JJxvi

I feel like there was an opportunity here missed to make this look even uglier...really could have gone for it...

I always find it interesting that pretty much the oldest noticeable thing that are still around are the electrical right of ways that meet and cross where the substation is now at Cindy and Foxwood

The City\Texans probably also have active bids to host a Super Bowl in 2026 and 2027 at this point as well.

Later sections of the neighborhood, west of TC Jester and north of 11th St have a 1.5 story limit in the deed restrictions which the sections south of 11th and east of TC Jester do not have, so in addition to the number of flooded properties in those locations, you have more teardowns because its economically feasible to tear down and build a huge new house there, but in the rest of the neighborhood, renovation and additions have been more feasible since you can't build a huge multistory home to replace it unless you sneak it in.

https://west11thstreetpark.org/history This has the Cliff's Notes version regarding most of the main portion of the neighborhood in the first couple paragraphs. The western areas were kind of the agricultural land around the northern fringes of a small rural community called Eureka Mills.

Agreed. That's why we need to mostly hide the "safety improvement" errr "bike lane plans" from them lest they come out against them. For their own good.

Government doesn't want people who might be against their plans to actually be aware of them. I'm sure they made plenty of "stakeholders" that they could confidently expect support from aware of them in various ways, but you can be sure that they never actually wanted "everyone" to know. 11th Street for example was a done deal before the vast majority of people who live on and use it every day knew about it. Hell, the "plan" that was in place when the hornets nest actually got stirred up was so bad (ie no left turns, no access to cross 11th, etc) that it almost seemed like it was specifically intended to be replaced with one that wasnt so bad once everyone found out as a compromise. Its like the joke at the beginning of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The plans to demolish Arthur Dent's house were definitely on display...in the cellar...but the lights had gone....and the stairs...and they were in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign saying "Beware of the Leopard"

I don't/didn't know about Shepherd Park Plaza potentially being a golf course at any point (mentioned a long time ago on this thread), but I'm pretty sure there was a country club with an 18 hole golf course in Garden Oaks. Garden Oaks is essentially a copy of River Oaks and similar to the way River Oaks Blvd is a short blvd running between the country club and a school, Garden Oaks Blvd was the same way. Today Garden Oaks Blvd east of Shepherd curves around northward to Crosstimbers through a business/industrial park, but previously it ended at a large clubhouse structure just beyond Shepherd with an 18 hole golf course behind it covering all of what eventually became the business park. The course can be seen on the 1950s Google Earth imagery.

I like how 11th street fronting properties now apparently have to block the new bike lanes with their trash cans on trash day because the trucks dont reach that far.

No. 18th Street only crosses west TC Jester. The street you have to be on in the Heights to cross the bayou/ and TC Jesters without turning is 20th. if youre on 18th street in the Heights driving west you have to turn left off of 18th St and onto 20th street to cross the bayou. Then at E TC Jester it changes back to 18th St. So..is 11th street predictably a cluster**** during rush hours yet?

This place is currently late 90's faux whatever with red brick right? It's probably gonna look better after its bleaching. It's not exactly the Webber House/Moody Mansion/whatever. Once the brick is painted then I guess future generations won't have to worry about that at least, and future colors could be anything.

I dont think this has anything to do with the Heights. Painting houses white (esp with dark trim) is a popular trend and likely has nothing to do with White Linen Nights. I advised my parents to do it in Timbergrove with no idea it was popular or trendy back in 2018 and over the past four years since, every time I've noticed a house change color its like a 90% chance this is what they did too. I notice it all over. Garden Oaks, Timbergrove/Lazybrook, Oak Forest. Brick houses, siding, remodels, brand new houses.

Learn something new every day. Who knew that The Leader was apparently radicalizing any bugs that got trapped in my recycle bin?

