If other cities work to make their systems more useful, they, too, can expect more riders. Houston doesn't have the world's best fundamentals for bus ridership in terms of weather or the nature of the built environment, but its success shows that, fundamentally, the quality and design of the system matters. That's all good news for Houston, but what's especially encouraging is that the playbook the Texas city followed is broadly applicable to a wide range of American cities. Bus ridership is up 4 percent on local routes and up 6 percent on park-and-ride routes - even as the city adds two new light rail lines (this part, obviously, did cost money) and ridership surges on the existing light rail red line. Early results are now in, and it appears to be working. Last year, Houston took a stab at doing something that sounds too good to be true - drastically improving its mass transit system by redoing the way its bus routes work, without spending a dime of extra money.
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