The METRORapid Silver Line will use a dedicated bus-only lane to connect Uptown to the Northwest and Westpark/Lower Uptown transit centers—7373 Old Katy Road, Houston, to 5105 Westpark Drive, Houston—with several transfer options available for free for up to three hours when paying with a mobile ticket or fare card. Because the service will use rail-platform-like stations at stops, the Silver Line will offer full accessibility with wider doorways and level boarding.
The cost to ride is $1.25 each way. Buses will arrive every 10 minutes daily from 5 a.m. to midnight. As with all METRO transportation, face masks are required to ride.
METRO began testing the service the week of May 4, which included tests for clearance around trees, entry and egress at every cross street, curves, docking procedures, platform approach and signal operation, in addition to other operational considerations. A secondary testing phase followed with METRORapid vehicles performing simulated service.
Bus rapid transit is seen as an alternative to light rail, which requires significant infrastructure to be put in place. The METRONext plan calls for some 75 miles of bus rapid transit service to be built out over the next 20 years.