I dunno who all went and showed up to the meetings in the past 7 or 8 months or all of the meetings before that or whatever, I'm not really invested in the thing. I just used to live on Nicholson, and know many people who live just off of 11th and go to some of the businesses there. The people I know who mentioned this to me were just people talking about it in conversation, I know a couple people who said they went to like a meeting at Berryhill in February because they felt blindsided about what the city was actually doing, I got the impression mostly that people (the ones who I've had conversations about this with) were fine about the idea of striping some bike lanes and especially in doing something about the Nicholson crossing, but couldn't believe it when they found out the extent of the changes would be made to the traffic pattern. I get the impression that the people invested in this and the city pretty much spent 5 years talking with only the neighborhood associations and so they feel like they did everything they needed to get input from residents, but the reality is that talking to the Greater Heights Association is not the same as being transparent with all of the people who live there. Its more akin to the "but the plans were on display, why didn't you speak up!" conversation from the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe that's an indictment more on the neighborhood groups and how they operate than it is of the City of Houston. I don't know

I'm sure I have biases like anyone does. I doubt that they are what you see through your own cloud of them.

It would cause some minor issues, primarily on Yale, as more cars need to stop and yield to turn left at intersections where unlike 11th there is no signal, but I agree, there are ways to get home and avoid 11th unless you live right on 11th it mostly just spreads 11th streets traffic to what are quieter residential streets now. It also leads to more people from Durham having to make the jaunt across four lanes of Shepherd highway traffic when coming back to the hood from the north (and honestly I think many people already do this, or use 14th where there is a light, because the grocery traffic on 11th is already a pain). In the long run, I think Shepherd and Durham are also planned for road diets as well, so who knows what that looks like in the future though. The problem with no turns, is that there will still be a significant number of people trying to turn (whether outside traffic or through unfamiliarity or traffic trying to reach a restaurant on this section, etc), so it definitely would create weird new thru traffic of people who now have to turn or try to make U-turns on Rutland and Lawrence. In addition only two turns increases the chances of lines forming because multiple people are yielding to oncoming and making the turn (whereas if you can turn left at every intersection, its unlikely to be more than one car at any particular turn) and since there is only one through traffic lane each way, traffic will be at a standstill in heavy traffic periods IMO waiting for people in front of them to turn when the left turn lanes back up. That's basically what it was like when 11th was under construction when I lived in the area.

In 2021, they found out that the ROW width between Yale and Shepherd was too narrow for their plans to have 3 traffic lanes (left turn in middle). So the plan was changed to eliminate all left's in that space except at Lawrence and Rutland which they announced around Novermber, I think of last year. This was about the time that "Just as the 11th street renovations were set to move forward, a very astroturf-ish looking group pops up at the last minute to throw sand in the gears." as described in the original post. I think (hope) that they went back on much of that part of the plan, but that was what stirred up the hornets nest. Many people living in the area also remember that several years ago they repaved 11th street in this area, and to do so lefts were blocked and it was reduced to a single lane each way and people waiting to turn where lefts did exist were backed up into long lines that blocked all traffic while the car waiting to turn at the front of the line had to yield to oncoming traffic. It was bad, and so many now believe that that driving nightmare is starting over again except this time permanently.

Yeah, worrying about how you’ll be able to turn into the neighborhood or whether more cars will be forced down your side streets, critical planks in the right wing political identity. Build your strawmen at someone else’s expense. These arent political operatives trying to keep the cyclists down, they are nimby’s that drive cars. They dont want bike lanes because they dont use them and they think building them might be a disruption to them… kinda like how people who dont go to WalMart’s dont want Walmart’s built near them.

14th east of Heights Blvd (ie by Heights High) already has a bike lane according to the map I linked, that's part of the reason why it seems like it would be the logical continuation of the path to connect from Heights Blvd to Shepherd.

