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The Boulevard Project


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9 hours ago, SkylineView said:

Also... is there a way to move this out of the Trains section and into the general Transportation section?  The Boulevard Project has nothing to do with trains.

 

I believe this has to deal with the new Metro hybrid vehicle. Isn't it a cross breed between a bus and rail car?

 

If rails are considered "trains" that is

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On ‎3‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 2:38 PM, Vy65 said:

This is getting to be besides the point, but would Austin  have the highly dense downtown it enjoys without zoning?

 

Zoning forces all high-rise development in Austin to be downtown or immediately south across the river. If not for zoning, you would certainly have high rises offering amazing views in places like Mt. Bonnell, Tarrytown, Westlake, South Congress, etc., and a portion of the market would be taken away from downtown. Nowadays most younger high-rise renters are drawn to downtown Austin for what it has become, but that draw would not have been so strong 10 years ago, and it would have taken longer to develop. The GFR requirements have also done a lot to create an interesting and agreeable neighborhood downtown, without things like hulking parking garages and curb cuts with cars speeding in and out hurting pedestrian life in places like 6th Street or Congress Ave.

 

On the other hand, zoning slows the process for buildings like 600 Guadalupe to come out of the ground due to all the approvals and negotiations needed, and the Capitol View Corridors have driven up land prices for high-rise sites by limiting supply. Houston held the record for most expensive land in the state with the sale of the Chronicle site a view years ago, but Austin has blown past that since.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Zoning forces all high-rise development in Austin to be downtown or immediately south across the river. If not for zoning, you would certainly have high rises offering amazing views in places like Mt. Bonnell, Tarrytown, Westlake, South Congress, etc., and a portion of the market would be taken away from downtown. Nowadays most younger high-rise renters are drawn to downtown Austin for what it has become, but that draw would not have been so strong 10 years ago, and it would have taken longer to develop. The GFR requirements have also done a lot to create an interesting and agreeable neighborhood downtown, without things like hulking parking garages and curb cuts with cars speeding in and out hurting pedestrian life in places like 6th Street or Congress Ave.

 

On the other hand, zoning slows the process for buildings like 600 Guadalupe to come out of the ground due to all the approvals and negotiations needed, and the Capitol View Corridors have driven up land prices for high-rise sites by limiting supply. Houston held the record for most expensive land in the state with the sale of the Chronicle site a view years ago, but Austin has blown past that since.

 

 

Don't you also think a lot of our development is due to the sheer size of our metropolis? I mean Austin is pretty small in size so the need for certain things isn't necessary. 

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5 minutes ago, j_cuevas713 said:

Don't you also think a lot of our development is due to the sheer size of our metropolis? I mean Austin is pretty small in size so the need for certain things isn't necessary. 

 

I am just discussing how zoning might have made Austin's downtown different from what it would have been without zoning. As far as size of our metropolis, it's a factor, but Austin has shown that it can draw people from other Texas cities who like what it offers. Plenty of people in those highrises were born and raised in Houston.

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3 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Zoning forces all high-rise development in Austin to be downtown or immediately south across the river. If not for zoning, you would certainly have high rises offering amazing views in places like Mt. Bonnell, Tarrytown, Westlake, South Congress, etc., and a portion of the market would be taken away from downtown. Nowadays most younger high-rise renters are drawn to downtown Austin for what it has become, but that draw would not have been so strong 10 years ago, and it would have taken longer to develop. The GFR requirements have also done a lot to create an interesting and agreeable neighborhood downtown, without things like hulking parking garages and curb cuts with cars speeding in and out hurting pedestrian life in places like 6th Street or Congress Ave.

 

On the other hand, zoning slows the process for buildings like 600 Guadalupe to come out of the ground due to all the approvals and negotiations needed, and the Capitol View Corridors have driven up land prices for high-rise sites by limiting supply. Houston held the record for most expensive land in the state with the sale of the Chronicle site a view years ago, but Austin has blown past that since.

 

 

I was reading a thread about a high-rise being planned near the Houstonian, and someone commented that the project was "another example of Houston having all the density with none of the benefits." I think your post is a good explanation of why that's the case. 

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On 9/19/2018 at 10:48 AM, rechlin said:

SkylineView, "drag" it out of purgatory is literally correct!  All you have to do is drag it from that linked page and into the post editor and it will work.  Like this:

 

http://i1241.photobucket.com/albums/gg515/SkylineView/image2_zpsym0hihgp.jpeg

I thought the bus lanes were supposed to feature a strip of grass down the center. Metro’s website shows the renderings/schematics with grass. They even refer to it as a “green guideway”. The photo above looks like it’s solid concrete.

 

https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/UptownBRT.aspx

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  • 2 weeks later...

I agree with J_cuevas713. You have to look to the future and this is an important part of our infrastructure that desperately needs alternatives.

Your looking at whats here now as far as retail and amenities. We are expecting 10 million people here in 20 years and a lot of that growth is going to take place in Uptown. If we don't add these types of alternative transit systems now we'll be in a jam later. Besides these will help guide the development and growth in the future.

I think eventually people that work in uptown will be offered parking in the transit lots on the transit centers at Katy and Bellaire and then catch the buses into the post oak blvd. freeing up the streets for shoppers and through traffic. Similar to what is done in the med center. 

You just have to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. This will be a positive in the long run.

Remember all of the Main Street Rail nay sayers cries!  "It hasn't done anything for development on Main."

Yeah, and the worlds flat!

