por favor gracias

Landscaping could stand an upgrade.

Thanks for all the pictures guys...looks great!

Yeah, me too.

In the spirit of going head to head with the Hilton, they should put a Lupe Tortilla in this one. 

Amen brotha! Lupe would do great downtown.

Yeah the residential tower sucks. I spent the least amount of time on that part since it doesn't exist and I had nothing to go off of.

Thanks though. I got bored waiting on some friends to get back in town so I sketched that up since we were discussing ways to improve GS. I had plans to sketch out other venues for the roof of GRB, and Houston Center but I may hold off on those after monarchs response. Lol

Right on with the light on!

I actually thought that rendering was really good...

Yikes!

 

...so i'm guessing that the official floor count as per your "residential tower" could be in excess of about (90x floors) which as we all know, shall undoubtably include about (500,000sf) of your beloved (gfr) ground floor retail.  this of course shall make your "concept" the tallest and largest edifice upon the "western hemisphere...  am i correct?

 

well, i tell you what "cloud713"...   why don't you take the initiative to present your "architectural" renderings (concepts) to "mr. brinsden" the ceo of midway cos.,  and see just what he may think of them...   i mean, you may never ever know until you try it right...    putt putt!

 

 

 

I "count" at least 100 floors from cloud713's "rendering."

I'm no architect (or artist), but this is my GreenStreet fantasy. In addition to the D&B/movie theater combo in the Sak building... A residential tower (since GS is mainly white I went with a white tower with green glass balconies (kind of Miami ish in appearance, but the overall style/design of my residential tower sucks)) on top of a reworked garage, with park space for the residents on the other portion of the garage. Carry the park space over on top of the old books a million portion (the sections on top of greenstreet could be open to the public, with the garage roof park strictly for residents), and finally over the covered walkway to the portion above forever XXI, providing an outdoor area for the hotel guests.

Then Putt Putt Golf on the roof above Lucky Strike, and possibly Laser Tag in one of the available spaces in GS. Make the area more family oriented/friendly so downtown isn't just a place for the mid 20s-30s crowd and second homes.

But I realize with a 5 star hotel, high end restaurants, ect, it may already be too late to refocus the development towards the family?

The "only thing" I would change about the design of your residential tower would be to make it look like a Flying V with flames on the side...

Other than THAT, well done! 

This is one of the top tourist destinations in Istanbul:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293974-d294555-Reviews-Basilica_Cistern-Istanbul.html

 

Ok, ours isn't 1500 years old and probably doesn't compare, but I paid to get in just to walk through (small fee) and they hold benefits and concerts down there all the time.

 

Wish we had more architecture like that here.

Thanks for all the updates MikeRichardson.

Nice pics LarryDierker...appreciate it!

Thanks SkylineView!

that would be one badass treehouse.. it was the onramp to Hardy tollroad heading south.

Well done!

This may make it even better. Maybe it is going to add a complexity to the view that we didn't think of. We won't know until it's done.

True dat...I hope that's the case.

I like the building itself and the infill, but I absolutely understand why a lot of people would prefer not to have the view from I-45 obstructed. It's one of the most striking manmade views in the world. The colors, the shapes, the textures and the sheer mass have always blown me away.

The problem with metro's system right now is that it focuses too much on coverage and not the corridors where ridership is highest.

The one thing about light rail is the buses used on that route can be used for other routes. Also developers love it. It's good in inner city dense corridors but outside I agree faster trains are best.

I agree 100%...and while I do prefer light rail to buses overall, there is a need for both.

Given that I've already stated that I don't think that LRT is a cost effective solution for Houston, I'm not overly concerned about whether rail funding is taking away from BRT.  I would be very happy to hear your plan on how to obtain the sufficient funding for bus, BRT, and LRT.

 

 

I think that you need to check your math.  It's almost exactly 20 miles from the intersection of Westheimer and Grand Parkway to the Galleria if you travel Westheimer.  In order to make that trip in 20-25 min, you'd have to average about 60 mph.  That seems...aggressive.

