Commuters using Houston’s METRORail Red Line are facing longer travel times due to traffic signal retiming in downtown and midtown. The changes, part of preparations for the upcoming World Cup, affected about 400 traffic lights and have added around 15 minutes to some riders’ commutes, abc13 reported.
Annette Frenk, a rider, described delays of several minutes at a time between stops. Peter Eccles of LINK Houston expressed concern that such delays could discourage public transit use, noting that the added time impacts thousands of riders. METRO stated it is working to adjust the timing to address the issue.
Click2Houston also reported on the situation, highlighting the experiences of riders like John LeBlanc, who said his trip has doubled or tripled in time. A typical 15-minute journey was observed to take up to 35 minutes. Eccles estimated the cumulative delay could equal about 5,600 hours per day for riders, with the Federal Transit Administration calculating a service cost of $7.50 for every additional minute.
According to METRO spokesperson Anna Carpenter, while traffic improvements for other commuters have been achieved, adjustments are still being made to better balance rail operations with city traffic.
