Houston is adding bus routes, and even those are hotly contested in city hall. The city tried to expand the very limited light rail we have but the vote for tha

Houston is adding bus routes, and even those are hotly contested in city hall. The city tried to expand the very limited light rail we have but the vote for that failed. We live in a super walkable part of Houston and still need cars to go to many places outside of (and even within) the Inner Loop. A 10-min journey in a car takes 45+ mins by bus, and that's assuming peak schedules and buses that arrive on time. I actually tried to do the no-car thing for a few weeks. It definitely impacted my lifestyle for the worst. The gym I go to is 10 mins away by car. It's a 45 minute journey by bus. I needed to walk 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop (despite being next to two well-trafficked cross streets). When the bus finally arrived, I needed to pay with cash because METRO didn't have Apple Pay set up at the time (early 2024) and while you could use the Q Ticketing app, it doesn't have a Watch app and I didn't bring my phone. The bus didn't show on two occasions. The next buses were 45 minutes away. All of this is, again, in the most walkable, public transit covered part of Houston. I also lived in NYC for a long time. There, getting anywhere was a 10 min walk to a train station, swiping you MetroCard (Apple Pay these days), taking the train and walking a bit to your destination. The only places that were inconvenient to get to by train alone were deep in Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx; for those, you'd take the bus, which usually ran every 10 mins.