Slick Vik

Some ladies were advertising nuride.com at the building I work at today. Seems pretty cool, you get points for taking transit, walking, biking, biking, or telecommuting, pretty much anything but driving solo. The points have typical value though, 1 cent per point, but you get 1000 for signing up. So hey $10 for nothing.

I think the name-calling and pigeonholing is a bit of a stretch, but have you (Metro West) actually ridden any train-based public transportation in the last 10 years? I've personally ridden four, the DART in Dallas (which has been operating since the mid-1990s), Houston's line, NYC, and Washington DC. While I have different feelings on each of them (first time in the Houston METRO I was in a car with some definitely creepy people, like the one guy that seemed to wear a crown out of what appeared to be twisted up coat hangers), I remind myself that I'm just a tourist and it's a novelty. I might feel differently if I was doing it every day during the rush hours, which is what a lot of the starry-eyed metro railfans seem to forget. The closest to that rush hour experience in recent times was riding back on DART packed with families riding back from the zoo, and I had to stand the whole way, unable to move in much direction until the train was almost to my destination.

I certainly don't hold it against anyone that prefers not to ride public transportation or chooses not to fund public transportation (because in many situations, it's not worth the cost), but I do get a bit annoyed when people start pointing out other city rail systems, namely DART (Atlanta's and San Francisco's run a close second) and start saying "THIS is the way to do it! Why don't we have THESE?" It gets annoying after the first half-dozen posts.

My experience is based on New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, portland, vancouver, Chicago, houston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Mexico City, buenos aires, Rome, Tokyo, Yokohama, Delhi, London, Birmingham, and Istanbul.

WOW! People who fly a lot and who don't own cars and who don't care about getting around in style and who don't mind it taking twice as long and who don't mind frequent stops and who love sitting next to people who don't bathe are going to love this. That's right, all 6 of them.

With Dallas traffic twice as long is an exaggeration. Also that's what makes public transit public. Stay in your gated community if you're scared.

Yes. Just takes one

It's necessary to connect two strong and exploding populations (Katy and The Woodlands) together and the sprawling development that is at the edge if not past the boundaries of the GP. The development in these areas is going to happen whether or not the toll road was going to built. There's no denying that. With the Energy Corridor building out at exponitally and a booming Woodlands population this is a necessary traffic congestion reliever. That's just reality.

You think the undeveloped Katy prarie would've developed without the grand parkway?

It may not be necessary at the time but you could make a strong argument that it is now though. The GP was always going to come. Houston sprawls, we don't build up. It was always inevitable. However, the means by which this land transaction occurred are questionable. Lanier didn't make money off the land he donated for the GP. He made money off the land around it that he sold to developers.

And made a lot of money for his friends also.

I'm not sure it's even necessary right now. And if you compare it against other projects I don't think it would've been at the front of the line. The only saving grace is that it's a toll road so people will talk with pocketbooks.

By that definition, you'd be against the monorail project, the Charlotte light rail, and the Big Dig project, since those involved "corruption" in some way or another, as well as many other transit projects that may have benefitted developers or anybody else in some way or another, which would include the Red Line as well, since that benefitted developers along the line. Better scratch off that one, too.

EDIT: Why am I arguing with you again? It's clear that any time I counter with facts, you just claim I'm "denying reality" or switching to insult mode, any uncomfortable questions like "If the Grand Parkway was instead a rail-based mass transit system loop but still backed by developers who would profit off of such a thing, you wouldn't have [said] a word," or "apparently all the studied experience you have with freeways is anti-freeway/pro-rail literature", or even exactly what I'm saying wrong are ignored.

You attack actual research I do on subjects (like when I derive stuff from the Chron) while trotting out obviously biased articles that conveniently support your views, and lastly, it should be noted that before you counter with my "anti-freeway" accusation and call me "anti-rail", I would like to point out that I have never actually bashed rail in any way, not like you do freeways. I've questioned the effectiveness of rail in certain areas and have spoken out against rail in certain corridors, but I haven't actually bashed rail in any ways.

Thanks

IT

Not sure what was biased about the article I posted. It gave a history of how absurd the grand parkway project was.

Exactly what "reality" am I denying again? Yours? I know that Lanier and others made a lot of money off of the Grand Parkway, but it was rather open (everyone knew about it) but you and I know that isn't unique, not unless you wanted to accuse other projects of being "corrupt" and where others (would) make money, except under the table and not be exposed until months later after the deed was done. You've chosen to single out the Grand Parkway because it goes directly against your anti-freeway, anti-suburban philosophies. If the Grand Parkway was instead a rail-based mass transit system loop but still backed by developers who would profit off of such a thing, you wouldn't have say a word.

It is corruption and I'm against it in all forms. It's no different than the Sicilian mafia using influence to have unnecessary projects built.

I'm leaving tomorrow and will take it to the W Hotel. Hopefully you will not mind my experience when I fly back. I will take the shuttle coming back and see what is better. I have a early Wednesday so DART schedule takes too long. I will take pictures and see how good DART operates. Please get over it.

