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Isn't the topic at hand the fact that the mayor is inserting himself into TIRZ plans to throw out a planned sidewalk improvement?

So this is gunna be a pretty neat building, eh fellas?

It's pretty explicitly not for people like me, but if it's built right, it could be 50 years from now. Unfortunately that's generally how new construction goes. Hopefully the Concept Neighborhood stuff is a little more accessible, but it'd be silly to expect anything in River Oaks to be for anybody but the 1%. The benefits are still universal, though. When the most agressively densifying mixed-use developments are concentrated in wealthy areas, the downsides of gentrification elsewhere are mitigated. All that said, getting rid of minimum parking requirements, minimum setback / maximum lot coverage requirements, etc. would go a long way toward making it easier to build smaller, lower-tab suites. Likewise, we could work making it easier to open food stalls in parks. Mexico City has an amazing park food culture that feels like something we could emulate in places like Discovery Green, Hermann Park, Buffalo Bayou / Eleanor Tinsley Park, Emancipation Park, Elizabeth Baldwin Park, and even Autry Park.

Just so we're clear: we're talking about two already-ultra-massive highways that cut right through city centers. And we'll probably have the same conversation 30 years after they're done with these projects.

Austin has the highest multifamily construction pace in the country by quite a wide margin. Absolutely insane that they're widening the moat between downtown and the east side, but that's TXDoT for you.

One of my absolute favorite examples of (basically) brutalism. Really beautiful up close.

They're getting creative, but the impetus for opposition is obviously concerns about having too many formerly homeless people around.

I...well I agree.

Say it with me: Allen's freakin Landing. Most indefensible missing link

Getting closer. This is a great project, but I would love to see more of the promenade (and that last mixed-traffic bit of Bastrop between Bell and Leeland) activated. The part between McKinney and Polk would be a great place for low-rent stalls (think European Christmas market, or even the Navigation esplanade), the east side of the Leeland-Bell stretch of Bastrop deserves a new build, and the building at the corner of Bell and Hutchins would be worth transforming, I think. Iirc, there is already something planned for the awkwardly trapezoidal lot between this and Emancipation.

Those poor Southamptonites. Such a downtrodden bunch.

This may be true of 11th. Not remotely true of Austin or Lamar. You're unlikely to go more than two blocks without passing another bike, and based on clothing, it looks to be about 50-50 recreational vs. transport. And while I am the only teacher at my school who uses a bike for commuting, there are several who take the bus, and plenty if students who bike, use a scooter, or walk. If the argument is bike infrastructure versus pedestrian infrastructure (it shouldn't be, for obvious reasons), then of course I choose pedestrian. But I think it would be totally irresponsible to prioritize pedestrian infrastructure to the point of neglecting bicycle infrastructure, for the following reasons: While a lot of pedestrian infrasfructure in the city is indefensibly bad, what really kills the walkability is the massive distances that exponential parking allotment creates. I live in "walkable" Midtown, and the two nearest businesses to me (Retrospect and Rado) are both about a 10-minute walk. The rest of Midtown - including the red line - is at least a 15min walk, and Montrose, Downtown, Museum, and EaDo are all far enough to require exercise clothes. That's pretty standard for most of the inner loop, with a handful of pockets making up the exceptions. We are decades of radically different development patterns away from anything resembling a true convenience-level walkability. Bikes are a totally different ballgame, however. Biking within Midtown, even as bike-unfriendly as it can be, is not noticeably less convenient than driving was. Biking to Montrose is comparable, depending on how far into Montrose I'm going. EaDo is a slightly longer trip by bike, but then I don't have to worry about parking. Biking within both Montrose and EaDo feels considerably more convenient and less stressful than driving ever did, and obviously it's much more convenient (and much less sweaty) than walking. All of that is to say, I think the city of Houston could lean into bikeability in a much more effective way (in terms of modeshare shift) than it could walkability. The key is to approach the issue at the level of the intra-neighborhood trip. We're not trying to ger the Med Center or Uptown worker living on 24th Street in the Heights to abandon his car and bike to work every day all year. We're trying to make the bike a better way of getting to school, to the dentist, to the bar, to brunch, and, eventually, as cargo bikes and/or smaller-load grocery trips become more popular, to the grocery store. And then, if there's a fast, frequent bus or rail line that used to be a 25min walk away, now you're thinking about making the 7min bike ride to the stop and taking that line in instead of paying for parking and sittinf in traffic every day. Are protected lanes on 11th St. specifically integral to that system? No, I don't really think so. But that's because 11th was one of only a couple of bad east-west stroads in the Heights, so there have always been alternatives. But they do seem to have curbed bad driving and even made driving a little less appealing of an option. I mean, let's say it's yesterday and you and a few friends are meeting up at Loro for an early dinner. You managed to get off work a little early, so you had a chance to go home - say, on Beverly between 9th and 10th. Three years ago, you would have driven without thinking about it - just pop up to 11th and zoom on down. But now...