We all have different ideas, but I think we can all agree there are many areas where we can cut costs. Knowing how inefficiently we plan, build, and "fix" a lot of our roads and communities, and knowing that we've spent billions of dollars for highway projects and new stadiums, I'm inclined to think we can set aside a little money for a real transportation system...especially one that will save us a ton of money in the long run. There are also many ways we can generate more money...for example how we are currently offering incentives downtown. That's going to pay off big time (and on a side note, I really hope we can get Mayor Parker to help try a similar strategy and lure Tesla to build their mega-factory here).

I would agree that LRT isn't what we should be focusing on, at least right now. Put all the rail/mass transit money into higher speed, longer distance corridors for now. Get this city connected. As much as I prefer light rail to buses...unless/until we get a real mass transit network, I think we should prioritize light rail at a later time. We already have a lot of buses, and the way we're building our light rail...we're putting it down corridors where buses used to run anyways, and it's also interfering substantially with street and pedestrian traffic. If anything, we should focus our light rail funds on routes where the buses don't currently run and build them with less interference with traffic.

If the train leaves Cinco Ranch (doesn't have to be at the Grand Pkwy, but I'll go with that) and goes 60 or 80 MPH with only two 90-second stops near West Oaks and Westchase before reaching the Galleria, it could absolutely get there in 20 - 25 minutes. It depends on what kind of train we build and how we build it. It's 18.5 miles from the Grand Pkwy and Westheimer Pkwy to the Galleria in a straight line. You may consider 60 - 80 MPH to be "aggressive" (and I certainly don't "disagree" with that), but there are trains in Europe that go less than 35 miles and reach speeds of over 150 MPH. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that we can build one to reach 60 or 80 MPH with stops every 5 to 8 miles. It only takes an 8-car passenger train (and I think we can do with fewer cars than that with this particular line) going 80 MPH about a mile to completely stop. A 60 MPH top-speed train would probably get people from Katy to the Galleria in about 25 minutes, and 80 MPH top-speed train would probably do it in about 20 minutes. Either way, it would be faster than traveling by car, bus or light rail.

Thanks Triton!

Given that there are finite resources, the cost of building rail is underfunding bus and BRT.

 

You could just as easily flip the script and say that bus and BRT funding is taking away from rail/train funding. There are many ways we can fund one or the other, or both...and there are also many ways we can provide for that funding.

It all depends on how you categorize "beneficial".  I would categorize it as a metric of the number of individuals moved relative to the cost of the project.  For example, I think that there's a pretty strong argument for the success of the Bellaire "Quickline" bus which has 8,200 average daily boardings which is about double what the North rail line currently does at a fraction of the costs.

 

My question about Westheimer was - if the question is commuter rail, how do you run a line down Westheimer and out to Katy and make it effective for transit time.  LRT in Houston runs at 15 mph.  Let's assume that you can run a line down Westheimer at 20 mph.  That would make a trip from Katy to the Galleria one hour.  I don't see that as attractive to people.

I would say "beneficial" means what would get the most ridership with overall cost in mind, but not completely "relative to" monetary cost. I wouldn't mind paying a little, and perhaps a lot more for better service. That said, rail consistently gets better ridership numbers than buses. You're "comparing" a recently completed rail corridor with a BRT line that opened five years ago in a much denser area.

In response to commuter rail down Westheimer all the way out to Katy, we would have to build something like that with fewer stops (kind of like the 9 mile/8 stop Bellaire Quickline...but even fewer per mile since we're going over twice the distance). If we did that, there's no reason for it to average 20 MPH if the stops were, say, around Cinco Ranch, West Oaks, Royal Oaks, Westchase and the Hillcroft/Dunvale area (or perhaps just Cinco Ranch, West Oaks and Westchase). The first scenario could get people from Katy to the Galleria in a half an hour with 90 second load/unload times, and the second one could do it in about 20 or 25 minutes tops.

I don't see people using the "Quickline" to get from Bellaire and Ranchester to the TMC (9 miles) in 38 minutes as particularly "attractive" either, but people still use it as it's the best option they currently have.

These are the ideal systems, what we should strive for. Don't toss them out just for the sake of it.

 

I know in vancouver buses run every 8-9 minutes mostly and trains run every 3 minutes.

