Slick Vik

In the letter to the editor that Luminare posted, the TCR Rep stated that the rail would be one of the highest taxpayers in Madison County. Less of the rural folk would be opposed if they knew this.

Rural folk aren't exactly rocket scientists

This is still hot air. They won't be using eminent domain anyway. Why is this so hard to understand!?!?

I think they will as a last resort

This appears to be the first opposition to the project by influential political leaders. In a previous post I stated that the risk to the project depends on the amount of political power of the rural interests, and it looks like the rural interests are rallying their political forces.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20150407-2-lawmakers-criticize-dallas-houston-bullet-train.ece

2 lawmakers criticize Dallas-Houston bullet train

The Texas Legislature’s top two transportation officials on Tuesday criticized a high-speed train planned between Dallas and Houston, whose officials have lauded the project for months.

Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said Texas Central Railway leaders spent too much time talking to officials in the metropolitan endpoints of the line and not enough discussing plans with the rural towns the bullet train will have to run through.

“They’re just shoving it down their throats, so the heartland is upset,” Nichols said.

Nichols chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, which is slated Wednesday to hear testimony on a bill that would strip Texas Central of its ability to use eminent domain for the project. Company officials have zeroed in on a route between Dallas and Houston that would minimize the need to use condemnation.

...

How can you discuss with someone that doesn't want the project under any circumstances?

Under pierce elevated has a lot of illicit activity at night particularly main and south to 59.

Looks nice

The house is now an office to sell the condos

Well, remember that the Allison flooding was one of those "100-year-flood" events, as was Sandy, which flooded the NYC subways. As for soil conditions, I believe it would be because it's generally wet (close to sea level). But...doesn't Amsterdam have a subway AND it's below sea level (or if not, just a bit above it?)

Therefore, either of those, I think would be a non-issue.

Also, even if something like a Washington DC Metro was created, I found it interesting that as the crow flies, it only goes about 17.4 miles out at its longest line (the Red Line going northwest, which at least seemed to be going out the longest way as of the 1998 map—I had newer ones, but I felt that a 1998 map would be a better estimate if it didn't take into account line extensions). Comparing that to Houston, if we're going northwest from downtown, we would be roughly at FM 1960/290, which if we're going to the Eastern Seaboard Way, we'd need a commuter rail to go even longer distances.

Then I compared that to the *allas light rail (see what I did there?), which goes 18 miles on a line that goes northeast. A trip takes about 40 minutes. At D.C., a trip from Shady Grove (on the Red Line) to Metro Central (which *isn't* all the way to the Mall, due to the fact that the Red Line doesn't go that way) is just about 30 minutes (which isn't that much of a time savings, assuming that the Red Line went all the way to such).

Where D.C. thrives and *allas fails is that they're built on a model that people want to go to downtown to suburbs and vice-versa, which isn't quite how cities here in Texas were built and developed. (California also developed much earlier than Texas did)

tl;dr A true "metro" with a traditional "lines radiating out of a center point" would be kind of cool but impractical (but technologically possible, make no mistake) and just be a massive money sink. I personally think that had the 1983 heavy-rail system actually been approved by voters, it wouldn't start construction for a few years, and the bust could've scuttled it indefinitely until it was scrapped due to budget cuts or killed off by politicians. Nothing would change, and you'd still be blaming Lanier for his crimes against rail.

Look at a metro system like Madrid or Barcelona or Mexico City or countless others which have lines not just going to the center. A proper system could be made for houston and it would a huge step up for the city.

I think I'm the only person in Houston that thinks dedicated bus lanes would be the best option. Right now it's either build rail or put buses in main lanes of traffic. A dedicated bus lane would accomplish the same as commuter rail (faster travel in town) while also providing flexible traffic control. If the rail line experiences problems, you shut the entire line down. If a dedicated bus lane has a problem, they're buses. Move them to the main lanes temporarily. I would ride a bus into downtown if I didn't have to sit in the same traffic as everyone else.

It's a good option but not the best. But I would take it over regular bus service for sure

So I've been in DC the past week or so, pretty impressed with the METRO system. It's the most recent of the major systems to be built domestically, so it goes to show if there's a will there's a way. Any comparison between bus and rail is laughable. If it's built, people will ride it. I'm so tired of the excuses I think honestly people against haven't been on a system and experienced its benefits. However many billion it costs houston deserves such a system.

United going to a dynamic pricing award model this year. The point game is over.

There are a certain number of hours the trains need to be tested calm down people. I also think it gives CAF an extra month to send as many train cars here as possible before opening date.

1034 Rochow is 11,000 s.f., the building footprint will be something over 6800 (2 x 3400 s.f. per floor). The rendering looks to take up the whole lot.

Rendering is very deceptive. The angle would be form the southeast, looking over Rochow toward the building. Not sure where that railing in the foreground would be. And, given the building is actually three blocks from the bayou, the units won't have bayou views. Certainly not from the balconies, which (for now) overlook the back of a pair of 1950's duplexes, with the Marshall's loading dock in the background.

Just walked by the house and it's abandoned. I saw some workers there last week and stakes with flags so it all makes sense. I guess those workers were unpacking. Interesting because just last year she turned down $880,000 so she must have gotten $1,000,000 plus and redid the flooring as well.

