On my second day in Houston, I decided to walk to the nearest HEB (a supermarket chain in Texas) to get groceries. It was a 1.5 kilometer walk, of about 20 minutes – which was not so bad, although it was slightly inconvenient while carrying things back home. What was somewhat surprising to me was the lack of interesting buildings during my walk: there were no restaurants or shops – just a lot of houses.

Among the first things I noticed in Houston was how far one location is from another. Within a strip mall, the distance I would have to walk from one shop to another struck me as odd. In most parts of the town, I would only see buildings that were one – or at most two – stories tall. I had the expectation that cities constitute high-rise buildings, and that Houston was a city. All the roads in Houston were rather wide (which I thought was a sign of having “good roads”).

I did find the neighborhoods with the interesting buildings in Houston eventually. I also did find the neighborhoods with the tall buildings. The roads remained wide, however – and as of the time of writing, I can truly think of one passage which would count as an “alleyway”. The unusually large interstitial distance between the shops of the strip malls also remained. I also started noticing that these spaces around the city were not necessarily characterized by their human-friendliness (such as parks or public squares) but rather by roads (generally well-maintained) and parking lots.

It wasn’t very long after which I realized that many folks in the city perceive their car as an essential part of their urban life: similar to the essentiality of housing and having a cellphone. I soon found that this is not a quirk of Houston, but of North American urban planning in general – so much so that there are entire online communities dedicated to belittling it. While I understand that there is more to a city than its infrastructure for transportation, this is what I will talk about here since this is what has bothered me the most. Many people suggest that the car-first mode of urban design is a matter of cultural choice, and I agree. What I do not agree with, however, is the idea that cultures are beyond criticism.

I was a graduate student at Rice University, which is how I came to spend 5 years in Houston. Rice happens to be located very close to the center of the two concentric rings which feature on every map of Houston. It is in the museum district, and close to the medical centre (which has tall buildings!) and is perhaps among the “nicer” and wealthier parts of the town. The university and the medical center are to the west of the METRORail Red Line. The “nice” neighborhood ends east of the Red Line and the Hermann Park, which is where the “rough” neighborhood begins. Close to the university is a residential area with beautiful houses: if one looks carefully, some restaurants, cafĂ©s and an indie bookstore can be found within walking distance. No groceries are to be found, however. Also within walking distance is the Rice Village, a collection of bars, restaurants and novelty shops but again, no reasonable place to buy your groceries. If you expand your definition of “walking distance” a little bit, the Freed-Montrose Neighborhood Library also become accessible.

During my first year, I lived in Rice Graduate Apartments, which is very close to the university itself. I had no problem walking to the university, and in particular Duncan Hall, which I could do in 5 - 10 minutes. The university also very generously operated shuttles to and from our apartments to the university. The matter of weekly groceries were also resolved by these shuttles. On Saturdays, the university operated shuttles to a Target, and a strip mall containing a Fiesta and a ROSS. There was a fairly frequent bus route, connecting you to an HEB about 15 minutes away.

Later, I moved to an apartment which was about 2.5 kilometers from the University. It was also 2.5 kilometers away from Montrose Boulevard, a neighborhood known for its thrift stores and gay bars. Fortunately for me, this is arguably the most walkable area of Houston. Unlike the Rice University area, this area had no shortage of groceries. There was a Trader Joe’s just behind my apartment, a Whole Foods about 10 minutes away, and an HEB about 15 minutes away. (All these distances are walking minutes, as you would have guessed.) There was a Pizzeria and a CafĂ© on the same street (and same block) on which my apartment was. (I highly recommend the pizzeria, but disrecommend the cafĂ© unless you are wealthy.) There was also a Target, a Pet Store, several hair salons, a Children’s Hospital, a branch of Chase Bank, and a GoodWill (a thrift store) within a radius of 5 minutes. And indeed, there were many bars and restaurants scattered throughout the neighborhood. These included chains like Torchy’s, a taco truck and upscale restaurants like Doris Metropolitan Steakhouse.

During the pandemic, I started developing a habit of going out on long walks in my neighborhood. Most often, they would be a 30 - 40 minute walk around the residential area to the north of my apartment. Doing so, I have found many Little Free Libraries around the neighborhood. (These are little boxes where neighbors are encouraged to leave a book for other neighbors to take, for free, at a later time.) I was quite fond of these since they were testimony that Americans haven’t lost all their compassion towards neighbors or books. On occasion, I have walked to The Galleria or The Buffallo Bayou, which would take me on a walk more than an hour long.

