DNAguy

Those aren't decorational pyramids at the top of the garage level; they're homeless spikes!  

Nah bro. It's just zombie apocalypse ready. 'Bell tower' perfect for sniping and/or putting a 50 cal. in. The spikes prevent the scaling of the building.

Since we are integrating stickers, can I just integrate my TxTag, registration, AND inspection into one sticker?

Why can't I pay my registration automatically like my tolls from a TxTag account?

Hmmmm. I just see that eventually all this inspection, registration, and 'toll' business will all get integrated. The 'tolls' will actually then go to a 'per mile' usage fee for all miles driven per year and your registration cost will reflect this. The gas tax just cant keep up.

This will take some time, however.

^^ eh, not so much saving money as kicking the can down the road, and opening yourself up for a ticket in the process.  Granted, not a moving violation - still, I prefer to keep my interactions with the po - po out of the "do you know why I stopped you" territory.

I guess that really depends how risk averse you are.

Myself? Well, both my registration and inspection are due this month. I usually always do this with my vehicle b/c its easier to remember. I guess now the state is forcing my habit on all of us. However, b/c of the inspection-after-registration-grace year-loophole I'm going to get my inspection done August 1st.

There you go. I'll have 15 minutes of driving total driving (to the shop) that I'll be out of compliance.

I'll take that risk to save $40.

As far as the signature downtown stations I'd like to see combine HSR, commuter, light rail, buses, and street cars there really is only two real places to consider:

1.) Current downtown post office 

or

2.) Hardy Yards

The post office site has some advantages that Hardy doesn't and visa versa. What are the advantages of one site vs another as you guys and gals see them?

There are lots of broad strokes being painted: "Culberson doesn't understand mass transit" is one, but I honestly don't think METRO does all that well either (for reasons, see my post on page 1). "Culberson is anti-rail" is another extremely popular one, he just doesn't run street running light rail on Richmond...an important difference, which is irrelevant if you're blinded by love of light rail and the All-Important Original Plan, but it's a difference none the less.

Of course, politicians are supposed to be painted in broad strokes: you can stack those things (anti-whatever, think of your own examples) to make deliciously easy to hate.

Culberson doesn't want rail on Richmond period.  Doesn't matter if it's street running, elevated or submerged.  This isn't necessarily because he's opposed to rail, but obviously some very "important" people to Culberson are opposed, so of course he will be as well.  It's not about what's best for Houston, it's about politics. 

 

Personally I think that the best east-west rail route would be a subway line down Westheimer, all the way out to Beltway 8, but whatever.  The closest Houston came to having a robust transit system was the 80s.  It's been all downhill from there. 

 

And BTW, I agree with you about METRO not knowing much about transit either.  It's all very frustrating. 

Culberson's objection is ridiculous on so many levels. He stands for limited Fed government, yet he uses the power of the feds to deny a local government entity the right to execute the will of the people. The rights of few outweighing the will of many. Man, that doesn't sound like democracy to me.

His big and most vocal objection is rail on Richmond. However, in his district the rail is on Richmond from Shephard to Edloe. That's it. A total distance of 1.4 miles. That represents less than 12% of the whole distance. 

He also raises the issue that METRO can't afford it. To this I might agree. METRO isn't run well at all. They are the Murphy's law of local governance. This is / may be true. But if this is the case, how on earth could we get fed $ if the agency is so backwards and poor? Maybe more effort should be taken to revise the grant / fed $ allotment process than to just blacklist a local government agency. 

And what makes all this even more comical is that he's doubling down when he's already won! Metro will lose out on 20% of the 1% sales tax revenue until 2025. That 20 % will go to building roads and not provide transportation. METRO has also released a revised bus system! A system that is efficient and provides more reliable service for the same amount of $. It's literally what Culberson / Republicans has been asking government to do: Live w/in its means and provide better outcomes. Does he not realize that he's won? Does he even know that METRO released a new bus system layout? Has he ever taken a bus? 

So they're going to move the two grave sites that are located at the corner of Memorial and Houston Ave?

IDK about you guys (and gals), but the thought of living close to the courthouse haunts my dreams. In my own personal hell, I would have to spend eternity in that dingy building waiting to be called in front of a judge. I'll tell you what though; I never feel more appreciative about where I live and the work that I do do than when I'm done w/ a jury summons or had to appear for a ticket.

I'm really curious about the 'flex' zones and how they'll work.

Does any other major city have them?

Are they a model for other areas of Houston / un-incorporated Harris county /  suburban cities like Sugar Land could emulated in the future as more and more people move here? 

How do we ensure that we don't have to re-invent the wheel like this again?

