41 replies to this topic

[IHB2]

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thanks dude. it's nice to have someone agree w/me.

[TheNiche]

I think he exaggerates, but freeways do alter the makeup of a neighborhood when they plow through the middle of it. there's no doubt about it, and there's no doubt that the alterations they make are negative.

PE specifically? it creates a clearer delineation between midtown and downtown, but the bus station on Main and homeless that hang around St Johns have a much greater impact on people venturing too far north from midtown.

Midtown as it is defined today is a hodgepodge of psychological boundaries. It used to be divided between the 3rd and 4th Wards along Main Street. Talk to the black community and they think that Midtown is an incursion into their territory. And back then, 4th Ward meant more than just Freedmen's Town. The freeways, the spur, the bus station, the shelters and pain clinics (the unsung villains), and the light rail tore it asunder from its old associations and totally reshaped it. It is one district and it is many.

And it may be easy to say that the Pierce Elevated is a barrier to downtown...but I'd argue that the derelict buildings and surface parking lots within the downtown district are a barrier to the actual downtown. Downtown hasn't gotten that far south yet. OTOH, 59/288 became a barrier between Midtown and the 3rd Ward. And that's been good for Midtown. You wouldn't see townhomes creeping across the barrier today if people hadn't felt that Midtown was a separate and insulated district in the first place. Depending on your background, you might see that as a good or a bad thing, so I won't proclaim it as either. Suffice it to say, the placement of a freeway can change a community...but change is not necessarily bad, or bad for everyone. It's just something that happens, a force of nature. The city as a whole will adapt to it, change will happen, and then it will be okay.

[ToryGattis]

More lanes are needed, and express lanes are certainly one way to get those lanes.

One problem is the placement of the columns to support the elevated express lanes. The lack of an interior shoulder on the Pierce Elevated rules out that option, so the elevated structure would basically need to span the entire Pierce Elevated.

A likely bigger problem would be objections from anti-freeway interests to a taller elevated structure.

If opposition could be overcome, an upper deck with elevated express lanes is likely the least expensive and surely the least disruptive option to add capacity.

Just drove it, and it definitely seems feasible to elevate 4 or 6 express I45 lanes over the Pierce Elevated and plug them to the underutilized, very long freeway ramps near Scott Street (3-4 lanes each direction!), but I agree it will take careful placement of the support columns. I'm not even sure there would be that much resistance from the adjacent buildings since their bottom level parking garages are quite high.

Not sure where to plug them in on the north side, but there seem to be plenty of options. Maybe near Dart street, just before I10?

[the.kgb]

What about removing the Pierce and routing all traffic along the east side of downtown on a widened 59?

From a land aquisition standpoint, all you have to do is buy all the blocks between Chartres and St. Emanuel and have a super wide/double deck/sunken freeway to handle the throughput. Much cheaper than trying to buy high-rises and you could probably make a few bucks selling the half blocks along where the Pierce is now.

Just my $0.02

[Slick Vik]

What about removing the Pierce and routing all traffic along the east side of downtown on a widened 59?

From a land aquisition standpoint, all you have to do is buy all the blocks between Chartres and St. Emanuel and have a super wide/double deck/sunken freeway to handle the throughput. Much cheaper than trying to buy high-rises and you could probably make a few bucks selling the half blocks along where the Pierce is now.

Just my $0.02

Sounds good to me.

[TheNiche]

What about removing the Pierce and routing all traffic along the east side of downtown on a widened 59?

From a land aquisition standpoint, all you have to do is buy all the blocks between Chartres and St. Emanuel and have a super wide/double deck/sunken freeway to handle the throughput. Much cheaper than trying to buy high-rises and you could probably make a few bucks selling the half blocks along where the Pierce is now.

Just my $0.02

The distance between the I-10/I-45 split and the I-45/US 59/SH 288 interchange is 2.3 miles along I-45 or 3.8 miles along I-10 and US 59. Adding to the land requirements for such a large and complex freeway such as you propose, there aren't currently very many ramps along the east side of downtown, so adding those from such a complex freeway would probably require more than just a single block of width in many places. And in fact, because there are so few east-west streets in east downtown that aren't truncated by Toyota Center, the GRB convention center, or Minute Maid Park, the ramps would pretty much have to be for Leeland/Bell, Capitol/Rusk, and Congress/Franlkin (each of these being one-way pairs). Polk and Texas would both be messy connections due to bidirectionality on one and the full width of light rail crossing the other. There are a whole slew of buildings that would bite the dust for ramps, including all three buildings from Lofts at the Ballpark.

I'd imagine that land costs would probably weight out pretty close to the same figure, going east or west. Where the value of buildings are concerned, Lofts at the Ballpark is probably far more valuable than 2016 Main, considering how low the condo prices are (on account of the extremely high maintenance fees because the building is in such poor shape). The only thing that's at all valuable along the Pierce Elevated is the St. Joseph Professional Building.

