Submitted Transportation Performance Measures Scorecard Public Comments

Topic

Reliability & Congestion

Comment

Until we get reliable mass transit in the region, Houston and the surrounding cities will continue to stew in our own juices.

Topic

Reliability & Congestion

Comment

Your metrics show you met the 2022 Reliability & Congestion targets. Houston area freeway traffic continues to get significantly worse, aggravated by TxDot freeway construction projects that take far too long to complete, cause significant delays from congestion, and cause many more accidents.

You should have metrics that measure:

1. schedule performance of freeway construction projects;
2. increased travel times or average speeds near construction projects;
3. and accident rates.

Example construction problem areas include 610 West Loop and 59 South, 610 South Loop and 288, I45 Gulf Freeway South, and 290, where thousands of vehicles are impacted every day.

Topic

Reliability & Congestion

Comment

Dear staff and members of the H-GAC TPC,

This comment is submitted by Stop TxDOT I-45, a grassroots transportation advocacy organization. We are supportive of every effort to evaluate transportation progress in our region. Thank you for your attention to our comments on the Performance Measures Scorecard at this time.

First, we request that H-GAC fundamentally change its overall approach to goal setting. As it stands right now, H-GAC largely sets goals based on previous trends and by observing transportation choices and patterns in the region. We want an approach that will shape change in the region to improve public health and safety, make the region more resilient in disasters, and prioritize expanding affordable and sustainable transportation options.

We request that H-GAC set more ambitious goals to improve air quality and then work to achieve those goals. We ask that H-GAC move to scenario planning in order to develop data-backed solutions to unreliability and congestion.

We also request more data transparency. It is difficult to understand exactly when reporting periods begin and end. Unmasking primary data sets would allow the public to process and digest information fully. A detailed explanation of data-collection practices will allow the public to understand the metrics and our region’s performance.

Relating to reliability and congestion, we want to make note that widening I-45 will make it impossible to achieve the region’s goals in the long term. Widening highways makes traffic worse and incentivizes personal, non-commercial, single-occupancy vehicle road trips.

We ask that H-GAC prioritize reliability for commercial drivers by providing multi-modal travel options for personal trips. The more people we take out of cars for personal trips, the more freely and reliably freight can travel. We recognize the importance of reliability for the delivery of goods in our region and for the livelihood of those drivers. We empathize with them, and we want to see less personal SOV use for the improvement of commercial traffic.

On the scorecard, non-single occupancy vehicle trips target should be increasing, not decreasing. Again, increase the goal and then work to change behavior throughout the region. Houston's Climate Action Plan calls for reduced vehicle miles traveled, which means we have to use single-occupant vehicles less. We can do that by expanding bicycle and pedestrian facilities, building trains, and maximizing the efficiency of our bus and bus rapid transit networks.

We encourage H-GAC to include tire particulate matter in air quality considerations. More and more data is showing that particulate matter is a large component of air pollution, not just emissions. We must reduce car use and reduce VMTs for the region in order to improve air quality and move us out of our perpetual, deadly nonattainment status.

Thank you.

Topic

Reliability & Congestion

Comment

I believe that the two scorecards right now are in contention with each other. As The overall stated goals are all something everyone can get behind. But when these goals are translated into measurable targets, at least for this specific report, the ways’ reliability and congestion are measured is in a large lump of person miles traveled, reliability of routes, and how often people didn’t drive alone.

I think more targeted measures like reliability of bus trips, reliability of personal motor trips, and reliability of truck (long haul shipping, not personal pickups) miles traveled would be better categories.

Our goal is to move people from where they are to where they want to be within reason while keeping people safe, maintaining good infrastructure, and reducing pollution. If our measures are vague, then reliable things like buses in dedicated lanes will be lumped with unreliable things like single occupancy vehicles to make them seem like they both have similarly reliable.

We have an infrastructure, pollution, and transportation problem in this region that we need to be honest about to expose the problem and thus help us work towards real solutions. We need to expose how personal vehicles traveling from suburbs to downtown and vice versa is not efficient or effective, meanwhile buses (and regional rail if we had it) are far more reliable and better for safety and emissions but when the category is vague buses can make up for cars ineffectiveness by lumping them together.

Also, these scorecards do not mention what is being done to meet these goals. As a resident I should not have to spend hours deciphering obscure government websites and documents to properly participate, that’s the DMV’s job anyways.

Jokes aside, if we want to improve reliability, making speed limit 5 mph would make the road more reliable, safer, and reduce idling emission but we don’t want to do that.

In closing on the reliability and congestion scorecard, I think we are better off categorizing how specific modes are and are not reliable and adding notes like expected reliability if we implemented rail or BRT, to guide us towards solutions.

As for the emissions standards, If we prioritize 2-ton boxes carrying most often a single person in our regional planning we should expect to continue to see us miss. The only viable solution that improves emissions wholistically is electric rail for long distances, walking/cycling for short distances, and buses and electric bicycles/scooters for medium distances.

Therefore, our scorecard should include overall emissions goals and emissions per person moved per mile for different modes of transit like personal, bus, and rail. This will expose how not all modes of transit pollute equally.

Another measure we should add is percentage of trips under ~3 miles that are made using a personal motor vehicle. Short trips can and should be switched to emission free options whenever possible.

In conclusion, I think measuring our progress towards goals is great, but we need to measure the right markers so we can provide evidence to our residents and leaders to update our regional planning to truly accomplish our stated goals.