One of the objectives of moving downtown was a more walkable lifestyle supplemented with public transportation and a bicycle.  In this blog I will focus on navigating the public transportation system in and around the downtown area.  When you have never used public transportation, getting started can be a little intimidating with the thought of being stranded after catching the wrong bus.  It helps to have a plan B.  My plan B is ride sharing.

While public transport in the area is not as good as it could be, it’s not as bad as many people think.  As it turns out, the strongest criticism I hear of public transportation is from people that don’t use public transportation.

The conversation typically goes something like this. I ride the local bus and light rail every weekday and when I tell people this they typically say, “public transportation in Houston is bad” and I say “which route do you take?”.  And they say, “Oh, I don’t ever use public transportation because it’s so bad”.

So, the biggest critics are the ones who never use it. The people that I talk to who use it generally find it workable.

This is not meant to be an A to Z how to use public transportation but rather a “starter kit”. More details to follow.

Let’s start with the light rail. I primarily use the red line for the area between downtown and the NRG complex which would include the Museum District, Herman Park, Houston Zoo, the Rice Campus and the Medical Center.  This line can be combined with other local bus routes to go east/west, for example route 25 down Richmond to Greenway Plaza and Galleria area south.  The red line also connects to the 84 route in the Medical Center which is helpful for accessing Rice Village as well as the Post Oak area around the Galleria.  Note that you can take a bicycle on the light rail, another way to access the Rice Village. The 82 runs down Westheimer and Milam connecting the Galleria to downtown. The 20 runs from downtown, through Memorial Park and over to the Galleria. It is particularly helpful for events at Memorial Park like the Bayou City Arts Festival or the Houston Open golf tournament.

At a high level, the red line runs north and south and can be combined with east\west local bus lines.

The light rail and local bus cost $1.25 which is good for a 2-hour window. If you have a metro card (see below), you can transfer from bus to bus or to the light rail for the same $1.25 within 2 hours.   Just tap the card on the bus or the light rail station each time.

If you are going to ride public transportation on a regular basis, get a Metro Card.  There are various places around town where you can get a card which can be reloaded at the rail station or with the kiosks on the local buses.   With the Metro Card, you get the transfer benefit I mentioned, and you are not constantly fumbling for a dollar and a quarter.

I am going to dig into this topic a lot more in the future, but this is part 1.