However, if you're talking about a single super-wide/double deck/sunken freeway that's large enough to handle all of today's capacity as well as to remain functional for a few decades, then we're talking about a really big and complicated road. I'd think that the hard costs would eclipse the land acquisition costs...and you have to build this expensive road 65% further along the eastern route than you would if you came up along the west side of downtown. Then consider that of what's left of I-45, you'd probably want to keep a portion of it in place to serve a purpose similar to Spur 527, as a rapid accessway to the western side of downtown but from the north. So that also has to be reconstructed and costs additional money, and you don't get to reclaim that land.

And after all is said and done, the eastern path is a longer commute in terms of distance for most people, so that's just one more downside.

[the.kgb]

The distance between the I-10/I-45 split and the I-45/US 59/SH 288 interchange is 2.3 miles along I-45 or 3.8 miles along I-10 and US 59. Adding to the land requirements for such a large and complex freeway such as you propose, there aren't currently very many ramps along the east side of downtown, so adding those from such a complex freeway would probably require more than just a single block of width in many places. And in fact, because there are so few east-west streets in east downtown that aren't truncated by Toyota Center, the GRB convention center, or Minute Maid Park, the ramps would pretty much have to be for Leeland/Bell, Capitol/Rusk, and Congress/Franlkin (each of these being one-way pairs). Polk and Texas would both be messy connections due to bidirectionality on one and the full width of light rail crossing the other. There are a whole slew of buildings that would bite the dust for ramps, including all three buildings from Lofts at the Ballpark.

I'd imagine that land costs would probably weight out pretty close to the same figure, going east or west. Where the value of buildings are concerned, Lofts at the Ballpark is probably far more valuable than 2016 Main, considering how low the condo prices are (on account of the extremely high maintenance fees because the building is in such poor shape). The only thing that's at all valuable along the Pierce Elevated is the St. Joseph Professional Building.

However, if you're talking about a single super-wide/double deck/sunken freeway that's large enough to handle all of today's capacity as well as to remain functional for a few decades, then we're talking about a really big and complicated road. I'd think that the hard costs would eclipse the land acquisition costs...and you have to build this expensive road 65% further along the eastern route than you would if you came up along the west side of downtown. Then consider that of what's left of I-45, you'd probably want to keep a portion of it in place to serve a purpose similar to Spur 527, as a rapid accessway to the western side of downtown but from the north. So that also has to be reconstructed and costs additional money, and you don't get to reclaim that land.

And after all is said and done, the eastern path is a longer commute in terms of distance for most people, so that's just one more downside.

I didn't think about the access isssues. Pretty much anything that is done is going to be hugely expensive anyway, downtown freeways are rarely a 'cheap fix'. It'll be interesting to see what the txdot studies come up with.

[infinite_jim]

Now that diesel exhaust has been medically and therefore legally determined to be a known carcinogen then it's highly unlikely that any vertical expansion of the PE will pass any DEIS.

They just don't build'm like they use to.

[TheNiche]

Now that diesel exhaust has been medically and therefore legally determined to be a known carcinogen then it's highly unlikely that any vertical expansion of the PE will pass any DEIS.

This interests me. Cite sources, please.

[TGM]

Now that diesel exhaust has been medically and therefore legally determined to be a known carcinogen then it's highly unlikely that any vertical expansion of the PE will pass any DEIS.

That should not be a deal killer. Diesel particles have been the main culprit and now that diesel particle filters are fast becoming common place I think I would be more worried about diesel exhaust from the construction of the road rather than the ongoing use of it.

Edited by TGM, Monday, September 10, 2012 at 5:06 PM.

[infinite_jim]

@Niche

A passing thought in the greater context..

http://www.cnn.com/2...ncer/index.html

That should not be a deal killer. Diesel particles have been the main culprit and now that diesel particle filters are fast becoming common place I think I would be more worried about diesel exhaust from the construction of the road rather than the ongoing use of it.

Good point. I was thinking this is not a bad idea (the roundabout loop) but we probably are quite a ways off before it's even necessary. Hopefully automated cars will solve most rush-hour congestion issues in the next coming decade.


As a resident, the problem with a demo of 2016 Main St. is that it's not a true steel curtain wall bldg. It's a solid, slip-formed brutalist concrete tower that would take a lot of jack hammers to take it down without closing the freeway and adjacent Gray St. Implosion is really the only way and then it would take a lot of cat herdering.

[infinite_jim]

Another corollary thought is that perhaps one way to alleviate some of the problems of elevated inner city freeways is to repave them with polymer aggregates to improve porosity, runoff, lessen tire wear, noise, bass vibrations etc.