 

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5 hours ago, bobruss said:

 

I think eventually people that work in uptown will be offered parking in the transit lots on the transit centers at Katy and Bellaire and then catch the buses into the post oak blvd. freeing up the streets for shoppers and through traffic. Similar to what is done in the med center. 

You just have to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. This will be a positive in the long run.

 

 

I rode the bus from the Northwest  transit center into the galleria every weekday for several years. It was very slow due to all the traffic. This BRT lane will not just be an improvement in the long run, it will be a huge improvement as soon as it is complete.

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44 minutes ago, H-Town Man said:

Doing a little catch up here... will the bridges involved in this project be able to hold light rail trains? What was ever decided about that?

 

Thanks.

 

From looking at the pdf'ed CAD files, They are certainly wide enough to hold rail. At one point I looked at the overpass for the Redline near Hardy Yards. They employ a similar build tech for how one builds overpasses for cars. They should be able to add gauge tracks ontop of the road deck at some point. I would think only think thing that needs to be done is possibly bulk up the foundation or brace the connects of the columns with the road deck (vibrations from moving railcars, and extra forces). Not really undo able. I think the only thing that prevents it is the size of the city/txdot wallet.

Edited by Luminare
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The bus lanes fly over the freeway and dive "into" the freeway... ultimately coming out in (like literally inside) the underpass where 610 intersects Post Oak.

 

FYI, 610 SB is completely closed all weekend around Woodway.  All 610 SB traffic (all 8 lanes) is being pushed to the one-lane Woodway exit and along the 610 frontage.

 

It's 10pm and it's backed up for a mile and a half.  Avoid.

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1 hour ago, SkylineView said:

The bus lanes fly over the freeway and dive "into" the freeway... ultimately coming out in (like literally inside) the underpass where 610 intersects Post Oak.

 

FYI, 610 SB is completely closed all weekend around Woodway.  All 610 SB traffic (all 8 lanes) is being pushed to the one-lane Woodway exit and along the 610 frontage.

 

It's 10pm and it's backed up for a mile and a half.  Avoid.

 

wow

 

Maybe there will be a fender bender near as well :lol:

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On 11/8/2018 at 2:17 PM, kennyc05 said:

I'm trying to understand. Does the bus lanes split the freeway when it exits at underneath 610 to Post Oak?

Screenshot_20181108-141533_Drive.jpg

 

That is pretty amazing though.  So a vehicle will directly bypass the 610 traffic/freeway to each Metro station? That's incredible! It could literally save an hour of traffic

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11 hours ago, SkylineView said:

The bus lanes fly over the freeway and dive "into" the freeway... ultimately coming out in (like literally inside) the underpass where 610 intersects Post Oak.

 

FYI, 610 SB is completely closed all weekend around Woodway.  All 610 SB traffic (all 8 lanes) is being pushed to the one-lane Woodway exit and along the 610 frontage.

 

It's 10pm and it's backed up for a mile and a half.  Avoid.

Thank you for the clarification!!!!!!!

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On 11/7/2018 at 0:47 PM, Luminare said:

From looking at the pdf'ed CAD files, They are certainly wide enough to hold rail. At one point I looked at the overpass for the Redline near Hardy Yards. They employ a similar build tech for how one builds overpasses for cars. They should be able to add gauge tracks ontop of the road deck at some point. I would think only think thing that needs to be done is possibly bulk up the foundation or brace the connects of the columns with the road deck (vibrations from moving railcars, and extra forces). Not really undo able. I think the only thing that prevents it is the size of the city/txdot wallet.

 

didn't someone at some point say that the entire system was built to hold LR, but they were putting in buses for now, so the system could more easily/cheaply be upgraded in the future?

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6 minutes ago, samagon said:

 

didn't someone at some point say that the entire system was built to hold LR, but they were putting in buses for now, so the system could more easily/cheaply be upgraded in the future?

That is correct. I think this is the smartest way to transition Houston. My thought is if we can just get a link between Downtown/Midtown and the Galleria and links to the airports, Houston will have a nice system with buses helping to link people along these main routes. At that point we can start to ask for commuter rail to the burbs. 

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8 hours ago, samagon said:

 

didn't someone at some point say that the entire system was built to hold LR, but they were putting in buses for now, so the system could more easily/cheaply be upgraded in the future?

 

I thought I heard the opposite at one point, that due to some political gobbletygook they were going to prohibit light rail on this alignment and the bridges couldn't be built to hold rail.

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5 hours ago, august948 said:

 

I thought I heard the opposite at one point, that due to some political gobbletygook they were going to prohibit light rail on this alignment and the bridges couldn't be built to hold rail.

Yeah, that's I read too. Basically a disagreement between TxDOT and METRO. It's worth noting that the HOT lanes in the Katy Freeway WERE designed to hold rail but they were never guaranteed it. Basically, METRO got a say in the design in the Katy Freeway due to the original bus lanes being built with federal funds, and they decided to spend a bunch of money to over-engineer them in the chance that they'd be converted to rail later (if that ever actually happened, the HOT lanes would probably need to be rebuilt or repaired anyway from age).

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Is anybody else disappointed with the width of the sidewalks?  For a such a major project on a signature boulevard, you would think they would build a sidewalk that could accommodate more than 2 people walking side by side.  I guess it's an improvement over what was there before...

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1 hour ago, yaga said:

Is anybody else disappointed with the width of the sidewalks?  For a such a major project on a signature boulevard, you would think they would build a sidewalk that could accommodate more than 2 people walking side by side.  I guess it's an improvement over what was there before...

The sidewalks seem wider than just 2 people. 

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