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Transit's final frontier: Houston Metro's President and CEO, Frank Wilson, is looking to lay tracks in a modern boomtown.

Article Excerpt
Like the top three transit authorities, the three largest cities in the United States--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago--are pretty easy to figure out. But what is the fourth largest city? Is it Philadelphia? Or maybe Dallas? How about last year's Expo location, San Diego? Nope, it's Houston, which saw a nearly 20 percent population increase from 1990 to 2000, double that of every other city in the top five in population in the United States over the same period of time.

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Houston Metro's President and CEO Frank Wilson has to shoulder the dichotomy of an agency in a rapidly growing city with far less transit than others of its size.

"We have 1,200 square miles of service area here. 1,200 square miles. And I got 1,200 buses. We're lost. You know, we're lost out there," Wilson says.

"I mean, how can you run all-day/all-night service with that kind of service area and no density anywhere, but a couple places."

Houston follows the mythic proportions of Texas with not one, but three downtowns with some estimates claiming that number is more like four or five and more than 2,000 people moving to the region every year. Houston is booming and the question is whether or not Metro can keep up.

As Wilson explains, the question is, "Can we build fast enough to influence where they go or are we going to have to catch up to the location decisions they make.

"One's easy to serve. The other one is really difficult to serve."

Wilson admits the challenge scares the heck out of them. Houston isn't very dense. In fact as I traveled around the city I felt like I was in a succession of suburbs rather than one city. Wilson says this is changing, though. With more than 2,000 new residents a year come a boatload of new ideas, tastes and preferences. And those moving from larger cities will be looking for transit, which Wilson says they won't see.

"At least nothing you can see on the ground like a fixed guideway system like you might see in these other cities," Wilson says.

"Yeah, there's buses running all over the place, but they don't count. Because they're an illusion. They're there and then they're not there. Well where did they go? Who knows. Well, I'm not getting on it because I don't know where it's going.

"You can run all the buses you want, there's no sense of structure, there's no sense of organization to a city unless you can find where the tracks or the wires go, or where the subway stations are. So those people come here and they expect to see all this stuff and they're a world apart from those who have been here their entire lives."

METRO RAIL

Frank Wilson has worked for major metropolitan agencies from coast to coast and knows a thing or two about rail. One thing he noticed when...

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