mattyt36

Downtown Dallas does seem to me less sterile and more organically “lived in,” with no retail in the tunnels. The different street grids and street widths also give it more character. The level of investment in downtown Houston versus downtown Dallas is just so visible, though, with Uptown getting almost all the new development. I think I would definitely rather attend a convention in Houston versus Dallas, however, that convention center is just in an absolutely awful location. Disco Green really is a visual jewel. This development will make it even more so.

Augie, I sure hope the left isn’t a self-portrait, I did picture you rather Bushy, but not in that way

As I am (happily) not an engineer, can someone explain cantilever roads? Is this a design like the LBJ Freeway in Dallas between the Stemmons and Central Exwy?

Ed, buddy, c'mon. That's your MO, right there, as described. You may not "attack" (Ouch! Words hurt!), but I have yet to see you seriously consider an alternative point of view in any post, ever. This thread is but the most current example. Otherwise, I'm glad to know you fancy yourself such an advanced student of human nature. 🙄 The irony is, shall we say, palpable.

Why don't you be a doll and summarize it for us, Ed? You started this thread with an article employing spurious logic--doesn't seem you have been listening very closely either. "Bulldozed into oblivion"? "Tired of being marginalized and ignored"? I didn't have you down for a bleeding heart, Ed. Puhleeze. Yeah all, what, 900 housing units of them? More than half of which are in the The Lofts at the Ballpark and Clayton Homes--many of these people who already moved out years ago? If the standard for "not being ignored" is that a $10 billion public works project that serves more than 100,000 people a day must be abandoned full stop, well I'd say they're out of touch.

Also very true--it would be helpful for me at least for people to express what they want rather than what they don't want. It's reducing congestion on one hand, but maybe it's more of congestion is OK as long as the freeway is not as wide. Or maybe it's congestion is great because people will be forced to move. It's transit on one hand, but maybe it's not commuter rail as much as it is frequent transit inside the Loop and the suburbs can pound sound. Like the Stop IH-45 Now stuff, I really just don't understand what they want. I think if they thought about it hard, maybe they'd come up with a different approach.

Oh boy, the logic there. Yes if you're adding 150,000 people to a metro area year after year after year, regardless of "reliable transit options," one should expect traffic volume to increase. Why? Because it's the primary driver.

The simplest explanation is more often than not the correct one!

"just The Woodlands and maybe Dallas"? Where on earth do you think the majority of the demand is coming from? Will all of your I-14 be built to the East Coast on a faster schedule than, say, I dunno, I-69 to Port Huron?

Well, for once I'm kind of sad to be right.

800 Bell may fit that bill, going on 8 years now, and certainly would be better described as a "major downtown asset" than this. But I hope you're right!

I have a friend whose company relocated right before COVID from The Woodlands to downtown, and he said when the announcement the atmosphere was like being at a wake. Sure, commute times were going to significantly going to increase for the vast majority of people, which is certainly reason to cry enough, but he said he couldn't believe the number of people who brought up how scared they were from a public safety perspective (lots of talk of muggings and homeless). Many of these people are recent transplants as the company consolidated offices here and essentially don't leave The Woodlands. You turn on the news at night and it's all focused on crime, you have the candidate of one of the major political parties for the county executive essentially airing ads telling people how unsafe it is in the city (basically if you go to an Astros game or take a walk on the Bayou, you're putting your life at risk), it's totally understandable, whether it is true or not. My cousin came and visited for some soccer tourney for her kid in 2021 . . . she lives in North Richland Hills. She literally asked me if my house was burned or sustained major damage in 2020 during "all the riots" (the riots referring to the George Floyd protests). I'm not sure she believed me when I said that I didn't have any damage (or come close to having any damage) and there weren't any buildings that were burned. Several instances of broken glass, sure, not denying there wasn't property damage, but this perception is what you're up against. Give them an opportunity or any excuse to stay in the suburbs because their commute now takes 75 minutes instead of 45, trust me, they will. And downtown, as has been the case my entire life, seems at times to be barely hanging on as it is. Certainly way better than it was before, but it's still nowhere near where many of us want it to be. So as much as you have anecdotes about spic and span rides on METRO, and how dangerous it is to drive in a car, I'd say these perceptions are way more powerful. They won't have personal anecdotes, perhaps, but they'll be happy to tell you how many home invasions they saw on Eyewitness News last week and how it "could've easily been them."

