FAST FORWARD
IN FUTURE, CITY WILL MOVE IN DIFFERENT WAYS
Five-year-old Caryn Price wants to be a doctor like her mother Cathy when she grows up. At least that’s what she wants to be the recent day she’s asked outside a local grocery store, as her mother loads their haul into their station wagon.
If she stays in Houston, however, how Caryn gets to her possible future office in the Texas Medical Center probably won’t be like her mother’s commute, especially through Houston’s growing urban core. Cathy’s grocery trips also will change dramatically, more than likely, including how and when items are transported to the store.
Still, observers and experts agree, Houston will continue to be a car city for a very long time and advances in car technology and significantly increasing use of alternative modes of mobility are going to take years — likely decades — to catch on with most Houstonians.
“I don’t believe that car ownership will dramatically decrease unless the economy or market forces change considerably,” said Tony Voigt, program manager for the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s Houston office. “Per capita car ownership may decrease, but with population growth, the overall number of cars will keep increasing in the region.”
That means people should get used to the same routes they have now, just operating a little faster and with fewer accidents slowing the way. Heavy trucks might not be as common a sight on freeways, too, as shipping shifts to an overnight function leaving peak commutes for cars and light trucks.
What will change, perhaps radically, is the car Houston residents “drive” around the area. Though a fledgling part of car sales now, electric vehicles will claim more of the market, which many think could make the gasoline-powered engine obsolete.
With it, so could the notion of driving for most people. Companies already are developing autonomous vehicles that turn all occupants into passengers. Vehicles could operate more efficiently at faster speeds making the existing freeways — which aren’t likely to go anywhere — handle more traffic in the same amount of space.
If cars can travel 15 or 20 mph faster only two or three feet apart by eliminating the human factors of sudden merges and inattentive driving, the entire system operates more smoothly.
Vehicle movements and opportunities also change significantly. A family could — depending on their schedules — own a single vehicle instead of the two they now own because the same car could take children to school, the parents to work, and return and pick each of them at a desired time.
Ownership in some cases also could become vague, with buying trips replacing personal car use. As Uber has changed the taxi industry, the ride-hailing firm or similar companies could one day revolutionize city movement. Commutes could be organized and people share a large vehicle with personal compartments, where people could surf the web, respond to emails or simply nap as their trip proceeds, said Tory Gattis, a local blogger who has advocated for transportation planning that envisions self-driving cars. Gattis also suspects workers will be increasingly freed from an office environment, making some commutes unnecessary or distributed throughout the day.
“You may not need to go into the office as much, because of these immersive virtual-reality meetings,” he said.
For Houston, that could mean a safer, less congested city where parking lots are less of the norm as cars circulate. Spots now dedicated to parking could be reclaimed for bike lanes and wider sidewalks, making neighborhoods more accessible. Businesses wouldn’t need as many spaces to operate, using the existing development footprint more effectively.
That could mean things like Houston’s long-range bicycle plans fill in the missing links between trails and benefit from promising research, such as a pilot in College Station that is testing paint markings for bike lanes that glow at night, using stored solar power.
Still, all those personal vehicles whisking people to and from also means freeways are not going anywhere, even if tolling them makes the term freeway outdated. The regional transportation plan prepared by the HoustonGalveston Area Council — which looks out 25 years to 2040 as part of its latest iteration, includes $87 billion worth of projects ranging from bike lanes to commuter rail from Loop 610 to Cypress along Hempstead Highway.
Many of those projects include more toll lanes along area streets, but the overall theme is highways will continue to develop deeper into Houston’s suburban communities as the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods increase in density. As the region approaches being the home of 10 million people, that means daily trips between The Woodlands and Houston’s central business district might not be as common as jobs and homes spread farther from the central core.
Freight goods, meanwhile, will also rely more on automation and off-peak travel than they do now. A freight shuttle, developed by Texas A&M Transportation Institute researchers, could move cargo from ports such as Houston to inland distribution centers without tying up freeways. Deliveries might be made from those centers to stores via autonomous trucks that can travel overnight and deliver trailers to be unloaded.
A number of locations will take on city-like characteristics of their own with The Energy Corridor and Katy being the job hub of western Houston, appearing much like downtown Houston does today.
In all likelihood, that will increase public transit use for city dwellers remarkably, and possibly suburban dwellers, too, to navigate these dense urban clusters. Public transit, however, might not be buses and trains.
“Public transit might morph to the use of 8- to 10-passenger vehicles that drive themselves and are less expensive to operate,” said Voigt, the Houston-based transportation researcher. “I don’t know that we’ll continue to see 40-passenger buses everywhere unless they are needed based on how many people reserve the service, which will be a change in itself — a reservation system for most modes of transportation services for more ondemand type of use.”
Both Voigt and Gattis agree economics will determine many of the transportation developments, as costs shift to a per-trip calculation rather than the overall expense of owning a car for many. Gattis predicts agencies like Metropolitan Transit Authority might see their role replaced by free markets. Now, those who cannot afford a car or taxi trip take the bus because of cost, not choice. Elderly and disabled residents on a fixed income are often reliant on buses and paratransit provided by Metro’s MetroLift service.
“I think eventually we will have transportation vouchers for people who can’t afford (to travel) and use it with the autonomous shuttles,” Gattis said.
Others will choose to keep driving by choice, simply for the love of control. Classic cars — built in the 1960s and prior when people thought we’d have flying cars by now — remain wildly popular despite new cars being more efficient, comfortable and driverfriendly.
“Are we going to tell those people they can’t drive anymore?” Gattis said, noting freeways and connected selfdriving vehicles will have to account for human drivers for decades after autonomous cars make their debut.
As local mass transportation declines and becomes more on-demand, commuter rail, intercity rail and even air travel are poised to increase. Regional plans call for rail lines along or adjacent to most major freeways connecting central Houston with The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Cleveland, Katy, Tomball and Galveston.
High-speed trains, meanwhile, could connect Houston to Dallas, Austin and potentially even New Orleans in coming years.
“I don’t think air travel will go away, but land-based high-speed travel may come to rival it,” Voigt said. “Highspeed trains... or Hyperloops could be a paradigm shift for long-distance travel within 50 years.”
The one uncertainty — upon which a lot of Houston’s transportation plans rest — is how anyone is going to pay for it.
“In many cases, the users will pay for the infrastructure through taxes or fees,” he said. “But the gas tax won’t fund the infrastructure if we move more away from gas and diesel-powered travel and to moving people and goods with electrical motors. Figuring out how to pay for that infrastructure with this huge shift will be a very interesting process to watch.”
Self-driving vehicles, more ride-sharing programs and virtual-reality workplaces could mean a safer, less congested city.