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samagon

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Everything posted by samagon

  1. samagon
    contextually that makes complete sense. make sure everyone has the bare minimum to survive (or in this case, travel safely), and when that's done, then we can do more.
  2. samagon
    when was the last time the Houston Freeways book was updated? on that website it says construction on that section of 59 was done in 2006. the watermark on that photo says 2011. according to this website, that section of freeway flooded during Harvey. https://www.news4jax.com/weather/2022/08/25/5-years-ago-remembering-devastating-flooding-from-hurricane-harvey/ at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. TXDoT is going to ram this through because as was mentioned they have to spend all their money on freeways, or the money goes away. if we want to see any changes, then we have to get our representatives to change how TXDoT is required to spend money so they spend money on more than just solutions for vehicle travel.
  3. samagon
    it's hard to see on any of the photos except this one, but the top right, you can see a walkway, there's an entrance to the building, that is what will be the entry/exit, the portion that still has excavators, and work trucks, that is going to not be open until the complete building is open later this year. whether Feb5, or later next week, or even early the following week, we're closer than it looks from these photos.
  4. samagon
    don't disagree with you. the claim by TXDoT that flooding causing breaks in commercial traffic and citing how much commerce was impacted is an atrocious argument. I could give two shits about long haul trucking needs through Houston. if TXDoT comes at me with the number of people have died on that stretch of road because of flooding, ok, now you have my attention, but throwing the commercial impact like that matters to locals? that reasoning makes it very clear that the safety and lives of humans who use those freeways daily are less important than moving freight, unless I missed that part of the presentation where they talk about mitigating people getting stuck in a flooded car on the freeway and drowning. sorry for not coming out and just saying that from the get go, it's just that kind of a statement on a presentation just really pulls out that kind of snarky reply. anyway, let's not talk about raising Houston's freeways, we just talked about going below grade on all of them around downtown. I guess because they aren't in a bayou floodplain, but then, neither is 59 near Montrose, and one of the most iconic pictures of flooded highways in Houston is a dude kayaking down 59. and we just saw 288 get a shiny new refresh, that goes right through a bayou, floods regularly because it is in a bayou floodplain, and all they did was add (managed) lanes. there's little consistency, so it's hard for me to accept a rebuild because of floodplain to really be a thing. I guess maybe the amount of commercial impact on 288 was less, so who cares if it floods, right? and let's not even discuss that the commercial impact argument ignores that there are alternate routes to avoid a flooded I-10. 610 (either direction), beltway 8 (either direction), soon to be Grand Parkway.
  5. samagon
    how many of the flooding events happened during an evacuation? the same answer is true. the evacuation happens before the event. there is a point when the message changes from "evacuate" to our favorite term "shelter in place". sometimes, before an event, there isn't time for city, or county officials to execute an evacuation plan and we go straight to shelter in place. no one ever is recommended to evacuate during an event, that creates an even worse possible scenario of being stranded without any shelter at all. the city, county or state will never issue an evacuation order when it is not safe to travel, if it determined to not be safe to travel, the evacuation will stop and it will transition to shelter in place. so no, your scenario of a freeway being inundated with water during an evacuation will never happen, nor has it ever happened. I can think of one scenario where the media sent the entire town into a frenzy, which overwhelmed the infrastructure, people who had not been instructed to evacuate, attempted to flee, in essence, the freeways were shut down due to people running out of gas and making the freeways (all of them) impassible, so people were still in evacuation mode (even though the official statement had shifted from evacuate to shelter in place). we were extremely lucky that none of the freeways flooded at that time and the storm took a late turn and went in farther east. anyway, that is an excellent example of why there will never be an evacuation order at the same time as there is potential flooding, we will be in shelter in place.
  6. samagon
    and flooded isn't necessarily impassable. I wonder during that same 32 year history, how many times was the freeway shut down for construction? all lanes, in all directions? duration for those, I expect 9pm Friday evening through 5am Monday morning to be the duration... I can think of 2 or 3 times alone for the Elysian street viaduct rebuild. probably more than the times it's been shut down for floods.
  7. samagon
    they grow pretty quick, in about 10 years these will be pretty big. cypress knees suck though.
  8. samagon
    weird. every time I went they had plenty of people drinking and having a good time. I did notice it was closed on Saturday afternoon when I went by to drop off the Christmas stuff at the storage unit.
