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HOUSTON -- It’s one of the largest downtowns in the country.

“We’re currently bigger than San Antonio, El Paso and Fort Worth combined,” said Joyce Camp, vice president of parking and transportation in the Texas Medical Center.

It’s expected to outsize downtown Houston.

It is the Texas Medical Center: a city within a city.

“The 17^th-largest downtown in the country,” Camp said. “It’s huge, and it really is a medical city.”

It shares a problem with Houston: Parking in the medical community is only getting worse.

Right now, 160,000 people go there every day; 73,000 people work there and more help is wanted. About 4,000 jobs are available.

“We obviously can’t build enough parking to build ourselves out of the need that we will have,” Camp said.

That’s why transit is a top priority. Just ask employees.

“With gas prices rising in the roof, rising through the roof, it’s time for a change,” Raymond Wright said.

That change is almost here.

“It saves the hassle on driving,” Wright said. “You save on gas; it’s so much easier on your body your mind, everything else.”

“These employees are already working for companies using a busing system,” Park and Ride spokesman Percy Patel said. “Soon, Texas Medical Center employees could come to this AMC theater parking lot in Sugar Land, leave their cars and hop on a bus for a ride.”

“I’m definitely excited,” employee Dionne Flynn said. “I’m waiting for it to actually start working.”

Flynn and her fiancé work at the Medical Center and hope to take the park-and-ride. 

Like so many employees surveyed, they say something’s got to give. and it isn’t gas prices. Eighty-one percent of employees said yes, and they’re about to get it: bus rides from fort bend county to the medical center.

“And it’s like door-to-door service,” park-and-rider user Percy Patel said. “I can’t ask for more, right?”

Sugar Land is the first proposed location, but the system will grow—paid for by the Medical Center’s parking garages. Spaces no longer used by employees will bring in more money. That’ll subsidize bus costs, and riders will shell out a few dollars.

“It’s a win-win situation,” Patel said.

The plan’s estimated to take thousands off the streets, if only to make more room for the masses still to come.

“Barbara Bush years ago called it Houston’s gift to the world, and that’s exactly what it is,” Camp said.