lithiumaneurysm

4 minutes ago, H-Town Man said:

Basically they are worried that the Ion will displace the huge homeless population in that area and instead they want the Ion to house the homeless, provide them public restrooms, and give jobs to the people of the area.

They also want the Ion coalition to take preemptive action against Third Ward gentrification:

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The Ion will almost inevitably accelerate predatory homebuying and development in nearby Third Ward, a historically African American neighborhood. The development’s leaders have invoked the importance of supporting and involving communities such as Third Ward but they have not proposed measures to protect Third Ward residents from rising property values and displacement.

[...]

If the Innovation Corridor partners are sincerely interested in benefiting Third Ward and communities like it, they would agree to provide protections against gentrification, support local businesses and art, provide living-wage jobs and secure generational wealth through housing.

What compensation does the city offer to businesses affected by regular road construction? I don't think the dozens of businesses on Memorial Drive on the west side are getting anything for the pain of that disastrous project. I'm not sure why transit projects should be (and often are) held to a different standard. Infrastructure projects are disruptive by nature and a necessary evil.

On 5/24/2019 at 11:25 PM, 102IAHexpress said:

I agree. Freeways that are very popular, jam packed, bustling with excitement should be expanded. Give the people what they want. The best argument for more freeways is watching hundreds of thousands of people in their cars use them everyday. 

Is this what the people want? Houston voters approved a five-line light rail system over a decade ago and never got what they were promised. District 7 just flipped from an anti-transit congressman to a pro-transit congresswoman. Kinder Institute surveys every year show half of all Houstonians would prefer to live in in more dense, walkable neighborhoods as opposed to car-dependent suburbs. It's inaccurate to conflate the use of freeways in a heavily car-dependent city with popular demand. The only accurate way to measure what Houstonians want is by scientific surveys and ballot referendums, which suggest the opposite of what you say.

The language used by Siegel strikes me as odd... sure, Gulfton residents have a higher propensity to use METRO, but is there no push to get more Bellaire residents to use transit too? What were the "transit issues" at the Bellaire @ S. Rice location? It always struck me as a sleepy, run-of-the-mill TC when I lived nearby.

It almost sounds like Bellaire is happy to have less transit access.

5 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

 

But see, Slide #49 (I think), "Off-Street Parking Standards".  It seems to provide for reduced (and eliminated) parking requirements at least for some streets (TOD Streets and Primary TOD Streets)

True, which is good. But TOD Streets are a much more limited classification than Walkable Places, which can be created anywhere if property owners support it. TOD Streets are, of course, limited to where fixed transit exists, which doesn't cover much of the city. Better than nothing, though.

On 5/1/2019 at 10:15 AM, Texasota said:

Check it: http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Commissions/docs_pdfs/walkable_places/Walkable Places _May 1st 2019 Draft.pdf

 

This looks genuinely impressive.

These are great improvements over the current code, especially mandatory compliance near transit stops and more stringent site planning standards. However, if I'm reading slide 21 correctly, development in Walkable Place zones will still have to meet 100% of the city's minimum parking requirements. That's disappointing—excessive parking is probably the biggest issue on corridors like Lower Westheimer, but at least with this new ordinance future lots will be placed behind buildings. Requiring additional bike parking doesn't offset the impact of surface parking lots on walkability. I wish the committee would have been a bit bolder here; if we want these Walkable Places to represent something other than the Houston status quo, parking needs to be completely optional.

1 hour ago, IronTiger said:

 

That's how the world works. Most laws are put in place after abuse of existing laws or tragedies (the alternative is pre-emptively banning everything), and most signals and road improvements are put in place after tragedy (or at least some horrific congestion issues). However, Houston was developed a long time ago...the Heights is neither a virgin suburb or a large plat of land that could be redeveloped as a miniature planned community (like, say, CityCentre). Nor is it comparable to the Netherlands, with its much denser road network, more (traditionally) homogeneous population, and a variety of other differences.

