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IHB2

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Everything posted by IHB2

  1. I was born in 47, moved to a new house in Bellaire near Chimney Rock & Bissonnet in 48 - there was a rice field at the western end of our street, a little over a block away, and a friend I met in kindergarten lived on several acres and his family kept horses 1 block north of Bellaire Blvd & 3 blocks west of Chimney Rock. sleeepovers at his place were great b/c we got to stay in one of their very cool barns. and it was all prairie, very few trees except for the forest along Brays Bayou pre-channelizing. yeah, you could say the "character" of the neighborhoods has been only fluid and the worth of preserving them at one stage rather than another is purely a matter of opinion.
  2. my money is on the 63 Rambler as cause of the accident. I went through the passenger side windshield of one in 1965 b/c it's brakes went out. 6 months before that a friend of mine also went through the passenger side windshield of one b/c...the brakes went out that 2nd scene is probably JD Hospital on Allen Pkwy (maybe still called Buffalo Drive then but I don't remember).
  3. the route shown in that area in the ppoint does not appear to be different from the original Uptown Line proposal. Dillards and other structures on the east side of Post Oak there are close enough to the street that METRO was going to have to take a couple of really small parcels and land on the west side they undoubtedly would have preferred not to take (cutting into the Waterwall acreage is guaranteed to draw howls from someone). can't find the original METRO drawingsbut swamplot had several blogs on it, and here's a link to some info: http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/river_oaks/news/uptown-rail-requires-land-from-waterwall-park-more/article_3abfd47c-179c-5482-aeab-f0d22a4f4c52.html
  4. interesting. thx for posting. remains to be seen how they solve the sufficient ROW acquisition problem METRO discussed in its original Uptown Line plan in the area between Dillard's and Lakes of Post Oak. those slides in this ppoint still show it to be a tight squeeze through there. glad as hell I don't work there and don't need to venture there once this work begins.
  5. and the "Bird" flip in shadow is absolutely classic devonhart!
  6. too cool! I was just starting at Jane Long Jr High when the 60 snow happened. I was home sick with the measles and it was my mom's turn to drive carpool, so she left me home alone...I don't think her car was fully out of sight when I ran outside, made and threw as many snowballs as I could then stashed 3 of them in the back of the freezer. a few months later I exacted sweet revenge on the mean dog that lived behind us. the "evidence" of the assault melted, the perfect crime...
  7. Also Finer's Drug Store in the low brick bldg on the corner of Mapleridge (7th St) & Bissonnet, across Mapleridge from the Bellaire Goodyear store (today it's a Libreria). And for a short time a Valian's takeout Bissonnet at Rice. Felix had a restaurant that today is the Brisket House at Bissonnet and Bellaire, which originally was a "circle" intersection (and Bissonnet was called Old Richmond Road all the way through Bellaire and West U to the curve at Edloe. The fried burgers and fountain drinks at Dugan's counter were spectacular - at least in my preteen critique.
  8. Either the Ones A Meal or the Dobbs House is today Bellaire Broiler Burger. I can't remember which one it was, but maybe it was both. I grew up a couple of blocks from there from the late 40s-late 60s.
  9. I just unpacked these 70 vintage matchbooks from my late parents' stuff. Mostly Houston area restaurants of the 1950s and 1960s, but also some Houston hotels, oil industry service companie, and some great Bellaire businesses. There are another 80 or so from all over Texas and some international and other US states - I'll post a pic of these after I take it. I sob a little just looking at the Valian's matches, and Kaphan's, and Pier 21, and Safari, and...
  10. 2nd Office Club in the Buffalo Pharmacy Center corner of Buffalo Speedway & Bissonnet at some point during the 70s (can't be more precise, the whole decade was a blur). where the HEB is today.
  11. I've already said I attended every public METRO meeting re the Univ Line from 2005-2010. You can access my public testimony from several of those meetings if you don't believe me. I meant 3 minute headways. What you've "never heard of" regarding METRO's LRT plans and actions since the Solutions vote in 2003 would fill a thick book.
  12. how can the Univ Line LRT run 3 minute headways during rush hrs w/o signal priority?
  13. leaving aside the fact that the tracks inside the West Loop were ripped up decades ago, and that even when they were still there in the early 60s there was a) no I610 loop at all, a total Houston Metropolitan area population of a shade over 1 million, Sugarland had a population of about 3500, Katy even less, and Alief was still farmland, and 3)there were maybe 8 trains a day on the track that remained west of Post Oak... the 2 LRT lines meeting at 59/610 were planned to run 21 hrs per day M-F, at max 6 minute headways, minimum at rush hours 3 minutes. have you ever driven through the 59&610 feeder rds/59 HOV entry&exit/Westpark Toll Rd & Westpark St merge/Post Oak clusterf***? your response would indicate no you haven't.
  14. I did not miss any METRO meeting on these 2 lines from 2005-2010. They were and are essential to a rational LRT grid, but they were and are both so poorly designed that they will destroy mobility in 2 of the busiest areas inside and near the loop. it's too bad politics caused the poor design, but had there been no opposition who knows how much more tax$$$ would have been wasted by the leadership of "old" METRO. given the economic crash and its effect on both local and federal revenues, it's probably a good thing that METRO was not in the middle of trying to construct 5 lines at once when the bottom dropped out. and one shudders to think that without the crash and the METRO mismanagement it exposed, we might still have that arrogant crook Frank Wilson and his enabler David Wolff spending tax $$$ for nothing - nothing is what we ended up with for the $$$ spent and it's all on them.
  15. and yet....he won at least in the short term. and as mentioned numerous times on HAIF - delay is the death for controversial multi-billion $$$ projects like the 2003 Solutions LRT component Bill King is unlikely ever to have to comment on the piss-poor routing of the University Line b/c it ain't gonna get built while he's still physically able to write for the Chron ;-)
  16. Bill King's LRT obituary in today's Chron. Be sure to read Crossley's comment below the article http://www.chron.com/opinion/king/article/King-Metro-vote-means-end-of-light-rail-project-4017617.php
  17. I went to BHS in the 60s. personally participated in stealing the Redskin 2 yrs in a row before the big fball game. goes w/o saying I detest Lamar like the Aggies hate UT. but they should NOT tear down everything but the Tx limestone facade in front of the auditorium. the main building is classic!
  18. the reply to the initial link (story) was in fact vapid. "a glorified bus system" hardly begins to encompass the multi $$$millions Uptown and Metro will be spending on this project, the disruptions to mobility on Wpark, 59, and Post Oak while a Transit Center, a T connector to 59 in an already jam-packed 59/610 interchange, and the tear-up and widening of Post Oak take place.
  19. in the early & mid-60s you could pay just to run time trials and be in the pits all day. seems like it cost $1.25. in 63-65 I had a 60 Valiant with every ounce of HP I could get out of the Slant Six and still be stock and then a new 65 GTO. it's hard to overstate how revered Don Gay was among teenage street racers of the time. He raced with his seat so far forward he was almost on the steering wheel in his Pontiac Tempests & GTOs - when he slammed the floor shifter into 2nd gear his arm was kinda behind him. That seriously cool look was responsible for the poor driving habits of a whole bunch of 60s Houston teenagers, me included. Friday & Saturday evenings in Bellaire you could hear the loudspeaker truck going back and forth way over on South Main repeating "Toniiight at the Freeway Draaaag Strip!!!" I love this thread.
  20. IHB2