It's cost effective. $2.50 instead of a $50 cab

Denying reality again. Making profits off a project only they could create is essentially giving yourself a kickback.

It is just an update Tiger if you like do not read it. Everyone in Houston should contact their representative. This blog does nothing. I have taken DART many times it took 1 hour to get from downtown to Richardson. This is a good step for them tell me your experience when you took DART? or forget it.

Took me 22 minutes to get downtown from 635 to downtown I was impressed.

The defense rests, Your Honor.

But seriously, the fact that Lanier did profit from highway construction and other projects is true. And if you read my last post, which you apparently didn't, does state that. However, Lanier left the highway related offices by the late 1980s and the Grand Parkway we have now involve years past that date. Lanier has no more influence on it than any powerful rich businessman does, which is of course what many have done, and frankly, the fact that this "developer interests" idea was openly transparent in the mid-1980s (read: not a conspiracy) and the idea still carrying (including voters' interests, as a 2001 Fort Bend County election did) meant that the Grand Parkway still has worth after all.

So using political power to create the mechanisms to building a highway that wasn't necessary to profit a small group of people is okay to you? That is corruption.

From the first article

In April, when Streetsblog interviewed Billy Burge, head of the pro-highway, non-profit Grand Parkway Association, he conceded that the outerbelt’s latest expansion — Segment E, through the Katy Prairie — wasn’t even intended to handle increased traffic. He was pretty clear that the project was about enabling the development of rural land into large-lot, detached single-family homes.

But Burge didn’t mention that before becoming head of the Grand Parkway Association, he had cashed in on that growth as a developer. Or that, thanks to a special Texas regulation, the Grand Parkway Association had been granted quasi-governmental powers.

He was also the developer of Cinco Ranch, a five-square-mile master-planned community that is now home to 11,000 people. The first segment of the Grand Parkway directly bisected Burge’s development.

The pair worked in partnership with the Grand Parkway Association — basically an interest group formed to ensure the highway’s completion. At the time, the Grand Parkway Association counted some of the region’s biggest real estate magnates among its members, including Walter Mischer Jr., developer of 120,000 homes in the Houston region.

Funding for construction was secured by Ed Emmett, a state rep who was also working as the paid director of a non-profit pro-suburban development group called the North Houston Association. The law enabled the creation of the Grand Parkway Association.

The truth hurts

In an October 1, 1991 issue of the Houston Chronicle says, "Houston mayoral candidate Bob Lanier voted to build a highway through a real estate development owned by a Houston savings and loan while he was serving as a paid consultant for the institution. Additionally, Lanier, as Chairman of the Texas Highway Commission (1983-1987) voted in November 1986 to spend state funds to construct a 5.6 mile segment of the Grand Parkway." "Lanier also owns property along the Grand Parkway route. Highway Commission records show that Lanier voted on six separate occasions to approve and fund the Grand Parkway, in spite of the fact that the highway increased the value of Lanier's 1,462 acre Westbourne development at Texas 249. A statewide lobbying group chaired by Lanier, Texas Good Roads, fought attempts in the past legislative session to tighten conflict-of-interest regulations governing members of the Highway Commission.

http://m.yourhoustonnews.com/archives/residents-upset-over-grand-parkway/article_913dac5e-e45e-51f4-b28e-715a413514c3.html?mode=jqm

What I was arguing was the ridiculous assertion is that the Grand Parkway was primarily built for developer's interests, which, like any good lie, has an element of truth to it. In reality planners in the 1960s anticipated that the sprawl would eventually reach that point anyway, and as for the plan revival in the 1980s, politicians that didn't have any interest in real estate still supported it, otherwise it would never have gotten off the ground. An article from the Houston Chronicle ("Lanier checks conflict laws following flap over parkway land", February 27, 1986) lists several key facts:

1. Lanier's land was in the northwest segment, at the time, the Grand Parkway route wasn't set in stone and no one knew if the GP plan would actually go through it.

2. Lanier said he never voted on the plan that would involve his land.

3. The Grand Parkway Association was acknowledged to have developer interests, it wasn't some deep-pocketed conspiracy.

Another 1991 article explains that Lanier did use his influence and did profit in land holdings and highways, $10M worth (most of that was related to Highway 249). Was it wrong to do that? Maybe. Was it illegal? Nope. Was he solely responsible for the Grand Parkway? Nope.

While it may benefit the people living in the far outer belt (hell, I'm not using it everyday, if ever) it does benefit the region as a whole, just like the Red Line extension that opened the same day as the Grand Parkway segment between Katy and Cypress. Outer loopers (and many inner loopers) don't use the rail, but it is a benefit to regional mobility as a whole.

What's ridiculous is living in denial.

Educate yourself

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/11/02/texas-sprawl-builders-funneled-taxpayer-to-highway-that-enriched-them/

That's a big step

This is a silly article, I'm depressed (not severely) that I wasn't around from the beginning.

