Luminare

once you get a layered public transit system going and trust from the public that it will service their needs then the need for mass parking disappears.

While Freedom Tower is a good example. Its more example of oversensitive politicians who literally had to do a full redesign because of who moronic they were the first time around.

Damn my boundless optimism lol. I know I'm young with a degree of naivete, but with this many projects online or close to online....its a good indicator that they will get built at some point. 

I hope so because this is getting down right silly -.-

@IronTiger

While your logic is sound and has been done in other cities. I would also look at those cities and data will tell you that commuter rail which is attached onto highways like that under performs because they are out of the way from people who will use them most.

You need to look at this from an out of the box point of view. Commuter rail is suppose to bring people straight to the heart of the city or straight to main districts of a city not to circle it like a highway and be as far away from people who would be able to access it. Not to mention putting it next to highways is making a statement saying "yeah we are doing rail, but it still subservient to cars!" When implementing any kind of rail program you have to make it it's own distinguish entity. One thing which is going to convince people to take public transit is for the city to make a statement that they are dead serious about it!

In fact there have been numerous studies on this including our own lightrail system! Currently our Redline lightrail is the best performing lightrail in the nation because it is integrated with the fabric of the urban environment and doesn't just go from park and ride to park and ride (which you still need a car to get too....so whats the point of rail at that point -.- ).

There is no easy way out of this. It has to be tackled head on. Rail has to be woven into the fabric of the city not elevated or embedded in a highway.

BRT can not be a replacement for commuter rail. Like everything else it is but a cog in the whole machine. An efficient well performing public transportation system has LAYERS!

Its like this:

High speed rail: services interstate travel or super fast (premium) intercity travel

Intercity rail: services travel between cities. It is a tad slower than high speed rail and makes more stops inbetween.

Regional rail: services (in our case) All of Harris county and surrounding counties and facilities travel in our region and gets people into the main areas of houston and other places for that matter

Lightrail: because of the type of ground we have under us. Subway would be here but we simply can't do it unless we encase the whole dame thing in concrete and have enormous bell piers under it. LightRail should service inter-district or inter-area needs with many stops so it can service as many people as possible. Its local rail and eventually there should be many of these at least lightrail on major streets.

BRT: essentially a trojan horse to bringing better transit to areas of town. BRT can be a permanent or temp solution where you are trying to build a reliable public transportation base.

Buses: services neighborhoods and is gets people from the inner parts of neighborhoods, districts, or even suburbs and towns, and gets them to the options above.

Layers in Transportation is important which is why we fail at it so hard! We try to find the easy quick solution and this isnt the case. You have to create an ecosystem that draws people to the service 

Holy Crap! Must I be here to restore optimism in every single thread xD Come on people!

Small update to the design I worked on a while ago.  Obviously I haven't done much but I did find a texture to throw on there to make it look somewhat realistic.  I really don't want to have to go back and build this thing floor by floor to make it look real but I think that's the only way to make it work the way I want to.   Don't hold your breath on that render haha

I was actually quite impressed by this :3 Though the bottom portion doesn't really connect what you have going with the middle and top portions its rather good for something done quickly in sketchup! *tips hat* In my opinion I add something on the bottom portion that both plays with the streetscape but also plays more with the buildings verticality.

So a great conversation in this thread! I love it It's great that I stumbled upon this forum and see people just as passionate about the built environment. I was beginning to go crazy lol. Ok anyway......westheimer.

Historically, Westheimer for some strange reason has always received very little attention in regards to its overall infrastructure. It was always at the edge of two different areas and remains a demarcation between "River Oaks" and "Everything else" (till a better description comes to mind). It's a very strange case where a road is used as a main thoroughfare, but it neither reads or is treated as one by the city. Just notice how Westheimer is treated once you get inside the loop. It is neither celebrated, loved, or treated as a main thoroughfare into the city (when we all know it to be). My observation is because there are competing interests in how people think it should be handled, and I'm talking about who should be responsible for it.

Now the railroad tracks themselves. It's clear it was put there because nobody at the time wanted to do the work to divert the stream or creek which runs right beside it and has become the main stream that helps divert all drainage from this part of town to Buffalo Bayou! It seems the city could have fixed this a long time ago, but again no political will or city density to both divert the stream or trench the rail line near it.

Now we have this incredibly awkward condition with a road that is vastly overused/deteriorated yet is a main thoroughfare into the city (but oddly not treated as such by the city), an underground stream that is vital to draining water from this part of town that nobody was willing to fix pre-densification, and a very inefficiently used rail that would be hard for the city to take back now since the costs would be astronomical. Thats the current situation.

The result will be that this current generation that is in power in all parties will not have the political will to fix this and will most likely fall on the lap of my generation or the generation after that (like most problems in this city and country) to bite the built and fix it.