While walking around Houston, I could not help but notice that the city feels dead – especially for the fourth largest city of the United States. There aren’t really people on the streets. When I did come across people on the streets, there was a good chance that they’d either be homeless or appear less fortunate in some way. Despite my neighborhood being rather walkable, the streets did not seem livelier. My suspicion is that this is because a majority of Houstonians use their cars to travel around, even for short distances. I suspect that this phenomena is so extreme that the infrastructure they build aims to minimize the time not spent indoors or inside a car. This is what has led to the development of drive-throughs. Instead of parking your car, walking to the ATM, and walking back to the car, a drive-through ATM lets you get the job done without leaving your car. During the COVID pandemic, I had a COVID test-center at a walkable distance from my apartment. Unfortunately, it was of no help to me, since it was a drive-through only service!

Not only does Houston seek to improve the quality-of-life for drivers, but it also does indeed neglect matters of infrastructure for their pedestrians. Unlike what Not Just Bikes mentions, most parts of Houston do have sidewalks. However, they indeed do sometimes vanish, and often pedestrians are left with no choice but to walk in a rather dangerous manner by the edge of a busy road or a bridge. Even when the sidewalks exist, they do not necessarily enjoy great maintenance – very often they comprise a sequence of slabs which are not laid out evenly. Wearing open-toe sandals have been rather risky for me: I managed to hit my toes rather hard several times on the slabs of the sidewalk near my apartment. While the sidewalks are definitely worse off, it is true that Houston roads themselves are not necessarily well-maintained either. Consider what happens when the potholes on the roads of Houston (of which there are many) are filled after a bout of heavy rain: cars spray water on the pedestrians while they drive over these potholes. This is not necessarily out of malice – the idea that there are no pedestrians on the sidewalks is the default assumption of the city. Construction agencies in the city do not mind making this assumption either. When they wanted to carry out some construction work on Westheimer Street, very close to my apartment, they just blocked a non-insignificant part of the sidewalk. They simply instructed pedestrians to use the other side of the street. This was not very easy for two reasons. First, you cannot just cross a busy street anywhere you want. And second, there was a similar construction very close to this place, on the other side of the street as well – which meant that you’d have to cross the road twice in order to be safe. Constructions are an important part of building the urban infrastructure, but this does not have to be this way. On my very short trip to New York City, I noticed a similar situation on the sidewalk, except for the fact that they did curve out a detour for pedestrians so that they still have an way even if the sidewalk was partially blocked.

As I alluded to earlier, Houston does have some public transit. The most expansive part of this network is the bus system. I was lucky to have access to two fairly decent bus routes close to my apartment: 27 Shepherd and 82 Westheimer, which ran at a frequency of 8 minutes and 15 minutes, respectively. Route 82 would connect Downtown Houston with Midtown and the Galleria, while Route 27 would go to Rice University towards the south. Both these routes connected to some nightlife strips: Washington Street for Route 27 and Downtown for Route 82. Occasionally, I would take 27 to the University. This would be a 10 minute ride to the Stadium, followed by a 15 minute walk to Duncan Hall. In my experience, commuting within from one point to another within the inner loop of Houston is not very difficult using the bus network. This may require walking 10 - 15 minutes to and from the bus stop, which is reasonable (except for the fact that many neighborhoods in Houston seem sketchy). If your trip does not fit within the inner loop, or if you lived in a neighborhood less blessed with walkability than mine, you may have had to exchange buses. While most of my trips were to the grocery store, or to some establishment downtown, I would occasionally have to go to some administrative office and have to face this situation. Exchanging buses would usually not be very pleasant. This is because the first and the second bus would rarely line up properly in terms of their timing. You may also have some difficulty finding the next bus stop (which may not be very close), or might catch the other bus in the wrong direction: to be fair, this isn’t necessarily the fault of the transit agency. Buses in Houston do have a timetable, and there is a tracking system – available over SMS and several apps – which you can use to track them. However, for some reason unbeknownst to me, the “real-time” arrival information of many buses in many routes are often not available.

Also as mentioned earlier, Houston METRO does have a some light-rail connectivity. The most notable of this is the Red line, which connects Downtown Houston to Rice University and the Texas Medical Center. The light rail is also much more reliable in terms of its frequency. While there is a fairly reliable bus route that connects the downtown to the airport, I would really like to see the Red Line expanded to connect to the airport in the future. There are also the green and the purple lines which are rather short, and which I have not used very much. There is also the Silver Line, a bus line with its dedicated passage, which operates somewhere around Galleria. In my experience, the Silver Line does not seem to have many riders: so I do not know what warranted the construction for this specific route. On the other hand, it would be nice to see a dedicated light rail route replacing Route 82, given the large number of riders on that route (at the expense of shutting down Westheimer to regular cars, if necessary).