I respectfully disagree. We have a real-world example of a Western country which has adopted a pre-emptive roadway design philosophy and has subsequently seen significant reductions in traffic deaths. It's worth noting the Netherlands had a higher traffic fatality rate than the U.S. before the Sustainable Safety reforms were introduced. They had many of the same issues that we have today with conflicts between vehicular and non-vehicular users and poor road design.

We don't even have to look to Europe for better roadway design. Consider Australia, which has a traffic fatality rate one-half the U.S.'s despite being just as car-dependent. In Perth, pedestrian crossings are generally built (or existing ones retrofitted) with refuge islands and, on arterial roads, their version of a HAWK signal. Here's what a pedestrian crossing looks like on a four-lane road there:

https://goo.gl/maps/qRbRtkfVUb52 

You'd be hard-pressed to find that quality of pedestrian crossing in Houston because of our reactive approach. Perth and other Australian cities have been actively retrofitting their infrastructure with these improved safety features. The Netherlands retrofitted their (significantly older) road network over a couple of decades. We shouldn't wait, and we shouldn't make excuses for inaction.

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I'm saying we shouldn't throw money into questionable pre-emptive traffic redesigns because it worked halfway around the world. We can't even find solid evidence that "complete streets" actually are beneficial.

 

This link is a discussion of the impact of Complete Streets on property values and has no relevance to safety.

33 minutes ago, IronTiger said:

The pedestrians killed obviously at the driver at fault--she didn't even stop if I'm reading it right. But at the same time, that appears to be an isolated incident, and if you actually read my posts, I wouldn't be against adding more HAWK signals for times pedestrians need to cross roads. What I am against is people never letting a tragedy go to waste and whinging about cars and (in general) absolving pedestrians and bicyclists of all guilt (and yielding right of way). I used to work in a business near Spring Street, and I could probably count on my fingers how many actually stopped even when I approached the intersection, so it's not anecdotal. The only reason I brought that up was to do some actual research on studying existing behavior at the intersection before adding any sort of permanent fixture.

Is it really an isolated incident? People are "whinging about cars" because Houston has abysmal transportation safety metrics. We have an abundance of scientific literature which suggests our infrastructure design standards are a large contributor—that they give far too much space and lenience to drivers and little to no consideration to other users.

The point I've been trying to make is that we need to remove perceptions of guilt from the design of our infrastructure. The Dutch standards that I mentioned previously presume that human beings make mistakes and break rules. They design roads around that fundamental truth, and as a result, their roadway fatality rate is one third the U.S.'s. Their methodology is preventative. Houston's is reactive—we install HAWK signals and other interventions after a tragedy (often multiple) has taken place. We assume people will always follow rules and absolve ourselves of the responsibility to preempt these tragedies. Sure, better education and enforcement are also important, but that's not the whole nine yards.

We could commission hundreds of studies on existing behavior, or we could use what we already know: people adjust their behavior to their surroundings, and we can design our streets to a set of standards which exploits this fact to the benefit of all roadway users.

We should expect these horrific incidents to continue as long as we keep kicking the can down the road on making our infrastructure safer. If it takes an accident to install a HAWK signal or some other intervention, dozens and dozens more people will die before Houston's infrastructure is anything close to safe. Only a systemic, proactive approach which changes the design philosophy of the entire roadway system will make a meaningful impact on pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

Edit: Also, yes, there are many urbanists who are rabidly anti-car, to a point of absurdity. But I think most people invested in the issue, especially in Houston, understand that this is a car-dependent city and that provisions need to be made for traffic efficiency. That doesn't mean our standards are not up to par, or that we don't grant an excessive amount of space to drivers at the expense of the safety of other users.

19 hours ago, IronTiger said:

It's not bias, they're inherently unequal, and arguably it's pro-pedestrian since if a car hits a pedestrian, by default if a motorist hits a pedestrian, the motorist is at fault (save for isolated incidents like if the pedestrian threw themselves in front of a car as part of an obvious insurance scam). If bicyclists were required to get licenses, insurances, and have consequences for breaking the law, then there's more room for comparison, and as it stands, infrastructure isn't going to do squat if either party blows through a light or sign.

