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Yeah, right. The Texans who regularly play bumper cars all across DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, etc. suddenly are on their best behavior when in the mountains even though most Houstonians can barely get through the Washington Ave roundabout without scraping metal. This may be the only thread on the internet where Texans are accused of being good drivers.

Croissants are very good.

Looks like the hot chicken restaurant boom is getting a run for its money with the bubble tea boom. There is Feng Cha going in on 19th and Moge Tee on Shep where Chick'n Cone used to be. Not sure whether there is that much demand for bubble tea or whether there is a bubble tea . . . bubble.

No, they would writhe in pain on the ground while the administrative assistant verified insurance coverage only to then be told that the next available appointment with the Dr. was in three weeks. The only good news would be if it was one of the doctors who hit the pedestrian. Then there would be deep pockets for the plaintiff's lawyer instead of having to just take the auto policy limits.

Expense account travelers sustain the high end hotels, steak houses, etc. I had a client who was an importer of manufactured flooring from China. It was a relatively small business, but profitable. They were in California and had to come to Houston for mediation. They probably spent more on the trip than on legal fees to get the lawsuit resolved. But when you run a small business, that is how you get to live large. You expense it all because you own the company and no one can tell you not to do it.

Texans make a mess of the roundabouts in CO ski towns. I have been to Copper, Vail and Beaver Creek over spring break. The roundabouts are a mess when the Texans are in town.

There was a plan to build a medical office on the north side of the street, but it was met with opposition when the plans had the main driveway crossing the hike and bike path. It fizzled and nothing has happened since then.

At rush hour, it is the motor vehicle equivalent of Fight Club.

I bet this intersection could be reconstructed to make it into a four way intersection with a traffic light. Arnot really should be widened as it is a well trafficked entrance to Memorial Park. Eminent domain Shipleys to give some room for Westcott and Washington to come together. It is just a fact of life that people in the south will never be able to figure out how to drive through a rotary.

The retaining wall facing the bayou is collecting some choice graffiti.

They have been month to month on their property as the land is being bundled up for a residential development. They finally decided to bail as they are shifting to the burbs with a big new location in Santa Fe, TX.

I am actually glad to see someone use a color on a house instead of mindlessly falling into line with the white and black modern victorian farmhouse craze/"aesthetic". And most realtors take the same kind of photos as this guy did. It is pretty much industry standard for HAR listings.

I think Brutalism gets a bad rap because it was used a lot in higher education buildings in the 60s. The architects were often instructed to make the buildings very maze like on the interior with few windows so it would be more difficult for students protesting the Vietnam war to occupy the building. So, I think everyone since then has had the experience of being a nervous college freshman scurrying around a Brutalist building trying to find their biology 101 class. You go down one hallway to find room 406 and the hallway snakes around going from 401 to 405 but then dead ends. You scurry back to where you came up the elevator/stairs only to find that there are two other hallways to choose from. Of course, you pick the wrong one and end up late for class. But the really great Brutalist buildings are usually very symmetrical and elegant in their design. So, it is unfortunate that so many are introduced to Brutalist architecture through these awful college buildings with their labyrinth like hallways.

Covering the ditches is the reason the ROW is insufficient. You have to curb and gutter the street if you are going to cover drainage ditches. Otherwise the streets will turn into lakes whenever there is a decent downpour. Curb and guttering streets is about a million for a few blocks. It would be infinitely more expensive to put a bike path on the cross streets. Having gone on 11th st a bunch of times during morning and evening rush hour since the build out and living near the alleged cut through streets, I am actually quite surprised at how well it is working and how little change in traffic there is (other than eliminating the Death Race 2000 that used to take place on 11th every day).

