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Angostura

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  1. Angostura
    There were two, but the more important one links the Complexo de Alemão favela to a station on the suburban train line, a total of 6 stations over 3.5 km. Theoretical max capacity per hour was 3000 passengers (152 gondolas, ~30 minute round trip, 10 pax per gondola). For obvious reasons, it's very difficult to achieve this capacity. In practice the system had about 10,000 passengers per day (article in Portuguese from 2012). Fares were heavily subsidized by the state government. Residents of the favela (a majority of users) could ride twice per day for free, while everyone else paid R$1 (about US$0.30) each way. To break even on operating costs at 10,000 riders per day, the fare would have needed to be about 7-8x higher, and paid by all passengers. (Other public transportation modes in Rio generally operate without subsidy.) Given the precarious financial situation of the state government after the Olympics, the operating subsidy was cut off and operation suspended in late 2016. The construction cost per mile is definitely at the low end as compared to light rail, average speeds are only a little slower, and grade separation is built in. It helps if you have the right topology, and you still have to work out the rights of way.
  2. Angostura
    Chick'ncone is a small chain serving chicken-nuggets-in-a-waffle-cone, with locations in NYC, Dubai, Colorado and the Woodlands. Light googling didn't turn up anything on Karne, but one assumes it's a steakhouse of some sort.
  3. Angostura
    Self driving cars will obey the speed limit and stop at yellow lights. They will slow down or stop for any object they recognize as having the potential to enter the roadway. People are going to hate getting stuck behind a self-driving car.
  4. Angostura
    I can't think of anyplace in the Heights where that much empty grass would be feasible (physically or economically). It looks a little like that project on 34th, but the renderings don't match.
  5. Angostura
    Floyd was a pioneer when he opened Reef with a wine list priced pretty close to retail (<2X wholesale). The theory is that you sell more volume (both # of bottles and price per bottle), turn inventory faster, and ultimately come out no worse off, but the customer gets a better deal. Going 100% BYO means zero inventory cost (other than glassware), and the corkage fee is 100% profit. BYO places tend to also get away with slightly higher food prices than restaurants of comparable quality.
  6. Angostura
    Skeptical. If a significant fraction of current single-occupancy vehicle miles shift to a model where they're purchased as a service, the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) necessarily increases, since those self-driving cars need to get to the pick-up point and from the drop-off point. And since most people still want to drive at the same times, congestion will get worse, not better. (And the fleet size probably doesn't change that much, since it's determined by peak demand.) There are two cases in which self-driving cars can reduce congestion. The first is that the technology allows better traffic management, closer following distances, more efficient intersections, etc., which would mean self-driving cars would need dedicated rights of way to segregate them from human-driven cars. So there is potentially a future where we have a dedicated right of way, maybe grade-separated, where a series of vehicles travel in close proximity to each other. It's basically a train, without the last-mile problem. It's also very different from what most people think of when they think of how self-driving cars will work. The second way self-driving cars can relieve congestion is that they allow cities to de-couple construction and car storage. It's no big deal for a self-driving car to store itself at a parking facility a mile or two away from it's last drop-off. If the existence (or potential existence) of self driving cars convinces cities to do away with parking requirements for every development, then cities will become denser, since people aren't separated by all that parking. The average destination gets closer, so VMT decreases, and eventually, a larger and larger proportion of trips can be accomplished by modes other than single-occupancy vehicles. If a city continues densifying, mass transit will start to make economic sense. Both of these will take a long time to materialize, and require a lot of investment to get there. In the near term, the most we can hope for are slightly cheaper Uber rides.
  7. Angostura
    All the retail appears to front the internal, pedestrian-oriented streets of the development rather than Allen Parkway.
  8. Angostura
    This is probably an understatement. It would be HUGELY unpopular. We're just now seeing NYC decide to implement one, and that's not even for all of Manhattan (only below 60th). It's also somewhat regressive. It de-values the homes of the lower-middle- and middle-middle-class in the suburbs and increases the value of the homes of the upper-middle-class and wealthy closer to town. However, to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles, the alternative has to be either faster, cheaper, or better (more comfortable/convenient). Preferably two out of three.
