The light rail is especially chilly, but it has to be with how often they open all the doors at every stop and let in a little heat each time.
As a planned city the downtown urban area was ideal for all kinds of transportation, with streets wide enough not to be obstructed by double-parked wagons, and suitable for streetcars to be installed just about anywhere when they arrived. Much more amenable to public transport than SF or New Orleans, even though horses were the primary consideration to begin with.
The problem was always overpriced real estate downtown, and it got to be too late for newcomers to afford, so anyone that could then started or settled in nearby communities at different distances outside city limits.
With unbridled growth, the city gradually annexed or enclosed these "suburbs", some of which are inside the 610 loop. Pretty much part of the urban area now, but not originally connected by more than one trail usually, which must have left some residual bottlenecks to this day. And that's inside the loop, where people once commuted in from the western suburb of Bellaire, or the close-in location of the Heights.
Just outside the loop to the southeast, people used to consciously depart from Houston and drive "all the way out" to Pasadena. When public transport was on the rise in the county (far too late) about 50 years ago, Pasadena voted not to pay the extra 1% sales tax which was earmarked for Metro, simply because they did not want innumerable people in the big city who couldn't afford cars to descend on their much smaller industrial suburb so easily.
I guess without intervention, stupidity trumps planning if growth is excessive or too accelerated.
For me, I'm just fine on a bike in 100 degree heat with (life-giving) humidity to boot, but I'm probably not the average senior citizen. The homes I like best were built specifically for this climate before A/C, and have more than enough windows to open, and I prefer not to use A/C when driving alone either.
I came from Florida so this is Northern Living to me, if I didn't like it hot I wouldn't be here :)
