Highway6

Awesome additional information.. thank you.

Don't mind me... Just closing out a thread 17 years later, finally having found photos. Peace !!

Irontiger.. Since you are such the grocery/department store connoisseur, I have a joke for you. Q: How do you fit an Elephant into a SafeWay bag ? A: You take the 'S' off of 'Safe' and the 'F' out of 'Way'. *Drum Riff*....

"Despite getting a renovation... It didnt look too different from most Krogers I've seen." Really ? Did you think Krogers Corporate Mother Ship would renovate to make it look more different ? Did you think Krogers Corporate Mother Ship was like "Gee, this Krogers has a cute quirky nickname.. we should surely take this into consideration when we remodel it " Did you think it got its name becasue of the renovations ? I'm dumbfounded at your train of thought. If you wanted to experience Disco Kroger for not just the people, but the architecture.. then it should have been fairly obvious to you that you were making your first visit over half a decade too late. P.S. You have "visit every grocery store brand in the US" on your bucket list don't you ?

Not sure what leg the plantifs have to stand on... We don't have zoning.... Touch $h!t Gotham and Renoir.. If you wanted to secure your property values, ya should have bought up the property before the current developer.

Probably they do know more.. but otherwise, I disagree. The Goal has changed from previous plans.. and that's what I have a problem with. The "market led approach" ( in their words) goal is now just get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible ... connectivity beyond that be damned.

But they havent kept it in mind if there are zero intermdiary stations to station hop.

I'm aware there is additional time spent in the 2 intermediary stations, acceleration, etc. I was just providing a simple example to highlight how little track would have to be added, relatively speaking, and to counter "probably adds 50 percent to the total travel time" because it would be nowhere near that. Plus.. route doesn't equal service. The trains are supposed to run every half hour. Perhaps every 3 of 4 are express and fly on through those stations and truly only 12 minutes are added. But the connectivity is there for that 4th stop every two hours. Dallas and Houston MSAs are 13 million.. yes...but BCS and Waco MSAs would add another half million. I think that connectivity adding two universities/employment centers is worth it. I understand we have to balance speed vs connectivity. But one line with only two nodes is weighted at the extreme of speed, to the detriment of connectivity.. IMO. And if we're only debating Dallas and Houston - Dallas and Houston are not point A and B... They are points A1 A2 A3 A4 B1 B2 B3 B4 etc... So I would argue only 1 node for A and 1 node for B does a disservice to those 13 million + people. And I'm not arguing for a node for each A1 A2 B1 B2 etc.. that's the job of LRT... but having a 2nd node in the biggest suburban population center in the direction of travel makes sense. When it comes time to debate a Houston-SA High speed rail... it won't make sense to not have a Katy or Energy cooridor Stop. When it comes time to debate Houston-Austin high speed rail.. it won't make sense to not have a Cyfair area stop. Nobody likes starting a journey by first heading 20 miles/half an hr in the opposite direction. With the population center of Houston being somewhere in west houston.. and with major population and commerial areas and the major growth stretching from the SW to the North.... which is convenient since those are the directions one must travel to get to SA, Austin, and Dallas... it makes zero sense to not have additional nodes there.

Previous plans have been better is all I'm saying.. One step forward and two steps back does not equal baby steps. I would argue with something this big, you can't afford to go in half-ass or with a questionable core if you want it to succeed.

But why is that now the goal? In the past when the Texas Triangle or Texas Tbone has been discussed.. part of the goal was intermediary population centers. The Texas Tbone recognized the value of getting BCS, Waco, Temple(Ft Hood) in on the system. How is having an additional stop in houston that serves the airport/major population/commercial center of little benfit? How is it not a benefit for someone in north houston to not have to drive half an hour in the wrong direction to load a train downtown before heading in the right direction ? ** How is adding 2 universities and allowing students and the work force to connect to two major metropolitan areas not beneficial to both the univiersities and metros? Adding 1 stop in North Houston to get IAH/Spring/Woodlands plus having 2nd stop in BCS, and a 3rd in Waco.. That's approximately 40 miles of additional track. Their site says Houston to Dallas in 90 minutes. If you do the math.. an extra 40 miles adds 12 minutes ** The rail is supposed to compete with Southwest Airlines and one of the pros is not havign to deal with parking miles away, half hr security lines, etc etc.. The rail loses a big positive for anyone in N/NW houston if it takes just as long to get to the train that the benefit of not dealing with the pre flight crap is neutralized. Having more than 1 location in the destination cities makes sense.

The two alternate routes they are currently considering is a huge opportunity missed. Map The routes go up in no-man's land between 45 and 6 instead of hitting ANY other population centers. Le'ts just go ahead and bypass Woodlands - 94k Conroe - 56k College Station - 100k Bryan - 76k Waco - 125k ....what a genius idea. It's the same damn LRT argument from a decade ago just at a bigger scale. They are putting it where's its easy and convenient and not where the people are. Great for the people of Houston and Dallas... but to not also serve 2 major universities and several sizeable population or employment centers... big ass waste.

OMG OMG OMG... this is on Bissonnet.. That road is totally unsuitable for any sort of multi-family development. Somebody call the Ashby Nazis.

All-around great news. From http://www.mysananto...-be-3642958.php The contract to create a Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing in College Station is likely worth at least $1.5 to $2 billion over the next 25 years. “It's the biggest federal grant to come to Texas since NASA, quite frankly,” Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said. The economic implications for the College Station area are also significant. About 1,000 jobs will be created during a construction phase that will last about five years. After that, there should be many more, said Dr. Brett Giroir, the Texas A&M scientist who led the university's bid. Additionally, the development should attract drug companies to invest in or relocate to the area. For the state's biotechnology industry, the announcement is a game-changer, said Jacqueline Northcut, president and CEO of BioHouston, which promotes life sciences commercialization in the Houston region.In the Twittersphere, there are numerous fake joke accounts that are fun to follow when news breaks. Here is TAMUS-Regents as the news broke Monday... Big press conference in Austin this afternoon. We've been told we have to put on pants, which honestly is a pretty tall order on a Monday. We hate big government. Unless it's handing us hundreds of millions for a bio research thingy. Then we're cool with it. That's right. When the monkey swine flu zombie apocalypse happens, we'll determine who lives and who dies. http://is.gd/AggieDrugsRUs Austin's really excited about getting a Trader Joe's. We just locked up the biggest federal grant of the 21st century. Priorities. Our top priority: Making all vaccines maroon. We're a perfect fit for vaccination research. We've been treating boys coming back from Lubbock road trips for decades. First order of business: Remove all hand sanitizer from System buildings. We can't supply if there's no demand, ya know? We anticipate this biomedical thingy will create more than 1,000 jobs in the Brazos Valley. Mostly in the "test subject" field.

The zoo just grew about 20% bigger a couple years ago with the opening of the African Forest. I don't golf. Tried it once; was a terrible experience that involved dodging way to many of these... Still To answer your question, I'd say no. I'd say its a great size for a single day visit, and it's even pushing it limits now in that regard. Now.. if you wanna plow over the golf course for say a certain oil derrick/Jeff Bagwell/ space shuttle monument.... or perhaps a relocated astrodome structural system/pterodactyl aviary.... I'm all ears.