The public transit system in Houston is fairly affordable. A ride costs USD 1.50 and is defined to last 3 hours. This means that the rider is free to exchange as many buses or trains as they wish for the next 3 hours, as long as they have paid for the first one. Students get a discount which makes it USD 0.60. My university further subsidized this – they would provide USD 500 METRO cards for USD 50. The payment on the buses had to be done using either prepaid cards, cash to the driver, or using an app. While I obtained my card from the university, it is not clear to me if there are kiosks which can print out these sorts of cards.

While the vast majority of passengers on the buses would be perfect gentlemen (or well-mannered non-men), it was not out of the ordinary to encounter certain unpleasant characters, especially on the popular routes. These individuals would sometimes yell very loudly, or try to bother other fellow passengers, and so on. On occasion, they’d be asked to get down from the bus. From what I have seen, these situations albeit unpleasant, were never physically violent. Sometimes the buses would be smelly – especially when crowded. Other times, the buses wouldn’t be very clean – you’d see pieces of food left here and there on some seats.

On most days, I would go to the university on my bicycle. This would usually be a 20 minute ride. Many students in the university use their bikes. Some students use standing scooters and skateboards inside the campus. The university does have decent bike infrastructure. There are a large number of bike racks throughout the university, and also a bike shop run by students. In all fairness, there are bike racks available next to a number of establishments and at numerous strip malls throughout the city. The METRO buses are equipped with racks for carrying bicycles in front of them as well. As a bicyclist, you may choose to either ride your bike on the road itself, or the sidewalk. Unfortunately, on a number of roads, especially the busy ones, the bicyclists do not feel particularly welcome, as the car-driving users of the road treat them as second-class citizens. The city has marked a few streets as part of a Bike Route, although the meaning of this is not entirely clear. On certain roads, however, there are truly dedicated bike-lanes which are clearly separated using obstacles. For my ride to the university, I could find a route through the marked bike routes, with about 30% of my route passing through the non-marked part of the roads. However, I suspect that a lot of Houston Residents will be able to take advantage of the bike routes.

Houston did have a bike share program ran by BCycle. While this was very affordable, and had student discounts, they didn’t have a bike-station close to my apartment. I was still really sad to see BCycle close their operations in Houston in 2024. I bought my first two bikes second-hand at a price close to around USD 100, and my third bike from Rice Bikes for a price close to USD 250. I bought my third bike because my second bike was not a very good fit for me. I bought my second bike because my first bike was stolen. Indeed, bike-theft is a significant issue in the city. During our orientation, we were told that this is the most common kind of crime on campus. The University Police encourages us to register our bikes with them. Me, my roommate and our neighbor – all three of us have had bike stolen from inside our apartment complex.

When one hears about Houston, they might recall that the city is associated with the glory of having one of NASA’s mission control centers. Unfortunately for me, there are no bus rides from the heart of Houston to NASA. The only way to go there was a USD 40 Uber Ride. When one is in Houston, they may feel an urge to be somewhere else. Galveston is a small island beach town, not very far from the city. I would really liked to have made a solo trip to Galveston on a Saturday morning and come back in the evening on the same day. However, based on what Google Maps would tell me, there was only one bus-route to Galveston per day, involving multiple not-very-convenient exchanges. The only way for me to go to Galveston was to hope that someone with a car would take me with them.

Without having to bother my car-owning friends, I have indeed commuted to College Station (a college-town in the vicinity of Houston) a few times. I did so using the ride sharing app Hitch. I was also told that there are Facebook groups where students arrange rides for each other to their way to College Station. On a few occasions, I have travelled by GrayHound or Flixbus to Austin, San Antonio and Corpus Christi. (Corpus Christi has far worse public transit compared to Houston.) Unfortunately, I have noticed that the quality of service on these bus services have somewhat detoriated over the years. In Houston, I found that the downtown terminal for GrayHound was closed, and reinstated at a location with much more remote location. The new location also had infrastructure that was poorly maintained, and lesser connectivity to public transit. There is an Amtrak train line from Houston to New Orleans, which takes about 9 hours, but I haven’t been so fortunate to use it.

Given my experience, should I have just bought a car? It would have been an option, and I did manage to learn to drive and get myself a driving license. An important aspect would be costs. It is no secret that graduate students do not make a lot of money: but nonetheless, some of them manage to own and drive their own cars. This would require that I bear the cost of buying the vehicle, but also pay for car insurance, fuel, maintenance of the car, and parking fees from time-to-time. But more importantly, buying a car would have meant that I would resolve the class struggle in my favor by simply joining the other class.