The conclusions I drew:

1. reduce the speed limit in and around neighborhoods to 20 mph.

2. make crossing the road easier for pedestrians by adding additional crosswalks in highly trafficked areas.

This article makes a really great example for why we have freeways though, imagine if the freeways didn't exist, those same hundreds of thousands of cars serviced by freeways would be driving down those neighborhood streets making them even more dangerous to cross, which would likely result in more car/pedestrian fatalities.

If they drove down those streets at reasonable speeds the fatalities wouldn't be a shockingly high number. Also freeways cause a lot of high speed wrecks which are intuitively higher risk in nature.

Spot on. Those darn unintended consequences get you every time. There's a certain mentality out there among some who think that freeways are the one and only cause of higher traffic and that if we'd only tear them up traffic would magically melt away. I'd be all for funnelling some of Metro's road funding to improve sidewalks around town, starting with the neighborhoods that have the worst.

That makes no sense. Sidewalk funding shouldn't be coming from an agency that needs that money to increase transit.

Within the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, the number of suburban neighborhoods where more than 20 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line more than doubled between 2000 and 2008-2012. Almost every major metro area saw suburban poverty not only grow during the 2000s but also become more concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods. By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents in the suburbs lived in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black residents in those communities, the figure was 53 percent.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2014/08/15-ferguson-suburban-poverty

According to a new report by the Brookings Institution, there are now 16.5 million souls in suburban America eking out an existence below the poverty line, compared to only 13.5 million in cities.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/25597-how-did-the-suburbs-become-the-zip-code-from-hell

The numbers of suburban poor are growing at a more rapid rate than those in urban areas. In 2012, there were 16.5 million Americans living below the poverty line in the suburbs compared with 13.5 million in cities. The number of suburban poor living in distressed neighborhoods grew by 139% since 2000, compared with a 50% jump in cities. Overall, the number of poor living in the suburbs has grown by 65% in the past 14 years—twice as much growth as in urban areas.

 

There are also few social programs to help the suburban poor ascend the economic ladder. In the counties surrounding the Denver and Colorado Springs area, for example, many charitable organizations and anti-poverty programs have historically been focused on urban cores and haven’t caught up to changing demographics.

http://time.com/3060122/poverty-america-suburbs-brookings/

People in dense cities are thinner and have healthier hearts than people in sprawling subdivisions. New research says the secret is in the patterns of the streets.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/blame-the-city/375888/

Uh, no. I have to laugh at your assertions about feeder roads and highways, since apparently all the studied experience you have with freeways is anti-freeway/pro-rail literature. As much as you'd like to think that the Grand Parkway was an evil plan created by Rick Perry, Tom DeLay, Bob Lanier, and John Culberson, the Grand Parkway has been in the planning books since the mid-1960s (and named as such) but was axed in the 1970s due to funding concerns. The modern Grand Parkway was indeed re-created by developers with donated land but the state caught on and forced the people in real estate interest off of the "Grand Parkway Association", which was pushing the Grand Parkway to be built and be back on the map. And that was in 1986. It took nearly another decade to get just the first segment built.

It is worth noting that the Grand Parkway was never designed with frontage roads to reduce the commercial clutter, as without it, there would've been wide arterials with strip malls and stoplights (like FM 1960), and that despite being tolled, it is being done with local funds, by way of HCTRA doing the duty rather than TxDOT. (source: Houston Freeways, which has its own citations)

Meanwhile, the reason why 288 doesn't have rail, and we've discussed this before, is that METRO doesn't extend into Pearland and due to tax laws, even if Pearland wanted it, they can't give the METRO tax that it needs, and frankly, using METRO funds to build rail to Pearland might get some resistance in the more urban areas, where METRO is having trouble enough in the Loop as it is.

And it is a fact that bob Lanier owned massive amounts of land where the Katy prarie portion of the grand parkway was built and is a former highway commissioner. Look you can choose to ignore every coincidence and think everything is happenstance but keep the ignorance in college station.

TXDOT is making toll roads because it's broke.

Feeder roads, while I'm not sure of their impact to traffic, are ugly and create swathes of strip malls.

The grand parkway expansion had nothing to do with solving traffic and everything to do with people who owned that land and developers.

It's fascinating TXDOT can look into future patterns and make roads for that but totally ignore rail for the same purpose.

Feeder roads aren't as necessary as you think.

35 won't get built. The neighborhoods would fight it at this point.

As far as tollways I'm all for them. Drivers can pay with their pocketbook if that's their choice of mode of travel. Add in se congestion pricing too.

Rail is a debatable investment in general, but it certainly makes absolutely no sense for the 288 median - there is already a parallel Main Street line right to the west. They will eventually continue that south and possibly take it out to Sugar Land.

Where the fort bend commuter rail would end would be nowhere near pearland. Also there is a huge population base in pearland that commutes to the medical center and to an extent downtown. Freeways are an awful investment but you don't say anything about that.