  9. Angostura
    We're not without options if we want to reduce the demand for highway VMT. Off the top of my head, here are some things we could do, with zero (net) tax dollars: Eliminate parking minimums citywide Per-sf tax on land used for surface parking anywhere inside 610, expanding eventually to anywhere inside BW8. Dynamic pricing of on-street parking Congestion charge for every vehicle that enters or crosses IH-610. By spending a little bit of tax dollars (especially as compared to the cost of the I-45 project): Migrate surface street ROW from vehicle traffic to last-mile alternatives (bikes, e-bikes, scooters) Improved park-and-ride services from suburban locations to job centers other than downtown Local high-frequency jitney services in job centers other than downtown The concern about infrastructure affordability is a good one. The best indicator of affordability of infrastructure is assessed property tax value per square mile. If we're really concerned about infrastructure maintenance and replacement costs, the last thing we should be doing is spending billions of dollars on a highway project that encourages low-density suburban development that can't pay for itself over time. We should be encouraging growth closer to job centers. Every time we knock down a bungalow in Cottage Grove and replace it with 6 townhouses, we take 5-10 cars off the freeway, and increase the assessed value of that street frontage by 4X or more. Ditto every time we replace a warehouse with a midrise. If we keep it up, we can eventually get to a density where grade-separated transit starts to work for a significant fraction of the population without a lot of last-mile help. Midtown and parts of EaDo are already there.
  10. Angostura
    Based on my experience (in a large S. American city): They are really fun, especially on a bike path. They are expensive on a per-mile basis. For the price of a subway ticket, which will get you all the way across the city, you can go maybe a mile on a scooter. For two people, an Uber is often cheaper. They're essentially un-usable on a crowded sidewalk. They top out at 20 kph (~12 mph), which is still 3X faster than walking pace, and, while not as bad as a bicycle on the sidewalk, they're a lot less maneuverable than a pedestrian. People DO use them on less crowded sidewalks, especially wider (>12 ft) ones, because it takes a lot of courage to compete with cars and buses for street space IF these become popular, cities will need to reconfigure rights of way, converting one lane of car traffic to cycles/scooters. Above a certain population density, the net result may actually DECREASE congestion (on streets that aren't thru-arterials), since scooters and bikes are far more space-efficient at moving people. If there is more space to ride these safely, a lot more people will use them. If cities want space-efficient transportation (and, above a certain population density, car-based transportation becomes untenable) these are a good bridge between what you can reasonably expect people to walk (half a mile or so) and mass transit. These scooters are reasonably for trips up to a mile or two, and e-assist bikes are comfortable for 2-3X that, but adoption will depend on high-comfort infrastructure.
  11. Angostura
    LOL at what appears to be a climbing wall in a nail salon.
  12. Angostura
    Really, really, really love this site layout. This formula, mid-rise buildings framing narrow pedestrian streets with fine-grained retail, is basically what the good parts of every tourist destination city look like. The mid-rise buildings just happen to have towers on top of them. If you're going to build on a super-block, this is a good way to do it.
  13. Angostura
    I'm somewhat skeptical. By definition, cars as a service (autonomous or not) will necessarily increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT), since they spend a non-zero amount of time moving without a passenger, UNLESS they're accompanied by either changes in behavior (more carpooling, or use mostly as last-mile transportation) or changes in urban planning (higher density, mostly reduced parking). People who live car-free (in cities where you can reasonably live car-free) tend to live most of their lives within walking radius of their home and their workplace, and usually take some kind of transit between the two. Things like scooters and bike-shares increase that radius somewhat, but are mostly used to move within, not between neighborhoods. Someone working downtown and living car-free in, say, EaDo probably wouldn't decide to hit up a restaurant in, say, the Heights unless the restaurant was really good, or that's where their friends (from other parts of town) were meeting up. But in this scenario, there would be 2-3X as many options in EaDo as there are today.
  14. Angostura
    This is true in most of the world. The common practice in the US, where a single owner owns an entire large (200+ units) multifamily project is very uncommon in other parts of the world.