The problem with adding freeway lanes as a way to reduce traffic is that there is no perfect way to do it. You cannot take a highway and split the earth open to uniformly add lanes on new land that appears out of nowhere and then have every exit automatically increase capacity all along the way. You will always have bottlenecks that cause congestion despite the increased carrying capacity. That is what happened on the Katy freeway. EB at 610 is always a mess because the 610 exit was not expanded enough to be able to handle the increased load from the Katy Freeway. Then, there are numerous instances where exits and merges create bottlenecks. Washington Ave and I-10 EB is also a mess because 610 NB traffic is merging while at the same time there are exit only lanes for Washington Ave. Merging and exiting traffic around Dairy Ashford and I-10 EB always makes a bottleneck even off of rush hour because there isn't enough room to get traffic to merge onto the highway before people trying to exit get in the way. And the merge WB before the grand parkway when the tollway lane drops out is also a bottleneck (EB I-10 merge with grand parkway NB traffic is also a mess because the merge is too close to exiting traffic). Finally, the number of lanes doesn't matter when there is a wreck. Urban highways are just too complicated of a system to be able to add lanes without having any blowback due to design flaws. Highway widening is the go to traffic congestion remedy because the real estate developer, construction and engineering lobbyists know how to do their jobs and there really is no opposing force that can go toe to toe with them on behalf of public transportation. It just took one house rep (Culberson) to kill off any chance at federally funded commuter rail from the west part of Houston. To its credit, the Houston area has been making adaptations by moving employment centers out into the suburbs. I used to work with a guy who would commute in from the Woodlands every day to downtown. It would take him a solid hour unless he left for work before 7 am. He got a job in the Woodlands and cut his commute time down to 15 minutes. But that was 20 years ago. Now, it can take him twice as long due to all the traffic in the Woodlands during rush hour. My boss lives in Kingwood at the far end of Kingwood Dr. It takes him longer to get to 59 than it does to go from 59 to downtown. So, we are basically screwed in Houston. We have reached capacity on most of the major arteries and even people who do the right thing and live close to work have to fight through traffic. We will not see any meaningful alternatives for public transportation in our lifetimes in Houston. Traffic will just get worse and worse and worse.

I have been in that traffic jam many times. Once you get past the light at TC Jester, traffic flows just fine. Bike lanes have nothing to do with it. Bike lanes on 11th st made sense because 11th st had become like FM 1960 with people hauling ass at 40-45 mph and weaving in an out of lanes. Crossing the street at the bike path on Nicholson and just about anywhere else between Shep and Michaux was a nightmare. Also, putting bike lanes on 10th or 12th would have been exponentially more expensive and may not have even been feasible if they wanted to do it. Those streets have minimal ROW and the ROW is all messed up in spots where fence lines are right up to the drainage ditches with no sidewalks on parts of the street. And then there are utility poles all over the place in the ROW. You would probably have to curb and gutter the street to be able to install bike lanes next to the sidewalks.

This has nothing to do with the bike lanes. The traffic at TC Jester is due in part to unrelated construction (drainage project) and a poorly timed light. The bike lanes are not going to go past Durham. So far, the bike lanes east of Heights Blvd are working great. Traffic along 11th is moving along just fine, but without people ripping along like it is FM 1960. I will say that it remains to be seen whether the changes to the intersection of Heights and 11th St. are gong to work. Temporary signage is confusing, but the city has cleaned it up a bit with a big no turn sign on Heights SB and NB. Hopefully, when complete, the signage will be easier to follow. I am not sure that no right turns from 11th to Heights and no left turns from Heights to 11th is going to work that well. But if it gets through traffic off of Heights and on to Yale, that would be good.

If you are looking to buy a car, don't. The market is set to go off a cliff. 2023 deliveries of new vehicles are finally getting caught up with demand. Default rates on loans are rising and will keep going up through 2023 as people realize that they cannot afford the payments on the Ford F150 that they paid $10k over sticker for. So, if you can patch together what you are currently driving for another year, you will probably save thousands compared to what you would spend right now.

I have notice a lack of diversity in restaurants in the Heights.

That was fast. https://houston.eater.com/2023/1/3/23536941/cherry-block-smokehouse-garden-oaks-closed

Hard to believe that we have a fire code that allows builders to stack townhomes with a single narrow driveway. Firefighters hate them as the driveways are too narrow for equipment and potentially create a hall of fire if units on both sides are in flames.

There are now big signs up in the median on Waco SB that say that the train may stop for hours on the tracks and to call the railroad company if there are problems.

There was a TABC notice on the building with a d/b/a for what was presumably a Mexican restaurant (can't recall the name).

I think Metro is making all of its bus stops compatible with the BRT busses with wide doors that open level with the ground.

Word is that a disgruntled former employee of one of the studios is a suspect. Scary stuff.