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Volume 72, Issue 107,
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Opinion Houston must improve mass transit Florian Martin
The current media hype about global warming might make Houstonians aware of the alternatives to automobile travel. If rising gas prices didn't do the job, maybe the desire to save the planet will. Either way, we need to become less dependent on cars. Houston ranks sixth in the number of non-car commuters of the nine U.S. cities with more than one million inhabitants, according to a survey by Bikes At Work Inc., a bicycle manufacturer. The results show that, in 2000, only 8.8 percent of commuters in Houston used transportation other than a car. Houston trails New York City -- which has a total of 65.5 percent non-car commuters -- Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego. Dallas and San Antonio have even less non-car commuting. It's not surprising the five cities beating Houston on that list are popular with tourists while Houston is known for anything but tourism. Of course, Houston never had the ambition to be a tourist city. Since its foundation, Houston has been known for cotton, oil, space technology and the Texas Medical Center. Its infrastructure is not made for tourists or heavy shoppers, unlike New York City with its Fifth Avenue, Broadway or Greenwich Village, where people can spend the day walking around window-shopping or sightseeing. In Houston, when people want to go shopping, they drive to a mall or strip center. Shopping in a city like Houston means having to make a game plan before leaving the house in order to avoid too much driving. In cities like New York and most metropolitan cities outside of the United States, one can go downtown and spend the day going to different stores, bars or restaurants. Those cities have souls, which is not only good for tourism, but also for the people who live there. While Houston's downtown area looks very impressive from outside, it doesn't have a lot of ambiance -- just that of a working city. This changes at night, when people wander on the narrow sidewalks between the different night clubs -- which raises another issue. A lot of those people are drunk at that time and will still be drunk when they have to drive home when the bars and clubs close at 2 a.m. If Houston had a fully developed public transportation system, maybe fewer people would drive drunk. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 46 percent of fatal automobile crashes in Texas in 2004 were alcohol-related, compared to 39 percent in New York state. Many people who go out want to drink alcohol, whether they have to drive home or not. While it is unrealistic to change people's drinking habits, it would make sense to improve the municipal transit system to offer an alternative to driving drunk or taking a costly taxi. Facing a lack of initiative by local governments, the company SYN3 Safe Ride, founded in 2003, offers free shuttle services for bar patrons in New York and New Jersey and plans to expand to other major U.S. cities. The shuttles pick up people from participating venues and drive them to other bars or home. This is a good way to solve the drunken driving problem and could help raise politicians' awareness of the overall need for a better public transportation system, especially in cities like Houston. A fully developed transit system such as those in New York or most major international cities could help transform Houston into to a more pedestrian-friendly city. While this will take time to materialize, the city will eventually adapt to the habits of its citizens -- in the same way it now conforms to their usage of cars -- and change its layout. Martin, a communication senior,
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