  15. Angostura
    There ARE people who love cars in and of themselves. But my personal experience, and that of most of the people I've talked to that live in a place where not having a car is a feasible lifestyle, is that you don't really miss it. First off, any city in which living without a car is feasible is probably dense enough that getting around in a car is kind of a pain, at least during certain times a day, and being able to park near where you're going is neither easy nor cheap (let alone free). Second, it's nice to have the extra money in your bank account rather than sunk into a depreciating asset. You never have to worry about whether to have that extra glass of wine at dinner. You'll never get a speeding ticket, and when you ARE in a car (uber/taxi/etc.) you can use your phone to your heart's content. And while having a car can sometimes save you some time getting places, you never have to spend time pumping gas, washing/cleaning the car, changing oil, getting an annual inspection, etc. Spending more time on the other side of the windshield also gives you an acute sense of just how much urban space we've given over to automobiles, even in relatively walkable cities. I would expect cities to gradually give over street space to non-automobile uses (bikes, scooters, walking) as we'll need to be able to move more people in less space than can be accomplished with cars.
  16. Angostura
    I would trade a 6- or 8-story height cap outside the CBD for zero parking minimums citywide.
  17. Angostura
    Don't need 'em. I'd rather we get buildings that look good from the sidewalk, rather than from a helicopter, freeway or rendering. You can actually get tons of density at mid-rise heights as long as you don't surround the buildings with surface parking or green space that no one ever sets foot in. They've also managed to keep the internal rights-of-way reasonably narrow. Cities like Paris and Barcelona achieve really high densities with essentially nothing over 8 stories.
  18. Angostura
    This is the big problem with all the development in the area. You're basically trying to build urban density on a suburban chassis. You have a bunch of very large tracts, not connected to each other or to a surrounding street grid. When you do high-intensity infill on this pattern, you get all the density of an urban center, but none of the mode shift. Which is to say, people still drive to and between (and frequently within) these developments. Density is a necessary but not sufficient condition for walkability. Density without urbanism is basically just vertical sprawl. I'm a lot more optimistic about high-density infill in places with a connected street grid (Heights, Midtown, EaDo, etc.). Since we don't do use-segregation in Houston, developers can locate retail, commercial and residential in close proximity, and since no tract is bigger than a city block, people can flow between them without cars. In this area, though, the only real solution is to nuke everything between I-10 and the RR tracks from Yale to Sawyer and replat with a proper street grid. (BTW, East River is an example of how to do this right: break up a large tract into smaller blocks, preferably with narrow rights of way between them, develop those blocks with a mix of uses within and between them, and integrate the whole thing with the surrounding grid.)
  19. Angostura
    Presumably the surface lots will go away first, since it's easier to replace nothing with something than to replace something with something else.
  20. Angostura
    Subdivision plat filed for probable multifamily:
  21. Angostura
    Rumored, but never confirmed I think. (Also, I like the term Traders Joe as the plural. Kind of like Attorneys General.) There WAS a Spec's on the roundabout until the city closed it for being too close to the elementary school. (These proximity rules are something that needs to be revisited as the city densifies, BTW.)
  22. Angostura
    Curious what's going on in the part of the podium not directly under the tower. Seems oddly configured for parking (though the facade would indicate that it IS parking). Also, is that a helicopter?
  23. Angostura
    I think this is the 3rd MF building in the Heights of a density beyond wood-frame construction (Elan Heights and the Alliance project on Nicholson being the other two). Edit to qualify: recent. There are a couple of assisted living places built before 4- and 5-story wood frame construction was allowed by the IBC, and probably others I'm forgetting.
  24. Angostura
    Another zero-setback building (though I don't think this one will survive). If we can't get the city to re-stripe Yale to 3 lanes, normalizing street parking on Yale may be the next best thing for accident reduction.
  25. Angostura
    More importantly, they better keep the zero-setback building, and re-open the windows in the brick facade. (Anyone needing tires in the near future might want to head to Monterrey while you still can.)
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