HouTXRanger

Ah, looks like I mistook this for a different development. Glad to see this one is moving a bit.

How long has that building in the little triangle been planned???? So pretty!

I've actually thought about this as well, in terms of somehow lengthening the current green or purple line up Shepherd/Durham to replicate the actual streetcar that once made living in the Heights attractive in the first place. I'm not sure if a circulator like the downtown circulator makes sense for the heights, since it has much less density in destinations, but it could theoretically work. The Heights is already getting increasingly better bike infrastructure too, which can make such a short haul bus route less useful. I agree 100% though, the best thing for the heights would simply be better and/or more reliable access to routes we already have. If this helps increase that access, then that would be fantastic.

Man, he REALLY got the locations of the Houston and Dallas stations wrong . . . regardless don't really disagree with his points. We've already discussed the pros/cons of the Houston station to death.

Did you heard anything regarding the owner of Central Cadillac being willing to sell? It would be awesome if all that land close to the rail station got turned into something better!

It's not really Rice's project itself. It's the fact that they expect land prices across 288 to skyrocket due to the Ion, displacing people there. Imho Rice is doing a standup job, assuming they follow through. This coalition is based on the assumption that unless an agreement is made with them and them specifically, Rice can disregard whatever agreement they made with the city and not be penalized. How that's different than Rice theoretically disregarding whatever agreement they might make with this coalition, when the city is probably going to be the one they call to enforce their agreement . . . I'm not sure really.

Transitional Housing of any kind usually means housing for homeless people to give them a permanent address for a year or two so they can apply for jobs and find housing of their own once under income. Whatever this does to local housing prices, I doubt it'll make much of a dent in the current housing price boom.

Do my eyes deceive me . . . are they actually narrowing the road? Incredible!

Although I do have fond memories of many painful 5 AM mornings on that slope to the creek, I do agree that the park was a bit of a dump for being right next to the largest college football stadium in the country. Glad to hear that it will at least maintain the tailgating space, and I really hope it doesn't end up as . . . well, too much.

I can pretty much guarantee that the University BRT will be one of the busiest lines in the city within a few years, especially if the commuter bus system gets reworked.

I thought that was the little train that ran through Hermann Park? 😋 You know, I bet that one crossing with the Hermann Park train has a similar number of incidents with cars as the average intersection with the light rail now . . . I've seen it happen before.

Oh wow, I'm a dummy. I misspoke and said there are no solid plans for extending east, when I meant extending west. I am SUPER looking forward to the eastern extensions to Hobby, I meant to say there wasn't anything solid on where lines west would be extended, like down Washington or something. My bad.

The only thing I know of even being part of MetroNext was the small extension to the courthouse, and that got bumped to the bottom of the priority list pretty quick when the pandemic happened. As for extending it beyond, that's what I mean by way off. Since there's no solid idea of where those lines will even go, we're looking at an entire cycle of design prototyping, maybe another vote, public comments, and undoubtedly protests from a handful of people along the route, all over again. It's not like the richmond route which was more or less set in stone many years ago.

There are very far off plans to extend that rail east of downtown sometime in the future, but its all in the clouds. There are numerous small roadblocks to extending it, but it was very easy to build the lines going west, so they did that ~5 years ago because it was easy. The stations in downtown may be sharing stations with a (relatively) imminent Katy BRT though.

Speaking of the Astrodome, just saw this article on it recently. It also has the most up-to-date info on the state of its "renovations." https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2021/06/28/we-need-talk-about-astrodome