Thanks--maybe that drawing is not to be taken literally--seems odd they'd put a semi-elevated walkway in the middle of a parking lot, across a street, through the middle of another parking lot, and through a building. But maybe it will end up being some sort an industrial-esque architectural attraction in and of itself!

Disingenuousness aside, there is no "control" group, there never is and never will be. We'll never know what would've happened if I-10 weren't expanded or weren't expanded as much. I submit that it's just as likely that not expanding it would lead to even more sprawl over the long run. (Would it have led to sprawl if it weren't built in the first place? Of course not. But that's not where we are.) The heart of a big city depends on transportation to survive. In Houston and most American cities, the mode of choice is personal automobile, and the city and surrounding area have developed as such. You ignore this for ideological reasons, well, you inevitably do not get the outcome that you're hoping for.

All of that may be true, but what matters is perception. That is, assuming you want to get more people to ride transit. Maybe you don't. Maybe you're in the camp, "They shouldn't have decided to live 30 miles out of the city" so it's either "who cares what they think," "tough flurf," or "let's punish them by not expanding their freeways. Knocking on people's doors and pointing out transit versus car safety statistics and expecting people to go, "Oh, I see it now, gonna take the bus from now on" is just ridiculous. Similarly, having politicians tell voters that they just don't know what's good for them doesn't have a great track record, either. Seriously, there is so much back-and-forth on this forum about transit and highways, I have yet to see anyone propose anything comprehensive as to change the situation, other than "just build it," or "make them suffer." I'm not surprised, as the problem itself is intractable and multidimensionally so.

There's that mysterious "Dock High Pedestrian Path" again. I get the concept from walking around other parts of Sawyer Yards and MKT, but there isn't a loading dock anywhere there, at least as drawn, or I am blind. Does anyone know what it's supposed to be?

"Anecdotally" 90 to 130 major incidents a month Houston METRO launches special homeless team to tackle potential issues along routes amid rise in public transportation crime - ABC13 Houston Houston METRORail violence: Police chiefs vow more officers on patrol after 6th violent incident on or near transit in 2 months - ABC13 Houston

Well, on this subject, all that matters is what the general population prefers.

Well, if you're concerned about transportation modes barely being able to pay for operations and maintenance, I'm not sure why you would look at rosy eyes with transit. Are Texans' property taxes, gas taxes, or sales taxes set to increase if NHHIP proceeds? Nope. And that's all that matters in the minds of voters. The majority of the mileage literally parallels the Central Expressway and the Stemmons Freeway, which must go "somewhere useful," considering the volume. If you want to commute via rail, you literally have the "option" to do so . . . I thought that was what this was all about? Well from a literal sense I mean the riders soaked in their own urine sitting (well, let's be honest) lying on communal seats. But it doesn't matter what I think--I have come to expect it--it matters what all the people you are trying to get out of their cars think.

Depends on the line. If you consider hourly headways outside of rush hour as "pretty great," well, then, I guess good for you? Now go sell that in the suburbs for what it'll cost. I'm not begrudging anyone from riding anything--it's a choice. I ride it frequently enough. If you want to keep your head in the sand and think that it's OK to expect people to choose the light rail (and transit, by extension) when it's not an infrequent occurrence to come across someone who is high, soaked in urine, otherwise smelling not so clean, or verbally threatening, well then, again, good for you. It's generally not how you attract people to change behavior. The light rail goes plenty of places that are not the Medical Center, and, if your prescription is for me just to ride it around there during rush hour so I see middle class people, well, I don't know what to say. Absolutely bizarre logic. "All of the urban planners." Well, quelle surprise. It's like asking economists from the University of Chicago in 1940 what they think of the New Deal. Urban planners are who got us into this mess to begin with. Your link is to a publication by an advocacy group. It refers to costs not directly borne by users (i.e., externalities). Let me put it this way: Joe Q Public says every time I put gas in my car, the State of Texas gets $0.20. The more I drive, the more they get--there is some connection between my use and what I pay, and I have complete freedom in going anywhere I want to. The few times I ride METRO (if any, let's be honest), I have to pay a fare on top of the property taxes I have been paying for something I rarely use because it doesn't go everywhere I want to. If transit is expanded, I'm still likely not to use it and I'll have to pay even more in property taxes. If you don't see the clear distinction between the two, well, then . . . I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I don't know, why don't you go do a nice poll and ask Houstonians if they'd be OK with, say, a $10 billion investment in a commuter rail transit network. Tell them the associated service levels, the fares, the time it will take them to get from their house to their work, how much they'll have to pay for the privilege, and ask them "Yay or nay"? (After all, they're the ones who are going to pay for it, and you did say earlier you were concerned about the voters.) Now ask them to pay $200 million for bayou parks. I have an idea as to how this will work out. You act like people universally want transit. Some do, but most are happy suffering in their personal vehicles. I don't know why this is so difficult for people to grasp. (Regardless, comparing the level of investment in transit with investment in parks (BTW I suggest you check out the City's park budget so you can see how much money we're really talking about here), street sweepers, and homeless shelters is absolutely ludicrous. Your sense of perspective and relevance is nonexistent.)

