, 1,500 plus seriously injured in traffic crashes. Um, these are numbers that outpace violent crime. Um so really trying to draw attention to these issues and um to advocate directly to decision makers to shape better outcomes around this. Previous to um our advocacy around the red line, the most recent effort that we uh did is our sixth equity in transit report, which pairs a survey of Metro riders with some data analysis around Metro's performance to see how they are measuring up compared to what riders care about. Um a big focus for us this year was around um as is often the case, riders voice that their number one concern is frequency of the bus system, making sure that those routes run more often so they can get where they're going faster and don't need to be tethered quite as much to schedules. Once again, that was the number one concern from folks that we heard. And actually, something that Metro is doing a pretty good job at this year, um without really talking about much. Metro has increased frequency on 12 routes on weekdays, nine routes on weekends, and the routes with the increased frequency are really driving the bulk of additional riders. Um, just seven routes on weekdays are responsible for a third of all additional riders on weekdays, and just four routes are responsible for 60% of additional riders on weekends.

SPEAKER_01:

I was surprised about uh again, it's been a little while since I was in Houston, but I want to say it was six or eight months ago. Uh and we were you know using transit to get all around the city, and there were several bus routes that we got on that were better. I think there was a few that were every eight minutes, um, quite a few that were 10 to you know, like 10 minutes. And what once you start to get into that sweet spot and even better, it yeah, you don't have to think about, oh, like when did the last one come? Am I gonna make the next one? Or like you see one driving away and you're like, oh, now I'm gonna be stuck here for 20 minutes waiting for the next one in July while it's hot and humid, and you know, um, so yeah, we I I was able to experience some of that firsthand, and it does make such a huge difference in terms of the ridership. So um that's great to hear that that a lot of that um advocacy is focused in that area as well. Well, Peter, unless if there's anything else you want to add in uh in terms of uh additional information on the Red Line project, other projects you're working on, I'll give you the opportunity to do so. Uh and then definitely let us know where folks can follow your organization on social media and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So um Equity in Transit was really meant to help elevate the voices of people who are most affected by this stuff. And that's our central aim all the time. Is and with this red line issue is to connect with riders and say, hey, are you frustrated about this? There is an opportunity for you to have your voice heard, um, whether through signing the petition, coming out to city council, coming out to the Metro Board to speak directly to decision makers and say, this is affecting me and I want to see it improved. Everybody has the power to shape better transportation outcomes. Um, and we just uh we work to co-power with people to help them show them how. Um to learn more about Link Houston, you can go to our website at linkhouston.org. Um, all of the information of things that I talked about, whether it's the red line, petition, equity in transit, um, how to join our community action network, which is our sort of more most active volunteers that help us spread our message. Um if you're in Houston, we definitely encourage you to join us there. Um and yeah, follow us on social media as well at link underscore Houston on Instagram and on um Twitter slash X.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll make sure all those links are down below. And yeah, I mean, it is so much gets done in cities across the US by organizations like yours. I'm wearing my data shirt from up in Dallas. Those guys do a lot of great work up in Dallas. You've got Aura in Austin. Uh we were in Kansas City earlier this year and met several groups there. Uh Urban Labs, KC, uh Northloop neighbors, there were all sorts of groups like this across the country that really make such a huge difference. And, you know, like actually being there at the city council meetings, going to talk, it it really makes such a difference and can have such an impact on the issues that are important to you in your city. So I really do encourage folks if you're in Houston and you're not involved in that sort of stuff already, check out the links down below. Uh, if you're in another city, do a quick Google search and see if there is a group like that um in your area. And if there's not, post an event somewhere and see if you can get people together for a coffee or a happy hour or something like that. You never know where it will go. Um, Peter, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. First, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, I'm saving that go public transit verb set. Watch me go.