First you would have to divert the stream! That is very important and should be done first. You wouldn't even be able to trench the railroad or even build underpasses for the roads anyway before accomplishing this.

Second, by the time this major project will HAVE to be done I would hope we are also building commuter rail or multiple layers of rail in this city and this rail line through this part of town would be a major line for a commuter rail with a central hub station probably in the area of Westheimer. You would trench the whole thing and move it below grade while also installing multiple rail tracks and stations (probably a hub at Westheimer and smaller ones at San Felipe and Richmond.

Third will be to have streets at level grade passing over this new trenched rail line. With the rail line also below grade you can now build separate pedestrian bridges to improve connectivity on both sides.

Fourth, will be to completely redo Westheimer from the loop till 527. You would widen it as much as possible. Have either BRT or lightrail in the middle (connected with the new hub mentioned before). Entirely re-imagined streetscape/sidewalks and clear signage/graphics creating a sense of place for that whole district kinda like how they do it in Uptown.

Finally, a place where I can unload thoughts I have had circling my mind for a long time now lol. Just an opinion, but I think it could work. You have to establish some kind of political will first and most likely grab investment from the private sector as our taxes in this city are so low we would never be able to afford stuff like this as a city gov. alone!

I honestly don't know why its hard for city planners to wrap their heads around this concept. It LITERALLY is a wonderful Trojan Horse to other public transport options. Laying down that BRT is a great way to gauge ridership and in some case it doesn't have to be very elaborate. Just enought money to make some nice stations and paint to put on concrete. It may not look fantastic at first, but you can slowly build a dedicated ridership base with very little cost. I think some great examples to look at are BRT in South America especially in Venezuela.  

I think they look fine. However, I think we have reached critical mass in terms of just how these parking structures effect the overall composition of an entire body of work. Honestly it shouldn't take that much more effort to bury that thing or work out some kind of deal with the city where you create one general purpose parking lot for an area in town used by all. This exclusivity of parking arrangement where EVERY building needs its own dedicated parking structure (which I know its actually code/laws more than anything else) is simply ludicrous!

The Biocorridor has been on my radar for awhile now. I remember seeing docs and meeting minutes online of the planning committee discussing this. It is going to happen! Mark my words on that. A&M is heavily pushing this. The only people that don't like it are the people that still think College Station is a small backwater town.....which it definitely isn't anymore. College Station has actually become the leader in terms of Urban design (or at least in the planning side of it) in the state of texas and are damn serious about it. I mean think about it. College station will be the only place in Texas that has this kind activity. It's amazing. The only thing that I hope is that they stick to the plan and really make this a true urban core. That gives that city 3 awesome cores to work from: Biocorridor, Medical Corridor, and A&M/Northgate. Exciting time to be an Aggie for sure

Wow I'm detecting some major insecurity on this thread! Its rare that major projects ever start on time or stay on schedule. Not to mention we are looking at the beginning of a precedent here in Houston. Downtown and other areas of Houston are going to experience a lot of growing pains these next few years as this is the largest boom in construction in this area since the 1980's thats 3 decades ago!!!

I'm just proud of the city for even getting the stuff we got now. Of course as an architectural intern, just like every other architect/designer, we aren't very patient people when it comes to development, but this is a major step for Houston and it will take some time.

All we need is just a couple of these to get goin and that's when the real growth starts. Construction is contagious and is momentum based. I think we all need to breath and not panic! Lets all be chill. What we are seeing hasn't ever been done yet in Houston or at least in a very very long time. Not to mention we just got out of a recession not to long ago either.

One has to wonder whether the city would be willing to offer additional incentives to build a more traditional grocery store downtown.  I lived in DC for awhile, near Mt. Vernon Triangle, and that area revitalized with the addition of a Safeway located at the base of the City Vista apartments--like Downtown Houston, it was also previously filled with parking lots in an area nearby a sports complex (the Verizon Center). A proper HEB or Kroger would address a significant concern for those looking to move to Downtown.

I agree with you on this one. Anchoring something like an HEB, Whole Foods, or Kroger in a mix-used development with maybe the grocer on ground floor and second floor and mixed use on top would be essential to the life of downtown. However the need has to be created first. This is why Macy's and other retail stores left because there wasn't a need for it at the moment. While city planners should be more proactive in anticipating needs such as a large Grocer Anchor the need simply isn't there yet sadly. Probably wont see a development like that for a coupe more years. There are still plenty of parking lots to fill though so lets just sit back and watch everything rise for the time being.

I remember walking around this area a couple weeks again. Hanovers development next to this is already a wonderful addition to that area. Great scale and has some nice spaces. This will be an awesome addition! Can't wait to see more of it. I like the fact that it faces Morningside Dr. pointing proudly towards Rice and the medical district.