EaDo Lou

52 minutes ago, Triton said:

Oh looks like they finally put steel in the way now. I rode past those barricades just a few weeks ago and it was still fully open. Guess that means avoid this area for the next year or so...

I tried the suggested detour yesterday - MLK to Old Spanish Trail to Lidstone. It is actually not too bad. The sidewalks are wide and empty of pedestrians, at least on the east side of MLK and the north side of OST, almost like a bike trail.

28 minutes ago, steve1363 said:

What are you talking about?  The OP is about a future event that will take place in January 2024.  Are you confusing with the NCAA Basketball Championship held last year?

I think this MarlonVaremez "person" is actually an Artificial Intelligence chatbot. There is just something not quite human about the way it uses words, very much like ChatGPT. My guess is that the bot is trained to automatically scour the internet looking for keywords and it does this for thousands of discussion forums across the internet. It saw the words "NCAA" and "Championship" and using probability and statistics, thought the post was referring to a past NCAA basketball tournament. Look how the bot includes a link to a website, which I am not clicking because it is probably a scam or something. I bet MarlonVaremez does not respond to this post.😁

12 hours ago, steve1363 said:

No graphics of the new trail?

I haven't seen any graphics yet. If gaining the necessary right of ways was no challenge, the best path would be like shown by the blue line. This is probably not possible because it takes it straight through the backyard of some homes.

More likely, the path will be something like shown by the pink or red lines below. I am assuming Wescott to Blossom would be optimal, although perhaps Wescott to Memorial is an option as well. I am just speculating.

Good news for those of us who like to ride to Memorial Park. The path will run along Buffalo Bayou.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/houston/2023/09/06/461609/houstons-memorial-and-buffalo-bayou-parks-to-be-connected-by-forthcoming-trail/

15 minutes ago, hindesky said:

I know of 4 in the greater Houston area.

1. Main St. at Montrose Blvd.

2. Washington Ave. at Wescott St.

3. South side of the Washburn Tunnel.

4. North side of the Washburn Tunnel.

There aren't very many inside the 610 Loop (only 5 of them), but there are plenty in the Houston area.  You can import the attached KML file into Google Earth to get the location of all the roundabouts in Texas.  There seem to be well over 100 in the Houston area alone, with a large concentration in a neighborhood in Cypress.

roundabout_export_9_23_2022.kml

According to the source below, there are approximately 8,800 roundabouts in USA, with about 396 of these in Texas.  Florida has the most with 589.  About 500 new roundabouts are built every year.

https://roundabouts.kittelson.com/pdf/Rodegerdts - Status of Roundabouts in North America 2022.pdf

That's an aerial photo from several years ago.  That long white building on the left was torn down in 2011 or 2012.  If I understand correctly, in most cases, Google utilizes a machine learning algorithm to attempt to reconstruct in 3D what it sees from the 2D aerial photos (sometimes combined with StreetView data, where available). In other words, these 3D models for this location were probably automatically generated by AI, not a human.  I'm not sure how often they update their graphics, but apparently not often enough.

If I am not mistaken, I think these are the only 4 traditional single-family homes that still exist within the CBD region bounded by I-10, I-45, and I-69.  All other homes have been torn down, moved out, or exist as museum homes only.  I am not sure about this, but I can't find any other of these kind of houses in this region.

https://abc13.com/community-events/houston-botanic-garden-opens-to-the-public-today/6424092/

34 minutes ago, hindesky said:

Moody Center on Rice Campus (west side of the building)?

https://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/09-04-20-buffalo-bayou-new-park-trail-fannin-street-mckee-street-austin-street-bikeway/

1 hour ago, TacoDog said:

How high (or how fast would the flow rate have to be) would the bayou have to be to cause the bridge to collapse? We could see a tropical storm/hurricane next Monday/Tuesday. 

 

There are equations for calculating the forces imposed by moving water (see https://www.bgstructuralengineering.com/BGASCE7/BGASCE7006/BGASCE70604.htm#:~:text=Hydrodynamic loads are those load,the effects of breaking waves.).  Large debris in the water, such as trees, vehicles, etc would be even worse.  If the fire reduced the strength of the trestles well below their capacity to withstand these forces, I would say it might be possible to at least partially collapse the bridge.  But I would say that is an unlikely scenario.  But you never know.  It will be interesting to see what happens if we do get a flood next week.

42 minutes ago, cspwal said:

They probably have a lot of spare capacity, since it was originally built for trains and now the heaviest thing that goes over it is an electric cargo bike

Good point.  From a load perspective, the loss of a trestle or two is no big deal since the original design loads were significantly higher.  However, there is still a requirement that the deflections/vertical displacement in the concrete be kept below a certain maximum value in order to prevent cracks from developing and possibly allowing water to enter the cracks and corrode the internal rebar.  Thus, the loss of support could be a problem in that regards.  But it appears the supports are still in pretty good shape even after the fire, and if so, I would imagine they could open up the bridge fairly quickly.

2 hours ago, s3mh said:

Seems like they were able to put it out quickly once they were able to get hoses down there.  The wood is over 100 years old.  Hopefully, some fire damage won't affect the structural integrity.  They already replaced one of the trestles in the middle of the bridge and did not have to close it down during the work.  Fingers crossed.

 

https://theleadernews.com/fire-department-battles-blaze-under-heights-bridge/

 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Fire-erupts-under-White-Oak-Bayou-bridge-15495693.php#photo-19830950

I rode past it on my bike and as of 4PM, it was still smoldering and they were still putting water on it.  But I agree, the damage is surprisingly minor, at least superficially.  Hopefully the follow-up inspection will reveal no significant loss of integrity of the wood.  I wonder if there was some kind of fireproofing that had been applied to the wood long ago?

4 hours ago, cspwal said:

Looks like on Google Maps detouring to Heights BLVD (on-street bike lane) is a 3/4 mile detour

If your destination is downtown, there is a quicker detour to the trail along White Oak Bayou via Stude Park.  This does require a short amount of on-street riding, but it is not too bad.

15 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Kind of wish it didn't look like drain culverts coming out but I guess the engineering required it.

 

The simplistic aesthetic design is likely the result of the limited budget rather than any engineering constraints.  Civil engineers and architects can do almost anything given enough money.