Or they’re all far right wingers, or something…

Most of the opposition to this is from people that are already in walking distance to 11th, in my experience, not people who need access to streets with businesses and stores. I think most in the neighborhood would reach that conclusion because i think its really that clear. Please pull up the bike map. Look at it, and tell me where you would best link up and provide the maximum east/west and north/south utility and do it most safely and with the least amount of disruption to the neighborhood considering the paths and lanes that already exist. i dont think bike lanes or fewer car lanes will be the end of the world, but Im not surprised people are concerned. I think most people would assume that if there needed to be bike lanes east/west that they would put forward 14th and 20th, very few 11th, particularly people who live west of yale https://houstonbikeplan.org/houston-bike-plan-map/ I also not sure I would consider 11th a major commercial street. I guess theres more things on it than there used to be but it is in no way like Shepherd or Durham or white oak or 20th, etc. It’s not a destination commercial street even now, way more people view it as a road thats needed to get somewhere and thats why people are concerned about changes being made to it with an unknown (to them) effect.

I'm sure to the city it's not as much of a slam dunk (in addition to not contributing to their road diet plans) because they'd have to actually spend some money improving installing curbs and covering drains on 14th west of Ashland.

One of the intermediate plans for this, which was only scrapped within the last year or so, that was sprung on most people would have shut down all left turns except in a couple locations. It would have meant that everyone traveling west on 11th and needing to get to the south half of the neighborhood and everyone travelling east trying to get to the north half, would be funneled into only like two entrances, so if you lived like on Rutland within a block of 11th, half the neighborhood would be forced to drive by your house. I think many that I've seen discuss this are frustrated that this is being sold as "bike lanes" and not with bike lanes being the excuse to justify removing car lanes. Anyone in that lives or has every lived in the neighborhood knows that bike lanes on 11th does'nt really make sense compared to the existing network as it exists right now. There is already an off street E/W path for cyclists just 4 blocks to the south. In addition, 3 blocks to the north is an ideal wide, quiet E/W street at 14th which is ideal for adding a new E/W bike lane that is in the heart of the neighborhood rather than being so close to the already existing E/W path at roughly 7th street. In addition, 14th is already a shared car/cyclist lanes east of Heights Blvd to Micheaux. Anybody with a brain who felt like bike lanes were needed would add them on 14th. It seems to me the real argument for road diet is about safety, but that message isn't getting to the people who are mad. They just hear that lanes they use probably every day are going to be closed, and then they hear that they wont be able to turn left into their neighborhood anymore (I think/hope this concern was mostly fixed), all for bike lanes that would make way more sense on a different quieter street that would connect many of the same existing trails in the bike plan that isn't duplicating another path just a half mile away.

As indicated, the West Loop and Katy Freeway are like night and day. The West Loop is awful. The Katy Freeway was too in the 90s, it was a nightmare. There is traffic on it now at rush hour, but its been decades since I've worried about avoiding it, and I think in the whole history of "the era where we had pocket GPS" I've never once felt the urge to look up how traffic is because I was getting on the Katy Freeway between the Loop and the Beltway (definitely done it on all freeways if I plan to go downtown or through it though, including 10). The problem with the West Loop is that there is generally no other choice of road to take. Someone going north or south in the city has to cross Buffalo Bayou. The West Loop is the only crossing between Shepherd and Chimney Rock, which are 4-5 miles apart. In the 11 miles between the bridges at I45 and Beltway 8 there are only 11 crossings. 3 of those are the freeways mentions, and of the rest, only Shepherd, Voss, and Gessner are actual major N/S options that you can use and get somewhere on.

The other interesting obvious Katy Freeway scar that comes to mind every time I drive by it are the Ivy Club Apartments just east of Gessner north of the freeway. There's these weird apartment buildings fronting the highway with like a big grassy lawn in front of them. And the building have strange gable roofs facing the highway at each end. What you're actually seeing is the only the back side of what used be square shaped buildings with a central courtyard. Those buildings used to extend out into the freeway by roughly the same distance as they are long. The gables are where the wings that extended south on each side of the squares were attached. I also always find interesting that they went with a weird "yard" rather no trees or parking or anything there. I'm guessing that ever since the freeway was built, the owner has had redevelopment rather than spending any more money on it, but it still seems like they would have paved that for parking or something.