The lady that lives there had some work done on it recently. Maybe it could be the apartments across the street but not that house the lot is too small 0.26 acres and it wouldn't make sense because she's balked at $800,000 offers in the past.

Some lady lives at 1034 rochow and there isn't enough room there for such a big building

Surveying work probably

Nothing good happens after midnight

Saw a work crew upgrading the telecoms connections to this block yesterday, hopefully it is a good sign of things to come!

I saw some flags on Rochow also. Not sure if that is the first step in taking down the Allen house apartments or if they are leftover from street reconstruction earlier.

Silo is great look into it

Silo

The article I mentioned -- insofar as my bad memory permits -- presented the idea that putting rail underground, while expensive, was not so much more costly than putting it above ground.

In any case, I think that we are able to build infrastructure here below ground that can deal with the occasional flooding events we have. Whether we do that is more a matter of whether we have the will to invest a sufficient amount of taxpayer money today in order to reap benefits in the future. I am not arguing that we should just do that because I think so ... rather, I think that as a community we should consider where we are, where we are heading (or want to head) and how we should prepare for whatever future we want Houston to have. In other words, it is better if our community thinks about this and achieves some sort of consensus -- rather than having the majority be an apathetic one that lets one or the other motivated group hold sway in elections.

In that regard, I don't think its sufficient to just go with the current flow, which is: we can't build freeways anymore, so let's fill the hinterlands with toll-roads until we cover the continent.

Underground is about triple of elevated cost

You contradict yourself in your first three sentences!

(from Wikipedia)

So 45% White, 7% Black, 35% Asian (a third of that is Indian), 11% Hispanic, 2% everyone else.

Here's the Super Neighborhood info on Gulfton: 75% Hispanic, 11% White, 9% Black, 7% Asian, 1% everyone else.

The biggest two majority groups COMBINED in Sugar Land are just five percent more than the single biggest majority in Gulfton.

Hispanic is diverse within itself. You probably just think mexican. But no, there are Mexicans, salvadorians, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, plus some Panamanians, Venezuelans, Colombians, Bolivians, and Peruvians.

I'm thinking the eastbound bike lane should be on McKinney St or Dallas St instead.

There's no other lane

Well, gee, if you watch a crime show on TV, guess where it is?

In all seriousness, though, NYC was notorious for crime in the 1970s, and there are still major parts of both cities that are still very sketchy, to say the least. Furthermore, there are multiple studies linking density with crime, and especially poverty with crime. (I would also associate aging infrastructure, though I'm not sure if there's hard studies on that)

And if what you're saying is true about people moving back to Gulfton, then if gentrification continues to hold, then the slumlords will sell out and evict everyone living in those apartments for nicer, newer apartments, and the process begins anew.

Know what? Forget it, it's not worth arguing and de-railing the topic over, as everything reply, no matter how factual, just represents a challenge that needs to be replied to

Major parts of San francisco and New York? Give me a break you can find a handful of dangerous neighborhoods of you combine them. Mission, Brownsville, bed stuy, and maybe queensbridge. That's it.

Oh I've been to Gulfton. Too many times. And I'm not talking about Fiesta. I'm talking about Gulfton. It's not any where near the most diverse Houston area.

Just because an area is not loaded with blacks and latinos does not mean it's not diverse.

Fiesta attracts many many ethnic groups. That's why I love Fiesta. They have everything.

I disagree. An area with only two particular types of minorities to me is not diverse. Gulfton is diverse. People shop at that fiesta because it's close to them, many people in that area don't have vehicles so it's not even a choice. I go to gulfton 5 times a week so I know it as well as anyone.

Believe it or not, such giveaways were common in the 1970s and 1980s. Sign a lease, get a 12 gauge shotgun!

Well, some tasty restaurants aren't enough to absolve a neighborhood of its problems. But the thing is, if you are a fan of denser development, you don't want to have an endless sprawl of 2-story cheaply-built apartment complexes. One of the reasons it's so full of crime is that IS so concentrated, not unlike government-funded high-rise projects for the poor that are now universally acknowledged to be failures, and because there are just a handful of separate owners, there's now huge low-rent areas with no other better land values to off-set it (that's how Sharpstown is in a much better position, because there are S/F homes to balance with apartment buildings.

I guess New York and San francisco should be full of crime because they are so dense?

Hilarious that you think of sharps town better than gulfton it's not even a comparison. Also on both sides of fountain view and hillcroft are a lot of single family homes. Actually there are a lot of young professionals moving to fondren and hillcroft area a bit south near braeswood.

I don't consider the Gulfton area "diverse". Sugar Land is diverse. Gulfton is just a ghetto pretty much controlled by Hispanic gangs.

I do remember when it was new and had disco clubs and a party atmosphere. I had a lot of friends that lived in the area. But the apartments were cheaply built and not maintained so it was inevitable it would succumb to the poor. They are probably still paying more then it's worth.

I don't blame it becoming a ghetto on "class" so much as typical Houston slum lords.

I guess you haven't been to gulfton. Go the the fiesta on bellaire and hillcroft it is the most diverse place in houston. Africans, Arabs, south Asians, Mexicans, central Americans and blacks it's quite fascinating.

Sugar Land is not diverse, it has whites Indians and Vietnamese/Chinese. How is that diverse when there are slim to zero blacks and Latinos? Seriously I have a lot of friends from sugar land that until college had never had a class with a black or Latino person.