Regulating your way out of a solution
How excessive regulation kills simple pragmatic solutions.
I sat through a webinar by the Houston Chronicle on the issue of a pedestrian bridge over the railway at McReynolds Middle School in East Houston. Titled - “Fifth Ward students risk life and limb to get to school. What can be done?” - the viewers got to watch Houston City Councilmember Mario Castillo, Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, a representative from Union Pacific, and McReynolds Principal Chastity Caesar discuss the issue with Houston Chronicle's Editor of Opinion, Lisa Falkenberg. This was on June 18th, after the Chronicle had run an editorial in the paper on June 4th - “HISD students are crawling under stalled trains to get to school. Where’s the outrage?”
And nothing got resolved. In the comments section I asked, what kind of pedestrian bridge are we talking about? Where would you put it? As I was looking at Google Maps at the intersection of Zindler St & Market St, and trying to see what could be done. These questions posted in the webinar chat were ignored by the Chronicle.
There is an old engineering joke below, about the problems of a project. This is something that anyone who has worked in projects will verify is not only real, but happens all the time.
So, what is the problem here? Just north of McReynolds is the Union Pacific Englewood Yard, it is the largest train switching yard in Texas, maybe in the southern United States and it handles up to 3,000 freight cars daily. That means a lot of trains go in/out of the yard and some of them cross Market St. next to McReynolds, and some of them stop. Blocking the students that need to go west from McReynolds to reach home. This has been a long term problem, and unfortunately some students choose to go under the stopped trains, placing themselves in danger.
The answer is to provide a pedestrian bridge, a way for people to safely cross the train tracks, right? Yeah, but what kind of bridge?
The simple bridge is an old bridge in England, there are lots like it scattered across the United States. I know a lot of engineering firms and structural builders in Houston that could give us a similar bridge made out of steel and have it designed, built, and installed for less than half a million and under a year. Local money spent with local firms to provide a local solution.
But it wouldn’t be Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant.
The ADA was passed in 1990 and it specifically says “no individual may be discriminated against on the basis of disability with regards to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases, or operates a place of public accommodation” (Wikipedia). And public accommodations include transportation. Which means that the simple pedestrian bridge needs to accommodate people with disabilities, and the simple stairs and crossing would need to be replaced with something that would includes elevators, which means now it needs electricity, lighting, and lots of other bells and whistles which not only makes it bigger, but way more expensive. Which is why a bridge built last year in Utah cost $8.5 million.
To quote the article here - “The project began several years ago and involved multiple agencies, including state, regional and municipal governments. Actual construction of the bridge began in 2021, and despite delays due to supply chain shortages, the pedestrian crossing opened this fall. (2023)” - so multiple years of design, regulatory issues and then two years of construction.
McReynolds has over 600 students, from their website I can’t tell if any are disabled, but the ADA act requires us to provide a bridge that allows disabled people to access the bridge, no matter what.
But wait. The whole point of this was to stop students from crawling under the trains. So rather than the simple half a million dollar bridge that we could get up quickly, the regulatory environment will push us into a $8.5 million bridge that will take 6 years or more to do. And be assured, if we go forward with the simple bridge, someone will sue demanding the ADA compliant bridge and then the legal costs could easily dwarf the $8.5 million.
Which is why nothing got done in the meeting.
Councilmember Mario Castillo discussed how the city was getting Federal funds to “study” the issue and hoped that Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia and Union Pacific could help in that.
Realize that the term Federal funds was mentioned repeatedly. This is the same Federal government that is over $35 trillion in debt and will likely run an almost $2 trillion deficit due to interest payments on the $35 trillion combined with insufficient taxes to cover spending. We can argue whether we need more taxes or less spending, when my view is you need both, but the issue is local governments can’t continue to expect Federal handouts when the Federal deficit is this big.
So, what are our options? One, we build a simple bridge that stops the students from crawling under the trains (some will likely continue to crawl under as kids will be kids), or we can try and build the ADA compliant bridge at nine times the cost and likely nine times the schedule. And, oh by the way, where are you gonna put this bigger bridge.
The railroad crossing at Market St has McReynolds on the SE corner past Zindler St. and the Wheatley Plaza Apartments on the SW corner, with a private business on the NW corner and a US Post Office on the NE. You have the right of ways of the dual train tracks to consider and you can’t build it up against Market St. So where is this ADA compliant bridge going to go. It looks like a tight fit for the simple pedestrian bridge, let alone the monster with elevators. You’re going to need to buy land from the apartment complex and the school, meaning it’s a longer bridge. (Do you hear the sound of a cash register ringing up more and more costs in the background??? I do.)
And there you have it. Engineering and project management is about executing a project within the box defined by cost, schedule, and space. And by requiring this bridge to be ADA compliant we have boxed ourselves right out of a solution.
Now, let me be clear, if we were building a new airport terminal or government building, then yes, it needs to be ADA compliant. But, when you are trying to shoehorn a simple pedestrian bridge into a tight area, making it ADA compliant not only makes it expensive, in this case, it makes it impossible.
Which is why the result of the meeting was “we will study this”.
Now there are issues with Union Pacific running longer trains and blocking streets, which the Chronicle was quick to note. But, trains blocking Market St. was an issue many years ago, before UP started trying to run longer trains to cut their costs. And trains blocking streets is something that the City of Houston wants to resolve in a number of places. But Market St. is not going to get a tunnel or a bridge, there is just no room for those. The best we could do is a simple pedestrian bridge for the students of McReynolds, but we regulated that away.
The point of government is to solve problems and if the problem is the students crawling under the trains, then why not build the simple bridge, rather than letting the regulations block us from doing anything.
So where is the outrage?
Practical solution is what I explore in my book “Fixing America”. That while we argue over culture war issues, we fail to address some of the root causes of our problems. Not only the failure to balance the federal budget, but also issues on manufacturing, healthcare, education, and others that all tie back to the poverty which is the root of our problems.
Please don’t take my word, I have received extremely good reviews from some of the major book reviewers.
Kirkus Reviews – A timely, level-headed analysis of America’s most polarizing political issues. …those looking for evidence-based, centrist positions on polarizing issues will find a well-argued book that eschews ad hominem attacks and hot takes … “Get it”
BookTrib – …From the outset, the reader understands that neither the political left or right is safe from his cutting analysis, as he dismisses policies based on ideology, emotion, or belief. Fixing America is a tonic of fresh insights, keen observations, and scintillating research for the millions of Americans desperate for that vanishing space called “the middle” … and a clarion call for its return to the body politic. Highly recommended.
Reedsy Discovery - Scholarly work with interesting perspectives on the issues faced in the United States today, with plenty of statistics to dig into... Author William Taggart is a well-traveled engineer who takes his industry's propensity for problem solving and applies it to the issues facing the United States of America. Loved it.