(Emphasis mine)

Infrastructure affects behavior, though. As I said before, there will always be bad actors in a system—drivers who speed, bicyclists who run lights, etc.—but the way we design our infrastructure can affect both the rate at which bad actors appear and the consequences of poor decision making. Drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians don't exist in vacuums where they make decisions without regard for the context of their surroundings. They respond, consciously or unconsciously, to the way the infrastructure is built.

The idea that changing our infrastructure will not reduce pedestrian and bicyclist accidents because those parties are generally irresponsible is patently false. Consider the Dutch "Sustainable Safety" transportation planning program, which studies have found led to a 30% reduction in the roadway fatality rate (for all roadway users) in that country between 1998 and 2007. Sustainable Safety emphasizes contextual roadway design, playing on our perceptions of space to design streets that clearly communicate expectations for each user (driver, pedestrian, etc.). A situation like Shepherd would never exist under the Dutch model. If Houston adopted Sustainable Safety principles, there would be clearly delineated areas for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians, and the roadway would be designed to passively enforce its speed limit with proven traffic calming strategies. This presentation by a Northeastern University student provides a good summary of how Sustainable Safety principles could be applied in the U.S.

Also, are we forgetting that this discussion started with news of two pedestrians being killed while legally using a marked crosswalk? The pedestrians in question here were not bad actors. I'm not sure why bicyclists who (anecdotally) run stop signs on Spring Street two miles away are relevant to a conversation about improving safety on Shepherd. This story is a clear cut example of the inadequacy of our infrastructure, and we shouldn't be muddying the waters with irrelevant discussions about how bicyclists run stop signs sometimes.

1 hour ago, IronTiger said:

 

I'm not going to argue points ripped straight out of transit/New Urbanist blogs, "muh dead pedestrians", etc. (because I just know that you'll pull out some source from them, which is usually deliberately skewed to prove a point),

It doesn't seem like you're here to have a discussion in good faith. You're building a strawman out of Angostura by accusing him of being some sort of New Urbanist shill instead of actually arguing the substance of his comment. Is asking how many pedestrian deaths is acceptable really that absurd or offensive to you? It seems like a legitimate public policy question to me.

Your comment is an example of how the internet degrades our discourse. Angostura never personally attacked you, but you automatically resorted to accusing him of being an irredeemable partisan when he tried to engage in a civil conversation with you.

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but bicyclists and pedestrians still need to follow the rules just like everyone else does. I fail to see why bicyclists deserve to "share the road" when they believe they're above the law. (You know who you are.)

This isn't really relevant to the discussion. Sure, people should follow rules and we should enforce them, but good design anticipates poor human behavior. Transportation infrastructure should minimize death and injury, period. That goal shouldn't be contingent on our personal, biased perceptions of certain groups of people. Nobody argues that we should remove clear zones on freeways because bad drivers just need to learn to follow the rules (and that we shouldn't feel bad when they die if they don't!).

Every system suffers from bad actors. It's human nature. We shouldn't sentence people to death for their poor decision making out of some medieval idea of fairness.

If other countries have achieved far lower fatality rates in their transportation systems than Houston's while maintaining reasonable commute times and accessibility for private cars, there's no reason we can't as well.

5 hours ago, dbigtex56 said:

Many of the shots in the Sicko Mode video are identifiable as being in Houston. Some of the interiors are Che' on Main St. 

I was bored a couple of months ago and made a map of all the filming locations (that I could identify) in Houston. The only scene I'm missing is the one with Travis Scott at a swimming pool - not sure if that was filmed in Houston, but the rest of the video was.

I live right next to these lots. A new driveway off of Newcastle was added to the western one a couple of months ago, and I've seen trucks parked in the grass every now and then, but otherwise no activity.

2 hours ago, Angostura said:

 

There is ALREADY a 4-story parking garage 500 ft from this site. There are also already HUNDREDS of off-street parking spaces within easy walking distance of the main destinations on 19th and 20th streets. The problem isn't that there's not enough parking around 19th and 20th St, they're just very inefficiently allocated, because everyone has to provide their own exclusive parking to get an occupancy permit. The current owners of those parking spaces AREN'T ALLOWED to rent them to other people. If we de-coupled parking from the destination and allowed a market for parking to develop, the existing parking supply would be more than enough to serve current and future development nearby.