Could not agree more. I haven't been to Vancouver, but I can vouch for Germany's system.

What's so fragmented when rail can have multiple stops? Downtown doesn't have to be the only stop... There could be one somewhere in the EC, one at the beltway/city center, one at memorial city, one at the transit center at 610/post oak, and then finally downtown.. Commuter rail can go as fast as 125 mph, plus with traffic it's sure to be faster (even only going like 60-80), even with the few stops.

And if the rail replaced the HOT lanes on i10, or coexisted, it would provide a more attractive mode of transit than busses, more people would likely use the system. The problem now is they can't get to their destination from the HOV lanes without a car. the busses taken off the highway could be rerouted to spiderweb from the stations, so they would service more local areas around the stops

A lot of trains around the world are first-class. It's virtually impossible for that to be the case with roads and automobiles.

Singapore is less than half the size of Houston, with twice the density.  Germany is, well...a large European country.  Apples to oranges.

 

When you come back with some better comparisons then we can take a look at frequency and timeliness and get a good idea of what Metro can do to improve.

Houston is densifying, and it won't be long before we hit 10 million people in the metro area (probably in 20 or 25 years)...and even then, it's not like 8 million people 10 or 12 years from now will be If we build a world-class system, we'll get the ridership. If we don't, imagine how much fun sitting on "the new West Loop" will be by then. That and provide incentives for development near/along mass transit corridors.

As I've stated multiple times, my belief is that a much higher preference in terms of transportation planning should go to those that use transit because they can't afford a car rather than those who use transit because they don't want to use a car.  Rail bias isn't a factor for those people.  An improved bus network is the best way to leverage finite transportation dollars and extend coverage throughout the city.

 

Regarding Westheimer, not sure what you would be achieving given that this conversation was about I-10 commuter rail.  If you're proposing running rail all the way to the suburbs down the middle of Westheimer, that strikes me as a prohibitively long transit time. 

I like where you're going with planning being geared towards those who can't afford a car, but I don't think we should start out that way if it's not as beneficial as other routes would be overall for the city. That would be like "prioritizing" a Scott Street line over a Westheimer line.

People in NYC usually buy monthly passes.

LA is investing heavily in rail now. Even one of its most ardent critics Henry Waxman supports it going through Beverly Hills. Yet afton oaks still protests. LA should be a warning of what will happen to houston if it keeps procrastinating in investing in a proper pass transit system.

It has substantial meaning in my classification of a "world class city."

METRO indicates that the Park & Ride system currently carries 29% of downtown workers, and another 8% of downtown workers utilize other means of public transit for a total market share of 37% of the downtown workforce.

http://downtownhouston.org/site_media/uploads/attachments/2013-02-15/Mechanics_and_Cost_of_Transit_Service.pdf

If you look specifically at Park & Ride on the Katy Freeway, it currently has three locations which have a combined average weekday ridership of approx. 5,500 people.

You're proposing a system that would move 12,000 people/hour which would be approx. 36,000 people during a three hour peak rush hour period, but the statistics from METRO don't indicate that kind of demand. Their statistics indicated that there's only (rough math) about 18,000 people that are going from those locations to downtown. That's admittedly a very rough analysis, but I'd be very curious to see some statistics that refute it.

The base assumption that you're making is that a high percentage of the people that are riding the Katy Freeway are going to downtown but METROs statistics seem to indicate otherwise. They indicate that the people riding the Katy Freeway are highly fragmented in their destinations and that's a huge concern when discussing rail on that corridor.

I wasn't really "proposing" that particular system, I was just demonstrating how many people trains can move at a time and that's one way to address IronTiger's scenario.

That said, rail ridership is generally higher than bus ridership. I'd be surprised if that 18,000 number demand wouldn't increase significantly if we had a first-class subway option. It would also give us a blueprint for more sustainable growth and future development. I see no reason to continue to sit in traffic and wait until there are 10 or 15 million people living here before we address this issue. We all know that's what's on the horizon anyways...and really, 10 million is quite comfortably in the "foreseeable" future. We'll probably be there around 2035 or 2040. If we keep growing like we are right now, we could be there by next June...