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Big E

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Everything posted by Big E

  1. Its not like those options aren't available. You just have to work a little harder to get them. You can take the bus...but who really wants to ride a bus everywhere? Especially in the wake of COVID where mass transportation was one of the easiest vectors for transmission? You can live close enough to your job to walk if you are willing to put in the effort to do so (and possibly pay more money to live where you want to)…but once again, why would you want to walk anywhere in freaking Texas? Its hot as fish grease out here! For most people, biking is a leisure activity to be done in the fall or the early morning for exercise. You could, once again, move close enough to your job to do so, but why would you? Options may be more limited than a European city, but they aren't nonexistent, its just that nobody would necessarily consider these options better than driving an air conditioned car or worth the extra effort to attain.
  2. Depends on what Phase II, if its ever built, will ultimately look like.
  3. This hypothetical assumes a few thing. First, it assumes you rent a car for the trip rather than just use your own. In the latter case, you just need the company to reimburse you for gas, which would potentially be cheaper than a train ticket, but if I rent a car, the company would have to reimburse me for the cost of the rental, driving the price up. It also ignores the fact that the train only gets you to your destination. Once you arrive in Houston (or Dallas), you still need to rent a car to get around. Which means your paying for a rental either way. So your probably not saving money either way. Once again, this ignores that a train only gets you to your destination. The difference between Acela and any train that operates in Texas is that Acela operates in the Northeast, where most major cities have very good public transport, like subways, so will conceivably never need to use a car. In Texas, the train will only get you where you need to go. You still need to drive once you get into the city, which means you will need to rent a car either way, weakening any potential benefit of taking the train. Also, even though Acela trains are rated at those speeds, they hardly ever travel that fast, except for one relatively short section rail. Most of the time, they travel no faster than normal trains. Whether or not they actually travel that fast in Texas is questionable.
  4. That last sentence is key. I don't think the slower trains will be able to compete because they won't be as fast as driving. The trains will move slowly, making driving potentially faster, and whenever you get to your destination, you will still have to rent a car to move around anywhere in either Dallas or Houston due to the lack of mass transit, so its not necessarily more convenient than just driving in the first place. The main selling point for Texas Central was using Bullet Trains that were specifically much faster than cars, and could even compete with plane travel on time, but lacked the hassle of trying to take a plane (like dealing with the TSA and the sorry state of most American airlines). I think anything Amtrak tries to do is dead in the water for that reason. A slower train will not be able to compete with auto travel or plane travel (which is why passenger train travel died in the U.S. in the first place), the Texas legislature will never support train development or the expansion of Amtrak, the Republican controlled house will never support train development or the expansion of Amtrak, train expansion isn't a pressing issue for Democrats in either the state or federal government either way, the cargo railroads will never allow Amtrak to use their tracks and interfere with their train service, and Amtrak will never be able to fund building a track anywhere near the existing interstates when it already loses money.
  5. So yeah, I was watching this video on the Texas Central Project and all the controversies its currently undergoing, and I saw an interesting comment: Can any one confirm this? If what this comment says is true, this sounds less like a partnership between Amtrak and Texas Central and more a traditional "higher speed" train like the Acela Line in the Northeast that is controlled entirely by Amtrak, maybe in addition to Texas Central line. Apparently, this line is supposed to be called the "Texas Triangle". Being that this is Amtrak, and calling the Acela a "high speed train" is a joke on the best of days, I hold out little hope of it succeeding. Also, supposedly Brightline is in fact looking to open a line in the same Dallas to Houston corridor, using the exact same building process they are doing for Brightline West, but they haven't made any public announcements yet. At this point, I wonder if all of these projects could actually coexist in a single corridor, especially with driving, long distance bus service, and air travel still being options. Seems like they would be actively competing for ridership and potentially cannibalizing a market.
  6. Somebody should move this out of "Going Up" and into the Downtown section. This tower has been "up" for a awhile now.
  7. I'd want something taller and grander at that lot, since it affronts a major road.
  8. The Shinkansen literally never use the same lines as slower freight traffic (with the exception of a single tunnel) in Japan. If they use bullet trains, they will have to run on their own dedicated lines, just like it does in Japan. Conversely, this also means that Amtrak won't be able to track share either, unless they are investing in their own Shinkansen trains (fat chance). Their rail lines also lack any and all at-grade crossings (which is why every road crossing has the trains on viaducts in the original plans.