  9. samagon
    It's what I've been told, and if you can do that, you should grab a coffee as well, it'll be tasty, I promise. If you can't do that feb 6, then when you can, get a coffee. 😁
  10. samagon
    Please sit down to read this shocking news. https://abc13.com/greyhound-houston-transfer-magnolia-park-crime-increase-safety/14282030/
  11. samagon
    I've driven around since the initial move, no HPD presence now. there has been a constable that hangs out at the flea market every weekend I've driven through that area.
  12. samagon
    extra info that I have. Feb 5 is the day it will open. however, this opening will only include half of the interior, the other half will be completed a bit later with a temp wall between.
  13. samagon
    IIRC, it was initially, but the owner applied for the building to be historic, in so making it more difficult than TXDoT felt it would be worth to try and take it. there's a thread in going up (I believe, or maybe it's buried in the pages here) that covers the 'progress' of this building. the owner went through the arduous process of doing the windows in the original format, and after that I haven't seen any further updates.
  14. samagon
    if as Big E says, the land is already in use as parking, that means someone already owns the land, convincing all of them to sell to make a park is going to be tricky. maybe TXDoT leases the land to someone so they can use it for parking?
  15. samagon
    do you think the holidays have impacted your traffic counts?
  16. samagon
    I cannot wait for the day that they turn MLK (formerly Calhoun) into 1 car lane in each direction, and make huge pedestrian sidewalks. they can also do more on University Dr, reduce to 1 lane in each direction west of MLK, and 2 lanes east.
  17. samagon
    one of my favorite stories specific to the Netherlands going car centric, then reverting: another story of the Netherlands going car centric, then reverting is more famous, the Damrak in Amsterdam (the main street heading from the central station to the Dam (a very active central square), I don't think there's any videos of this transformation because it was more organic over time slowly removing car lanes to add more pedestrian and bicycle areas, but there's plenty of pictures of it in 1980, and then you can also find plenty of pictures from then to now of how it has transformed. it went from 6 lanes of traffic with a parking lane, now its a 1 lane, 1 way street, 2 tram lines, sidewalks and bike lanes. and I'm fully aware that these places started life before cars so after they reshaped them to be car centric, it's easier to revert back to what they had before, but the point is not that we can easily make the change, the point is, ordinances and rules are what force the shape to be what it is, ignoring that we've had 100 years forcing the shape to mold to cars and just saying it grew around cars, that's not accurate, or fair.
  18. samagon
    there's no doubt that you're right. I have allowed myself to easily be sucked into arguments with people like Matty36, who take the discussion down completely irrelevant tangents, and so I have gotten completely off track at times. I take responsibility for my part. I think though, if you go back and find my initial thoughts towards this project, it's always been local connectivity, and the local people who are being negatively impacted that I think this project is hurting. I am not against doing what needs to be done, I have and will always maintain there is a better way to do it. anyway, I'm actually glad for the project, it has helped to create a very active group of people who are organized to ensure the local people are heard better, in fact this group is who did a lot of the leg work for Prop B that recently passed, which will forever change how HGAC operates. I only wish the formation of that group were about 5 years earlier than it was, perhaps we'd have a much better solution for freeway expansion that takes better care.
  19. samagon
    Houston has ordinances in place specifically to make Houston car scaled, cities with zoning have similar rules in residential areas and commercial areas. parking requirements, setbacks, minimum lot sizes for single family homes. these rules were put in place with what I can only assume were best intentions, but they end up creating exactly what we have, car scaled cities. credit where it's due, steps are being taken to try and make it less car centric, see transit oriented development. as far as European cities always being this way, sure, there is a lot of organic that happened before cars that led them to being walkable, but it wasn't always that way. WWII did a number on many towns in Europe proper, after the war, cities were rebuilt for cars. if you go find pictures of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Maastricht, The Hague, any town you want in the Netherlands from the 60s and 70s they had very much been rebuilt for cars. wide boulevards, parking lots, even urban freeways. two things happened at the same time for the Netherlands, the oil embargo, and kids being run over on the way to school in the mornings. the people of the Netherlands, rather than saying, oh, we need more street lights, or parents just need to drive their kids to school, or we need more efficient cars, they actually decided car centric society wasn't great. not that cars were bad, and no one should have them, just that continuing to redevelop towns for cars, instead of people, it was dumb. it has taken the better part of 50 years to fix what was done in the 2 decades following WWII. if you travel to the Netherlands today, you would be forgiven for thinking it has always been a bike friendly, pedestrian friendly place it is now, they have done a great job with legislations and city planning to make it exactly what it is.