The essence of an ideology which enshrines the free market as an instrument of social decision making is that individuals participating freely in activities is the best way for them to show how they want society to be. When you tell people to use the public transit, they tell you that it isn’t convenient enough. When you request the authorities for better public transit, they tell you that it wouldn’t be of help to many people. By buying a car, I would be prioritizing my convenience over my values and feed into this perpetual fly-wheel. My understanding is that when people buy a car, the lack of public transit stops being an important issue for them. Instead of demanding that the city build better public transit, they tell their friends to just get a car. If I bought a car, instead of getting my clothes sprayed on from the water in the potholes, I would probably be the one doing the spraying. Instead of riding my bicycle, I would be the one impatiently honking at the fellow bike-riders. Let us consider another concrete case: there is restaurant A, which is not very accessible by public transport and then there is restaurant B, which is. Restaurant A has good parking, but Restaurant B does not. Based on my principles, I would rather go to Restaurant B, because I want to support businesses which are close to decent public transit. But if I had a car, I would care about my selfish need to park my car, and would probably choose Restaurant A. Anyone in a traffic congestion would know that car-drivers are also a cause of inconvenience for each other. When possible, it would be morally preferable to take public-transit to avoid the clogging of the road so that it can be used by other drivers, perhaps even other car-drivers, who may have a greater need.

When people say that no-one in Houston is using the pubic transit, they are being ignorant. I have taken buses on several routes several times, and I have seen people use it. In fact, during Rush Hours, almost all the seats are often taken on Route 82. My suspicion is that the individuals making these claims just happen to be in a different social class than the daily commuters on the public transit. While using the public transit is an equalizing experience where you share your ride with strangers from other social classes, the experience of driving is quite the opposite. Perhaps wealthy people do not feel the desire to sacrifice the comfort and convenience of their car and endure being in a closed space with numerous smelly strangers. I have seen some people argue that having good public transit connectivity to Sugarland (a suburb of Houston) would be a bad idea, since it might help homeless people get to their neighborhood. Clearly, keeping their neighborhood ‘safe’ was more important. When people are advocating the just get a car strategy over public transit, they are excluding people who can’t afford cars or have some disability preventing them from driving.

The car-centric lifestyle has given rise to the famous American suburban lifestyle. American suburbs are neighborhoods far away from the city center and consist of blocks upon blocks of single-family homes. While it is true that living in the suburbs, one can afford a large house with a lawn and plenty of space to park their car, it is unclear to me if this living situation is ideal. It appears that this would be a good setting for residents to take frequent walks in the neighborhood, or socialize with their neighbors. I am not sure if this is something suburban dwellers enjoy. Living in the suburbs further solidifies their car dependency – they now have no choice but to suffer long commutes to work everyday. While some people seem to think that cars are a symbol of freedom, I fail to see how this wouldn’t be hours of stress and frustration. Because there are no groceries, pubs or restaurants nearby, the practical reasons for the suburban dweller to get out of their house for a quick walking trip are also minimized. Does this make for a good place for the children of the dwellers to grow up? It could, if they had a chance to meet other kids, or go to nearby parks and play. In this setting, they cannot walk to their schools, and have to rely on their parents to drive them around. Adults blame children for being on their phones and consuming toxic content on TikTok, but what else could they do? They have no way of organizing any social gathering with their friends without the help of some adults constantly driving them around.

Living in the suburbs may be cheaper, but the personal expenses paid by motorists (in the form of taxes, parking fees, tolls and so on) fail to cover the cost that it imposes on society. The society sees this cost in terms of money it has to pay for the upkeep of roads, but also lost revenue from the better utilization of parking lots, loss of productivity from individuals suffering from accidents or other health conditions. Having a sparser living arrangement means that the city has to maintain longer roads and other infrastructure with taxes from fewer people. Walkable neighborhoods are better for small businesses. When people are walking around, they get a chance to discover a new neighborhood cafe, a mom-and-pop pizzeria or an independent bookstore. Indeed, these places could act as third places where people of different social classes bump into each other, and slowly pave the way towards a more egalitarian society. Businesses are also required to have a minimum amount of parking available – either legally, or because of the simple fact that they are not located in a walkable neighborhood. This is something that rises the cost of operation for these businesses. I suspect that there are poverty-stricken individuals without a car who could find employment only if they could commute to their workplace. Once, I did meet a tea-seller in the Montrose market who lived in the Galleria area: she said that she has to rely on her friend to give her a ride because her car was met with an accident.

Some of the issues with a car-centric lifestyle should be obvious. Driving cars increase the per-capita carbon footprint of the population. When one drives, they are being potentially lethally dangerous to themselves, other drivers and pedestrians. Every-time one drives, they are missing out on an opportunity to walk, or even just stand for a while. Finally, the parking spaces, vast oceans of concrete and asphalt, are an eyesore; we’d be better off with parks and gardens.

I want to end with an anecdotal legal theory (not supposed to be taken seriously). Rice University, a private university, sensibly bans people from bringing in firearms into their property (i.e, the campus). However, in Texas, cars are considered an extension of your home. Thus, while it is not okay to carry a gun walking into the campus, it is fine to have a car which you drive into the campus.