The new @METROHouston Bus Rapid Transit line (the Silver Line, AKA Uptown BRT) is almost complete. It has 100% dedicated lanes, off board fare collection, level boarding, and service every 10 min all day and 15 min the evening, through a major employment center. Here's a tour.

This project is a north-south link in the frequent bus grid, connecting 16 local bus routes to the jobs, shopping, and restaurants in Uptown.

It's also a part of the regional network. People who live in the suburbs out US290, IH10, Westpark, and IH69 will be able to catch the same park and ride service that goes to Downtown, but get off at a transit center and transfer to the Silver Line to get to jobs in Uptown.

The project has four major pieces: a new transit center on the south end, bus lanes and stations in Post Oak Boulevard, an elevated busway along IH610, and the reconstruction of the Northwest Transit Center at the north end.

Here's the new mulit-level Westpark/Lower Uptown Transit Center. It will be a connection hub for local bus, freeway express buses, and BRT. The freeway express buses use a ramp (at left here) from the IH69 HOV lane directly onto to the upper level.

The BRT and local buses will stop in the ground floor. This will create new connections between buses in Gulfton (a very dense low income neighborhood) and the express service to Downtown.

The BRT lanes start just to the north, duck under IH69, and emerge in the center of Post Oak. The lanes are in the median, separated by curbs and trees from regular traffic lanes. Stations are like light rail -- platforms, canopies, passenger information, ticket machines.

The lanes are part of a total street reconstruction that also includes better sidewalks, crosswalks, pedestrian scale lighting, and landscaping. https://theboulevardproject.com  (aerial tour here: https://www.ridemetro.org/pages/METRORapid-Silver-Line-Uptown-Houston.aspx)

Next to the Galleria, there's a connection to the Westheimer bus, METRO's most frequent and highest ridership bus route.

At the north end of Post Oak, a ramp in the middle of the freeway leads into the elevated busway.

This is Houston's most congested freeway, so the buses will save a lot of time by speeding over the traffic.

White the Post Oak lanes were built by the Uptown Redevelopment Authority (funded with tax increment), the elevated busway is a TxDOT project.

At its north end, the busway drops into Post Oak Road, where bus lanes bring the Silver Line to the Northwest Transit Center.

Northwest TC been out of capacity ever since the bus network got reimagined, so it's being expanded. The entry to the managed lanes on I-10 west is just across the street, and there are direct ramps to the 290 HOV and to I-10 east.

Also included in that project: a new RideStore customer service counter and (yay!) restrooms.

Pre-COVID, service was scheduled to start this summer with a temporary platform at NWTC until the transit center work is done.

This is frequent, reliable, high quality transit through the middle of a secondary ("suburban”) employment center, part of a connected network of local bus and express bus. It's just the first step -- two more BRT lines will connect Uptown to Downtown and the Medical Center.