Does Metro have a strategic plan for bus service?

And for my next discovery, a little something I call...gravity!

Everyone knows that's totes been done, like, forever ago  ......

I'm not willing to get into another pointless trains/highways discussion or another pointless Pierce Elevated discussion, so how about something different: frontage roads, the type of highway design commonly found in Texas? A brief primer is at Wikipedia.

Frontage roads are considered to be a type of highway lanes and allow businesses and others to interface with the highway. Otherwise, you're left with a wide thing that actually no serves true "city" purpose (and is why freeways have a bad rep). Continuous freeway lanes (not just providing exit/entrance purposes) of course take up more space, but it also serves as detour lanes when highway closures are necessary.

I tend to not like them when exiting/entering (depending on where the ramp is and what the traffic is like), nor do they seem particularly well as local routes (Cypress Towne Center businesses are a great example of this), but they do give local road function (always good) and they make highway scenery more interesting.

What do you think?

They help w/ the flow of traffic and make navigating easier by usually allowing more frequent exits / easier u-turns. However, I feel as if that they actually induce sprawl / make the city uglier.

So I guess I'm 50/50 on them.

Ok, I raise your question w/ another question:

"What do you call the roads that run parallel to a highway that allow you to enter and exit the highway?"

A) Frontage Rd

B.) Feeder Rd (The Feeder)

C) Access Rd

Based on the above 1978 photo of the area around what will now be the Marriott Marquis, I have marked the areas that have been redeveloped into something other than a parking lot in green, and the areas that used to have improvement but now have parking lots in red.  The areas that are expected to be redeveloped within the next couple years I have overlaid in yellow.  Not bad for less than 40 years! (click for bigger view)

 

Stellar work!

Are all of the remaining segments planned to be tolls? I assume they are in order to get built but then there's segment D which is nice and free.

Yes. All segments will be tolled except for the section between I10 and the westpark tollway.

Speaking for myself here, no amount of ball swaying could hypnotize me or draw me in. Just saying, lol.

The original manufacturer of these God awful things is this company I believe: http://www.bullsballs.com/

I assume the first person that put these on their truck, were compensating for the lack of a set of their own.

The answer to C) is the same as A).

The plural of scrotum is scrota. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure whatever Chinese worker that is casting these things know what they are...but maybe not why they're being hung from the under carriage of a truck.

They are pretty big in Europe too. (No pun intended) They're called Brass Bollocks or something to that effect.

@ Purple

You, sir, might be the most knowledgeable person I've met (ish) on the subject of truck nuts. I applaud your mastery of the subject.

It also led me to my glorious new band name: "Truck nut Guru".

Kevin James is like the new Adam Sandler which is a real shame.

I think the new Adam Sandler is the real shame

Segways were the worst thing security companies could buy. I can just never take anyone seriously when they're riding one 

Oh man, you did it now! You brought this on yourself!

That's the root of the problem.  Most people don't think they will ever hurt themselves.  Even worse is the blatant disregard most have for others on the road!  And I often times find the worst offenders to be the people who have those annoying stickers showing Dad/Mom/Kid1/Kid2/Baby Darth Vader/Family Cat etc.  Or my all time favorite bad drivers are people with those ridiculous truck nutz.  I've yet to see someone with those drive with care.  Often times those truck nutz will be paired with the oversized "big rig" style exhausts coming up from behind the cab belching diesel smoke when they floor it.  These are just my observations from years of driving local freeways/roads.

Is there anything more fascinating than the set of 'truck nuts' on a vehicle? Hear me out. I mean, the mind races with questions when you're stuck behind an F-350 and a set of these babies wobbles in front of you as you speed along in the Texas heat. It's like a car accident dangling on the back of a hitch. You want to look away, but the hypnotic swaying draws you in.....

So many questions.....

A) Who was the first guy to make them?

B.) What possessed him to put them on his truck? Did he think that his truck needed to identify as male?

C) Who was the first person to mass produce truck nuts?

D) Are there real chrome ones and what are the most expensive pair that anyone makes / has purchased. Are there truck nuts made of precious metals? What will future cultures think of us when archaeologists uncover a set?

D) Are the Chinese factory workers who make them even able to comprehend why they're making anatomically accurate scroti (I'm assuming that's how you pluralize scrotum)? Would they be disappointed if they knew the truth?

E) Is there anywhere else in the world where something like this could catch on?

I really hope someone makes a documentary about them. I can see it now:

"Truck Nuts: A True Example of American Exceptionalism"

'A City on a Hill', The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, Manifest Destiny, Civil Rights and now..... truck nuts.

I guess it's not THAT bad if the poles double as street lights.  

