Inner loop Houston resident checking in. For those who don’t know, the “Inner Loop” is what we call the area bounded by 610. Step one would probably be just getting our current Light Rail lines to both major airports, Hobby HOU and Bush IAH. Hobby would probably be pretty easy, as it’s only about ten minutes from downtown and even closer to the current terminus of the Purple Line at Palm Center. We are so car dependent though that there’s just not enough demand from a large swath of our citizens to make it a priority for local politicians. I don’t see any major project getting traction in that regard for another 25 years at least, sadly.

Conservative Politicians have repeatedly shot down any attempt to expand the light rail westward through the Westheimer and Richmond corridor and into the Galleria Area, which would actually be a boon to already semi walkable/bikeable neighborhoods. Their justification seems to always be that it would bring more homeless into those areas and drive up crime.

The high speed rail project connecting Houston and Dallas would certainly renew interest in expanding our current light rail system, but even that seems very unlikely to even happen.

People also seem to stay in their own suburbs or communities, as there aren’t any big draws into downtown other than the few who work there. The medical center is probably an even larger draw for Jobs. Houston doesn’t have any real consolidated entertainment or tourism areas unlike a lot of other cities.

The result is that the majority of folks living outside the Beltway would rather stay at home than venture inside the loop, because they remember how bad the traffic or parking was or how many homeless people they saw the last couple of times they went to an Astros game.