Shoutout to chlorophyll

Love parking garages with big, front-facing surface parking lots.

Was this formerly Louis' Lunch or something?

My rich friends refuse to go to Whole Foods on principle because they think it's too expensive. Meanwhile, my too-broke-for-an-apartment ass never had an issue. I choose my grocery store based on 1) what they have vs. what I'm looking for, 2) distance 3) safe bike routes and bike parking. Do about 80% of my grocery shopping at Phoenicia now, maybe 10% at La Michoacana and 10% at the Montrose HEB. I'd go to the MacGregor HEB more often (I'm pretty much at the midpoint between there and Phoenicia) if they'd do something about the crossing from the Brays trail. It's just annoying enough to choose Montrose.

Oh I've been emailing him. Guy's gotta be sick of me by now. and school!

Interesting. This is an essential route and I really hope it moves forward, but I'm curious about the Preston Street section, particularly between Main and Austin. Given the current geometry, I'd assume that the most sensible route would be to upcurb the current onstreer parking spots to make the ped/bike right of way continuous from its widest points. But I imagine that that would be contentious. If they took that approach, though, they could do one-way paved bike paths on either side, which would make it easier to navigate around the trees. I think any plan to cut down the trees would doom this project, but I'm curious about whether the city would rather go on-street or off-street with the bikeway there. I assume Commerce will be on-street à la Austin, at least for this section. (I think Harrisburg Trail-Navigation may be off-street, with just a wide, smooth sidewalk like Cleburne, though I base that on nothing.)

As a bike-commuting teacher, this kind of statement really makes me want to walk into the ocean

I don't think I'm making excuses. I simply explained why nobody with any transit knowledge would have expected the Silver Line to be a high-ridership line. Anyone with high expectations was kidding themselves. The University Line would be a replacement and upgrade for the heavily used #25 Richmond line in conjunction with the 153 Harwin express bus. It's also a line that seems much more likely to experience a significant increase in ridership after its introduction than the Silver Line, due to the high-value corridor from Greenway to Wheeler. A bus that comes every six minutes, doesn't get stuck in traffic, and connects to the Red line has much more appeal to the general population along the corridor than the current bus, which already gets a lot of riders.

There's no question that the Silver Line was not a great choice of route for a flagship service (though my recollection is that the project was more of a TIRZ-led project than a METRO brainchild?), and they flubbed plenty of details when it came to things like stop location/spacing, signal priority, and frequency. Combined, they made the paltry ridership numbers unsurprising to those of us who are deeply interested in transit functionality. But that's a very small number of people, and @j.33's concern is spot-on: as the University Line gets ready to begin the years-long, expensive, highly visible, and traffic-slowing process of constructing the line, it's almost impossible to imagine Whitmire not trying to intervene, and an underperforming Silver Line is an easy tool for that objective.

All I want is CDMX-style carts in all of the parks. Not sure if it's a demand problem or a regulation problem, but dammit I want a torta with salsa from a bucket.

I so want to believe that the University Line won't get axed...

🤦

"Exposed" brick on the inside. This whole building is so slightly weird.