  9. Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, this is the first remotely positive news we've heard about this in a while. On the other hand, its Amtrak.
  10. The caps were specifically being designed to support large buildings, last I checked.
  11. Minneapolis, like New York, had a brand new stadium, and, unlike New York, it was enclosed. Also unlike New York, it was in downtown Minneapolis, with plenty of transit and car access. It was only the sixth Super Bowl to ever be held in a cold weather city, and the new stadium was the only reason it happened. Soldier Field? Are you kidding me? One of the oldest stadiums in the NFL (or professional sports, for that matter)? Aside from all the numerous problems with Soldier Field itself, its an open air, cold weather stadium, located right next to one of the Great Lakes, so lake effect would be in full swing, in the middle of one of the most crime ridden cities in America. Come on man, be serious. Once the Bears build their new stadium, then they will probably get a Super Bowl (edit: maybe: the Bills aren't getting a Super Bowl, even after they get their new stadium, because its Buffalo, but their stadium is also not fully enclosed), but they are under no serious consideration for one now. At the very least, the league seems to want to give every new stadium at least one shot at hosting a Super Bowl.
  12. My guess: its too cost prohibitive and isn't really a priority, especially since you just need to travel an extra mile or so to find a crossing.
  13. Lambeau Field doesn't host Super Bowls because its a cold weather region and the stadium doesn't even have a roof on it. The league has hosted one cold weather Super Bowl in modern times, the one they held in New York a few years back, and not only was it one of the worst Super Bowls ever in terms of on the field product, it was terrible in any number of other ways as well. They barely missed getting snowed out by literally only a few hours, and many people who traveled to see the game found themselves stranded after the fact due to the weather. MetLife Stadium is probably the worst "new" stadium in the NFL, being in a remote location with no real mass transportation access (they even discourage walking to the stadium), so the local transportation networks were overburdened and broke down just trying to deal with all the people trying to get to the game, and it also doesn't have a roof despite the ludicrous amounts of money they spent on it, so anyone who saw that game sat in the cold. The League will never hold another cold weather Super Bowl again after that fiasco, so even if Lambeau Field was located a few hours away in Milwaukee and had a dome on it, it wouldn't get a Super Bowl.
  14. There is no way they can build an NFL stadium in EaDo. They'd have to take out half the neighborhood for the stadium alone, not even getting into the issue of parking. NRG Park is owned by the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation. No redevelopment is happening to the area without their approval. And both the Houston Rodeo and the Rockets would veto any redevelopment as it would cut into their event parking.
  15. Sky bridges are specifically bridges between buildings, generally carrying pedestrians. They are "sky" bridges because they technically never touch the ground.
  16. Land looks cleared and ready to go. I'm ready for this to gone ahead and start.
  17. I like the design. Its really nothing like anything else in Houston, which is nice, considering that downtown has been place for architects to get a little more inventive, historically. It could have, should have been taller than it is, but I can live with the current height, since it covers up the Embassy Suites. The most exciting thing about this building being finished is that now that it is, Skanska can move on to developing the rest of Discovery West.
  18. They're not even widening the freeway... They are just moving the other existing freeway to the opposite side of downtown, necessitating the large amount of acquired land.
  19. The B1M released a video on the Corpus Christi Bridge Project, going over all the issues that plagued it for the past few years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ODgfIaxc4
  20. They actually mention the Medstar Tower. Last we heard, it was either cancelled completely or in deep hold.
  21. Place your bets. Which building will finish first? This one, or the first building of Discovery West? Everyone place your bets!
  22. Because zoning codes are filled with all kinds of arbitrary rules and variances that can make building anything a pain, and make it easier for NIMBYs, like the ones trying to stop this, to actually stall out and even defeat development, especially in cities like San Francisco which are not as-of-right jurisdictions. Houston is not nearly has bad as those cities precisely because it lacks a large, labyrinthine zoning code that has to be navigated, and there is little to nothing NIMBYs can do to stop a development once it starts. There's a reason why NIMBYism is worse in other American cities. Zoning codes basically play right into them. Even if you try to follow them perfectly, challenges and litigation are still guaranteed.
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