  20. samagon
    makes sense. aside from there being a transit station super close, this is still car centric Houston, freeways specifically. getting to and from this place off of I-45 (even though it's like right there, you can almost touch it from the property), it's just not easy to access from the freeway like other freeway frontage locations. getting to and from UH, again, it's like right there, you can almost touch it, that underpass is not pedestrian or cyclist friendly, at all. if the water pumps that keep it dry aren't working, it floods and you have to find other ways to get to campus (and there was almost an entire year where this was a thing off and on). if anyone wants to build student housing off Lockwood, they'll really need to work with the city/TXDoT/railroad to improve that underpass at Elgin/Lockwood for it to be better. in a decade or so that won't be an issue with METRO doing the BRT in that space, but I struggle to see how they are going to fit everything in the fixed space they have available (especially in the railroad underpass portion of it, that's a massive bottleneck).
  21. samagon
    are these storm sewers just laying about, or part of the landscape?
  22. samagon
    my hope is that the Columbia tap trail is extended on Walker and that a 2 way bike path is installed on the southbound feeder road (the roadway that is between the freeway and GRB that turns into Hamilton) to get you either to Polk, or to points north of Walker. Walker is a good option for something like this because like Preston, it's a road that doesn't go anywhere thanks to civic projects, it is 4 blocks long between GRB and Emancipation.
  23. samagon
    you clearly didn't understand what I wrote, so I'll state it again, in another way. hopefully, it'll sink in. you're absolutely right. there are people in here that have far greater knowledge than I ever will on the effects of this project. however, I know that based on your responses that I absolutely have more understanding of how this project is going to affect my daily commute and local traffic in the east end than you do. and I don't want you to misunderstand, there are other areas within this project that you probably have more understanding than me regarding the effects it will have than I do, and certainly in other topics you make a lot of insightful posts. no matter, as I stated, this project is happening, it'll suck, I'm moving on.
  24. samagon
    the fact that you happily point out that there are 15 crossings shows just how little you know of the actual value of those crossings to the people who commute locally. for example, of the 15 crossings, there is a crossing at Preston is literally the most useless feature of this project. it dead ends into the baseball stadium a block west of the new freeway, and it ceases to be a road 3 blocks east of the new freeway because of the railroad. furthermore, in addition to Polk going away, the Leeland crossing which currently allows WB traffic to drop onto Bell street goes away as well. yes, the schematics show you can still cross the freeway going WB, but the ability to continue west on Bell goes away. so someone who is WB on Polk, now has to jog over 3 blocks to Leeland, then jog over another block to Pease street. then to get back over to Polk, it's another 4 blocks. that's 1/2 mile difference in overall travel distance, never mind how many added stop lights, and sitting at stop signs for cross traffic. in a car, not a huge deal, but for any other form of transportation? at the end of the day, this project is going to happen, it's going to suck for everyone during construction, and it will continue to suck for a lot of people who have to live with the impacts to their community. you can keep arguing about it, or you can acknowledge that there are people who might be more in tune with the area in which they live than you are.
  25. samagon
    you can find plenty of commentary from people who live in the east end in this thread (and not just me) about how this will affect connectivity, no need to get in and rehash all of that now. to compare this realignment/expansion (whatever you want to call it), it differs from the Katy project in that all existing methods of getting from one side of the freeway that existed prior to that project, still exist today (aka, local connectivity). Post Oak, Silber, Antoine, etc. the through streets were there before the expansion, and they are there today. connectivity was not lost, and in some instances, it was made even better. this is not the case for segment 3 realignment through downtown. not just a problem for the east end. 3rd ward, 5th ward, near northside, all negatively impacted from a connectivity perspective. again, you can skim the thread for the details on how connectivity is being broken further by this project, and why it matters for all of the communities around downtown, no need to re-submit. I'll grant, I haven't looked at the recently updated drawings to see how they've updated for the better, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised when I dig in, but I doubt I will.
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