Anne Linehan and Kevin Whited, and Tory Gattis continue to do a good job of covering Houston Metro Rail’s ever-present expansion plans, which seem to be impervious to whether the expansion is actually needed. Previous posts on the boondoggle of rail systems in cities such as Houston are here.
Although not as slick as a trendy Metro economic report analyzing the projected benefits of an expansion of the light rail system in Houston, this Bill Schadewald/Houston Business Journal ($) op-ed describes his rather compelling analysis of Metro Rail’s ridership on one portion of the existing rail line:

As Yogi Berra once observed, sometimes you can see a lot just by looking. Neighborhoods can change character in a just a year.
Today I’m revisiting the outer Texas Medical Center area with a stroll down Fannin past Reliant Stadium along the light rail line.
It’s half-past five on a Tuesday afternoon. The walk from South Braeswood to the end of the line is about a mile, give or take. . . .
A Metro train passes, whistle wailing. The trains regularly come and go in opposite directions every few minutes.
I’m focused on heart rate and rock, not paying much attention to the rhythm of the rails. Then I happen to look over. Staring back is a single solitary face on an entire train.
The cell phone says a quarter to six. Just one rider? During rush hour? It doesn’t make sense.

I change the radio station and find a traffic report. Traffic is in bumper-to-bumper gridlock and slowed to a crawl on every major freeway for miles on end. Nothing unusual there. It’s a typical weekday afternoon.
I decide the first train must have been a fluke. The next one will be chock full of rail commuters happy to be without cars.
The next train is empty. No passengers. Nada. Zip.
I start checking ridership on each train and keep a running total. The math isn’t hard. After 20 inspections the cumulative body count is only 32. Even if I missed five who were bent over tying their shoes, it’s still below two per train.
The rail cars may be packed from downtown to the Medical Center, but South Braeswood is the end of the line for all but an average of less than two.
It’s a mystery why Metro went the extra mile. This ghost spur owes existence to a Super Bowl, a seasonal Reliant Stadium, and a now-defunct seasonal Astroworld.
In post-Super Bowl Houston, trains are crammed with cowboy hats for a few weeks of rodeo festivities early in the year. Red pom-pons and Texans T-shirts fill the seats on Sundays in the fall. . . .
So a mile of the seven-mile system built at a cost of $300 million is now primarily a $43 million limousine service on tracks for livestock lovers and football fanatics.
The depressing sight of so many empty cars bringing down Metro’s ridership statistics is turning my walk into a bummer.

Schadewald goes on to recommend that Metro attempt to increase ridership by using its excess capacity of rail cars in a bumper car attraction next to the Dome. Not a bad suggestion, actually.