 

Your last point is also important: currently the only way we get even halfway decent urbanism is by developing HUGE parcels of land (e.g. City Centre), which allow for enough scale to build structured parking. However, most great streetscapes are built as small parcels (20-60 feet of frontage), not monolithic block faces (see in Houston the 300 block of Main St and the good block-and-a-half of 19th). We should want to have development rules that don't make building great streetscapes illegal. 

Seriously. Off-street parking will remain a mainstay in Houston in the absence of parking requirements—new developments in Downtown are still consistently accompanied by parking. But removing these requirements will at least give small businesses a fighting chance to participate in urban development alongside big developers, instead of being pushed out of the game by onerous parking requirements that mandate they double their land purchases just to construct a private lot.

It's completely absurd that we push the enormous cost of supplying parking entirely onto private landowners via legal mandate. It's an authoritarian solution to a problem best solved by the market, and it's particularly egregious in a country like the U.S. which (often smartly) prioritizes market solutions and private property rights. Minimum parking requirements also act against Houston's own interests. The city's annexation days are over—the only way to grow property tax revenue is through developing existing land. Every unwarranted parking lot created by these requirements neutralizes land which could otherwise be productive and reduces the city's tax revenue per unit area.

8 hours ago, 102IAHexpress said:

19th century transportation technology

This is such an old and lame meme. Really, I can buy the more rational arguments that rail is too expensive, not appropriate for most places in Houston, etc. but just calling it old is so out of touch with reality it renders the rest of your comment irrelevant. If rail is a 19th century technology, then someone explain why the most technologically advanced nations (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Western Europe) all have such extensive and wildly successful high-speed rail systems. East Asian countries in particular have been at the forefront of all the high-tech breakthroughs of the last 50 years and they've been building more rail, not less. China is literally exporting high-speed rail systems to tens of millions of people in Southeast Asia and Africa as part of their grand geopolitical strategy.

Seriously. Imagine being more concerned with ideology than practical solutions for problems that have been solved time and time again in other cities around the world. Houston may not have a population density or layout appropriate for an extensive rail system, but at least be honest with yourself that it's a relevant and widely adopted technology that is essential to the functioning of the world's most modern cities.

1 hour ago, texas911 said:

So people that are moving to Houston come from cities that have rail. What do they all have in common, its outrageously expensive to live in those cities! Thanks, but no thanks. You want to live in a city with rail, go move there! Options people, options.

Rail isn't some luxury item that cities buy as a present for their residents. It is (or should be) part of a toolbox of urban transportation solutions, to be used on highly trafficked corridors where cars aren't getting the job done.

Here's the throughput of a single 10-foot lane based on transportation mode: https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Design-to-Move-People_all-e1461361807936.jpg. Because cars require so much space to operate and often only carry one person, they have a very low throughput. Bus and rail lines are extremely effective when the terminus of the line is a compact, highly popular destination. That's why our Park and Ride system is so much more efficient than driving for commuters heading downtown. It's able to transport many times the number of people without becoming congested on highly-trafficked corridors (the freeways) to a compact, walkable destination (the CBD). The low throughput of our freeway system exhibits itself every day during rush hour(s), when roadways which only have the capacity to move a few thousand people in an hour without congestion are suddenly packed with tens of thousands.

There is no evidence that building rail makes cities more expensive. Los Angeles has become expensive despite being the eternal stereotype of a car city. What does make cities expensive is unmet demand, both for housing and transportation. If Houston wants to avoid the costliness and congestion of L.A., we need to keep building as much housing as possible, and we need to keep an open mind to implementing higher-capacity modes of transportation, like BRT and rail, where they have been proven to work elsewhere.

If a lot on a major thoroughfare in one of the densest and most walkable areas in Houston isn't a logical place to put a multifamily tower, I don't know what is. The only way it could be more appropriate is if it were on a rail line and had less parking.

