They don't use zip codes in Pandyland. The address she gave is across from Teh :rollistanian: Embassy.

I fully agree with that, although there's no way that rail could have been used. It was old, had been abandoned for years, and was single track most of the way. Even if the right of way had been used for rail transit, the existing track would have had to have been completely rebuilt, and the right of way would have had to been widened and double-tracked.

Sugar Land has been anti-Metro since the agnecy's first day. In fact, that really applies to all of Fort Bend County; I believe the only Metro service in the entire county is the express bus that runs from the TMC Transit Center to Missouri City.

I agree 100% about people not moving out there if they don't want to deal with the traffic. I had zero sympathy for people who .....ed about the Katy Freeway and the traffic out there. That existed for several decades before that freeway was recently rebuilt. 90% of the people who lived out there knew about that traffic before they moved there. Most of the time I lived in Houston I lived close in as well, and the traffic wasn't so bad. I also took Metro on a pretty regular basis when I could, especially when I was commuting to an office job in the city. Even in my current job, when I was doing work for STCL in Downtown, I took Metro there most of the time. People who live 25 miles from where they work, especially when they moved out there knowing the traffic was a problem, and still refuse to take the existing park and ride service, shouldn't be complaining IMO.

Well, they have expanded park and ride buses several times in recent years, and continue to do it. It really takes both elements to make the system effective, though. Park and ride works for people who live in suburbs and work in Downtown, or in areas like Uptown or the Medical Center. Local bus and light rail is needed for the people who don't live way out but need options for local transit, as well as to ferry around those who take park and ride and need to extend their trip beyond the scope of the park and ride area. The system is being built out with that approach in mind. It's just painfully slow to get it done, because Houston was so late in getting any real start.

And at least Houston is doing something. Living in Atlanta I've seen the great start MARTA got off to in the late 1970s/early 1980s, but there are major gaps in that system, and no leadership whatsoever to resolve that. And if Houston had to deal with 15-20 years of an anti-transit funding political climate, Atlanta is far worse. It's the state's capital city, largest city, and primary economic engine, yet the state government (dominated by representatives from rural areas) won't kick in a penny for anything in the city. The belt line project in Atlanta, which would use existing abandoned freight rail rights of way for multi-purpose transit (hike/bike trails, light rail, express bus, etc.) to fill in many of the gaps is moving at a pace that makes Metro Solutions in Houston look like it's moving at warp speed.

Last week the Grand Hyatt (NYC) had reward availability which is why I Hyatt hoped this weekend. Now that the reward has been deposited there is no availability for the night I needed it. :mad:

There is nothing Grand about that hotel, except what they charge. :rolleyes::mad:

Its for my sister and her friends. I basically worked a deal with them to pay for one of my nights in FL and they could have the free night. Now it backfired on me and Im going to have to find a place for them to stay.

It's not just about reducing traffic. Even Metro will tell you that the reduction in traffic in the city center was negligible as a result of the first light rail line. On the other hand, it did remove hundreds of local bus trips from the Main Street corridor. Before that rail line opened, Main Street was nothing but a glorified bus corridor anyway. Even if nearly every passenger on the light rail line was a bus passenger pre-rail, that's still 40,000 weekday riders who aren't driving. And those people are riding on far fewer vehicles than it took to transport them pre-rail, when the streets the rail line runs on today were packed with buses.

Metro did a huge amount of analysis on that line, and if you go back to the Whitmire administration, you'll see that such a line was the backbone of a proposed system in the mid-1980s. It serves a lot more than just people going between Downtown and the Medical Center/Stadium area. The service area radiates in all directions from the line, and a very significant number of riders connect from local bus services to the rail line to continue their trip. Living in the area both before and after the line's opening in 2004, I can assure you that the trip on the 14 Beechnut from where I lived to Downtown pre-rail was about 20-30 minutes longer when the entire trip was on a bus than it was after the bus line was terminated at the TMC Transit Center and you had to transfer to a train to complete the trip. That eliminated a lot of extra stops and traffic lights.

As for fare enforcement, that's an issue with light rail everywhere. All transit systems know that it's a problem, yet the vast majority of the passengers are legally paying customers.

That reminds me of something that might be a new "marketing" deal. Some bottled water that came from HEB was named "Niagara." Looked at the label, and the company location is given as Ontario, CA. Now, Ontario, Canada would be a logical place, sure, but CA is California. So I looked at an Imperial Sugar bag the other day over breakfast (men, left to their own hunter gatherer ways, revert to feral states within hours), and the company location is Sugar Land, TX.

I wonder is both are not just mailboxes for marketing effect, and the real LLC offices (both are LBO spin-offs, I'll bet) are in, like, Greenwich, CN.

Both airports are on the long-range map. HOU will get it first, though.

The problem with IAH is that it's a very long way from Downtown, and without the central portion of the system in place first, serving IAH doesn't do a lot of good, since it there's still the connection issue at the other end of the line.

Even in a city like Atlanta, where MARTA dumps you right into the airport terminal, at least 70% of the people I see on airport trains every week are airport employees, not travelers going to/from a flight. That changes somewhat when there's a large conference or event going on and a lot of people are staying in hotels in the downtown area, but overall, my Monday/Friday MARTA trips to/from ATL are mostly airport works and DL flight attendants, with some business travelers like myself.

I connect daily from the 25 Richmond Route (when I don't just walk it for some exercise).

I find Starwood to be the absolute worst about hitting my card for something after checkout, and half the time I have no idea what it's for.

On the other hand, there was the trip where I consumed probably $50 worth of mini-bar liquor at the W New Orleans that they never charged me for. :D

I haven't booked a hotel room through the corporate travel agent in years. I don't see why I should. I get reimbursed for the stay based on the receipt the hotel gives me. Our accounting department can't tell from that how the room was booked. They don't look for anything from the travel agent to match it against. I have coworkers who swear you'll not get reimbursed for a hotel stay or car rental not booked through the travel agent. Then I tell them I've been doing both for nearly five years and nobody has ever questioned it. I also manage to get myself into much nicer hotels for the same, or cheaper, rates than some of the places they're staying because of it.

My job description says nothing about being a profit center for our travel agent. I use them as little as possible.

I used to take that back when I lived in Westchase. Richmond and Woodland Park Drive to Downtown on the 25 on a good day was a 45 minute ride; on a bad day it could be over 90.

I know that the rail serves more than just those two stops (Med Center / Downtown), I was saying that those are the two places that it primarily connects people to and from.

I'd actually like Metro to make its ridership numbers and behavior more visible.

I think that's the issue with MARTA: it's very location specific, so coverage is actually quite poor, even though service is excellent. Anywhere a walk from --now my mind draws a blank-- the stop by Marriott/Hyatt/Westin, provides great service, but from, say, even CNN Center, not so great, given the need for change. And, after some point in the evening, the service to Buckhead requires a wait at Lindburgh (sp?).

That's the kind of thing that makes class action lawyers' nostrils flare. Documented patterns of illegal or fraudulent behavior, the threat of federal RICO based filings, the vision of armies of expensive auditors combing the records = rapid settlement talks.