    METRORail Green Line

    and that's the essence of METRO's LRT controversy. in important ways LRT in a city like Houston is the tail wagging the dog. it's not that LRT doesn't fit well as a transit option in Houston, it's just that METRO's plans for the lines, esp the Univ & Uptown, promise to decrease mobility along the routes. and the primary reason for that is METRO's designs are for lines built and operated as cheaply as possible rather than as efficiently as possible. and the reasons for that failure of planning rest entirely on the money available given what was/is politically possible for transit in Houston. any plan that decreases mobility in a sprawling, automobile-dependent city is foolish, at best.
  21. there's some discussion of this info on the Uptown Line thread -
  22. IHB2

    METRORail Green Line

    ok then. the only way to overcome poor METRO bus route management is give METRO huge sums of tax dollars to build more LRT so management will have fewer bus routes to manage badly. I don't know why I didn't figure this out sooner. I'm blaming Niche for distracting me with the promise of Weed 'n Q restaurants in Hempstead.
  23. IHB2

    METRORail Green Line

    but that's a management problem, not something attributable to the specific transit mode.
  24. IHB2

    METRORail Green Line

    Less than 10% worldwide, but most of that is outside the METRO service area unless Christof becomes emperor of the world. But Houston estimates are at least 90% of households have 1 or more cars, and over 95% of people drive to go anywhere in the METRO service area. Within the METRO service area, and especially regarding the East Side Line, it is difficult to see what LRT will accomplish that buses will not - given the difference in capital costs - in either reducing automobile congestion or providing more transit choices for those that rely on public transportation only.
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