I have faith the city will not buckle to NIMBYs when reviewing this development. The only way Houston can become truly walkable is by developing the right urban context. We can have TIRZs funnel as much money as they want into complete streets with fancy brick paving, but all of that means nothing if our urban environment is still a no-man's-land of parking lots, empty fields, and blank walls.

This kind of development is a sign of a healthy city. The only successful places are ones which are adaptable. Houston shouldn't shoot itself in the foot to appease people who want to keep it static.

43 minutes ago, Angostura said:

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

This is part of a walkable shopping district, with zero-setback storefronts covering the entire blockface. Providing ANY parking onsite disrupts the streetscape. This entire district should be parking-exempt so that this site can be re-developed in the same style as its neighbors.

Absolutely agree. The city should be doing everything in its power to preserve this streetscape, which is an extreme rarity in Houston. I'm cautiously optimistic since the Planning Commission has been getting a little more progressive each year, and the Walkable Places Committee is dedicated to looking into these ordinance issues.

The Fulton/San Jac connection wasn't constructed alongside the other Hardy Yards improvements due to objections from Union Pacific. That's why the Main Street tunnel was shortened and a new intersection with Burnett was created instead. Not sure if it'll be attempted in the future but it seems very difficult politically, as most things are with the railroads.

Source: have had some exposure to the project at work

Via reddit:

The Domain Memorial rental townhome community at Memorial Drive and Nottingham Oaks Trail is just finishing up, and the street presence along the neighborhood-facing edges is incredible. It's really transformed this street (Thicket Lane) and makes the entire area more walkable and attractive. This part of the Energy Corridor has a WalkScore in the mid 70s so there's a ton of potential for further improvement. I think this development is a great example of the positive impact our relaxed housing density policy is making, even in the city's furthest reaches.

4 hours ago, DMR said:

I am surprised this project complied with C.O.H. impervious area requirements. It's projects like these that adversely effect our flooding problems. 

No, it's boundless greenfield suburban development that exacerbates our flooding problems. The relentless expansion of the White Oak Bayou floodplain into the Heights isn't because of development in the Heights – it's because of what's happening all the way past Beltway 8.

Blaming a single high-density building for exacerbating flooding is like claiming the Ashby high-rise creates traffic – the effect is negligible, and ironically, the development in question is part of the solution, not the problem.

7 hours ago, dml423 said:

 

Thanks for the link. I understand it costs money to build the sidewalk, but wouldn't the continuous upkeep of mowing the grass eventually erode the savings?

I assume most of these developments have to hire landscaping services anyway. Getting them to cut a few extra square feet of grass every couple of weeks probably doesn't amplify the cost much. Maintaining extra sidewalk space, especially in a city where concrete settles so poorly, would probably be pricier.

Anyway, I wish the city would do more to promote wider sidewalks. Our politicians pay plenty of lip-service to the concept of walkability, but there's little talk of changing the ordinances which make it so difficult to achieve (parking minimums, building setbacks, etc). Of course, changing these laws would be far more controversial and politically costly than the subpar status quo.

38 minutes ago, dml423 said:

The rendering looks ok, but I still don't understand why almost all construction here in Houston only builds 3 foot sidewalks. Why do developers not make  6ft sidewalks (Or better yet, all the way to the street) to increase mobility? Does it have to do with city regulations or what?

The city's sidewalk ordinance mandates 5' minimum (6' for transit corridors). Sidewalks cost money; developers usually won't build more than what's expected of them.

5 hours ago, j_cuevas713 said:

Use public transportation... you can't complain about parking yet favor more pedestrian friendly development and expect them to invest more to build a parking garage so you can neglect the transportation system you have in place to use. I ride the 36 to RedLine South every day it it's great.

There's also Rice's gigantic Greenbriar Lot two blocks to the east. Parking for $1 a day. Just a 5 minute walk to the center of Rice Village. Even at peak times there's a significant oversupply of parking in the Village – and that doesn't include Greenbriar Lot.

We really need to get over this idea that there needs to parking immediately in front of every building. It's had an immensely negative impact on our urban landscape.

This has probably been posted before, but where do each candidate stand in terms of transit and bike infrastructure? 

I attempted to write up a summary here.