I'm pretty sure we're in the mess we're in w/ transportation and infrastructure because many of our officials' decisions were predicated by the statement "I guess it's not THAT bad if......".

I think that the Grand Parkway should become a full loop: just send the 99 designation down 146 while expanding the existing Seabrook Road into a wide boulevard by taking out the old railroad.

For the full loop, the section that is the thorniest isn't actually 146 itself. The issues comes when you try and get from 45 south to 146 to complete the loop. 

I just don't see the people of League city being all that jazzed about having a tollway replace Loop 646 / 16th street. 

It's happening!

http://swamplot.com/cafe-express-on-kirby-is-closing-at-the-end-of-may/2014-05-22/

I'm sorry, but it has to be done:

Bravo burying the utilities, so ugly to see wooden telephone poles everywhere.

They can't be that bad. I mean, Metro didn't get rid of them in the East end and it ended looking just fine......

What you're describing is known as the theory of constraints. It's a very well-known manufacturing methodology that identifies why output of a production line does not achieve it's maximum throughput. It applies well to mobility.

If it's so well known as a manufacturing methodology, why did I have to re-invent it 30 years later?

We, as taxpayers aren't paying for it in the first instance.   So  we don't pay more to use.  Users pay for the road.  Period. The toll roads are built and paid for by issuing bonds, which will be paid off with toll revenues. 

Well, not exactly.

If TxDOT builds a toll road, then it has to issue bonds. 

Tolls on the roads are, in principle, supposed to go to pay off those bonds. However, this really isn't the case. To TxDOT, money in is money in. In addition, they also leverages tolls + gas tax revenue to float more bonds for future projects. They count the tolls as income just as gas taxes. All they did is just take out a loan to build a road. So the $ to pay off the bonds comes from the whole pie of incoming TxDOT $. The extra 3, 7 , 9% could have build / maintained more lanes. So we really are stuck with a road that we paid more to build than if we had the $ today and the prospect of paying to use it forever. When $ is tight, there is always a premium to have something built faster.

I'm not saying whether there actually isn't any benefit for building highways as tollways, but lets call it what it is. It disincentives use and incentives other means of transportation / mass transit. One could argue that all highways should be tolled.

I know that TxDOT doesn't own the ROW, but why didn't they look into routing 45 from 610 to DT along what will be the Hardy DT connector? You then route it along 59 from I10 to 45 south.

The current section of I 45 now becomes I145.

Would there be enough ROW? Do the laws permit a swap between HCTRA and TxDOT so that I145 or some spur designation could be tolled? I'm curious if this could actually work.

I dunno.  As it is, 59/69 southbound past downtown and through the 288 split seems to be a parking lot pretty much any time of the day.  As far as how to get onto 59/69, it may make more sense to use the North Loop, keeping the portion through the Northside down to some point around downtown as a spur.  Using the 10 corridor would end up with a lot of relatively tight curves one right after the other, with a concurrent opportunity for mayhem.

One thing I've come to realize is that when you get rid of a bottle neck in a system, you expose / exacerbate other bottle necks. If this prevents you from fixing a known problem (b/c you know that'll you'll just run into another problem down / upstream), then you in a paralyzed state where nothing gets down.

No doubt that 59/288 interchange needs to be fixed. By fixing the 45/59 interchange, you're actually incentivising the earlier action.

I dunno.  As it is, 59/69 southbound past downtown and through the 288 split seems to be a parking lot pretty much any time of the day.  As far as how to get onto 59/69, it may make more sense to use the North Loop, keeping the portion through the Northside down to some point around downtown as a spur.  Using the 10 corridor would end up with a lot of relatively tight curves one right after the other, with a concurrent opportunity for mayhem.

I like where your head's at. However, I think you run into problems with the directing the 'regular' through traffic of 45 into the industrial part of Houston. Lots of trucks from 59 to 45 south on 610. Plus you have a large bridge. And the 610 / 225 / 45 area is already loaded up with lands that end and merge in a way that would only add to the nightmare that it is today. 

Baytown segment is definitely weird, however the I-10 to 290 segment does make sense IMO. You've got Bridgelands which is going to be split directly down the middle by the GP and most of the rest of the highway has construction on either side or soon to be developed plots. Segment E was really all about getting ahead of the game.

With Houston's west side developing at a pace roughly 20 years faster than rest of Houston, I guess you're right.

I fail to understand the need for the 59 north to I10 east section though. However, Exxon has a big refinery in Baytown and their new campus is right off the Grand parkway. I wouldn't put it past TxDOT to just build the road to help reduce that refinery to campus commute. What's a couple billion bucks anyway?