Well, in fairness, a couple of things: (1) Under the current system, freeways are largely "self-funding" through the gas tax. Transit and commuter rail are not anywhere near directly so, at least not in a way that is easily digestible for voters to understand. Ergo it's not a real leap or illogical to consider it expensive for what it is. (2) There are cities like LA and Dallas that have built commuter rail systems (and I think these serve as the best example of what would happen if Houston built similar--note LA and Dallas are as known for traffic as we are), and they aren't exactly the most useful. With few exceptions, Metra in Chicago isn't even all that great. (3) METRO rail isn't exactly the greatest advertisement against the "great unwashed poor population" bias.

I don't believe the NYT is particularly "biased" except in the sense that they generally adopt the academic consensus view, and this is the academic consensus view. However, it is simplistic in the sense that it does not consider the alternative. The truth of the matter is, traffic or not, most Americans (especially those who vote) prefer to live on large lots in economically segregated communities with good schools. Moreover, living in a city is prohibitively expensive for many that wish to do so (why not consider the affordable housing problem in the same article?). This idea that you can force density in a city without a historical rapid transit network by just making it more difficult for people to drive seems to make logical sense in everyone's head ("Ah, if it took two hours to get from The Woodlands to downtown, then they'd have to take the train!"), but it is 100% unproven--and I'd say it makes no sense on its face. I'd say it's equally logically sensical in a city like Houston that the central core of the city would de-densify with businesses moving out of the core and into the plentiful and cheap land on what used to be called "edge cities," only that these new edge cities won't be on 610 or even Beltway 8--they'll be on the Grand Parkway. So how does that solve the (apparently) stated problem? Invest in transit, you say. Well, the way it stands in this state, at least, Houston would be pretty much on its own with meaningful assistance from the federal government (and this pie is very limited). A meaningful system (commuter rail joined to a transit system with comprehensive coverage and attractive headways) under this scenario is nowhere near financially feasible, and that assumes the voters would actually approve it to begin with. (And, I hate to bring this up as I know all of the Stop IH-45 people's #1 concern was keeping low income neighbohoods intact, but try to build a truly useful system without displacing a lot of people. I know, I know, in this case you will find some way to say "it's A-OK because it's for the greater good" (which really means, "It's A-OK for what I think is the greater good."--need I remind you you are in the minority.) The level of thought that people give to such complex issues is absolutely laughable. There is this sense that one can have one's cake and eat it too with no acknowledgment that once the system changes, you can't keep what you assume you could control under control. @editor says "Blame the messenger" with all the cited facts, etc., etc. I'm not disputing the facts as presented, but what's their prescription to really change how American cities develop? I think if you spend much time musing on it, you'll realize it's all but impossible. As long as there is land to sale on the periphery, it will be purchased and with the expectation that it will be developed in due course. There is no mechanism for development cordons in the State of Texas, and even if there miraculously were, I doubt they would hold up in this Supreme Court. The long and the short of it is that people are going to continue to vote with their feet and pocketbooks until the system changes. To me, this article doesn't say anything about the real problems, it just summarizes symptoms, and, as such, the academic consensus keeps on tilting at windmills. BLAME THE MESSENGER, I guess. This is 100% accurate. 🤣 This would be laughable pretty much anywhere, but given Houston's history with transit and Congressmen putting riders into federal bills specifically to prevent transit in a single county, it is especially laughable.

Great addition, esp if it is more of the Royal Blue variety than the Fannin Corner Store.

If only it were nearly as deep as the "hole" you must feel for thinking: I was inconvenienced + my buddy said he wouldn't fly Southwest anymore, either = Southwest will die like Braniff I mean that's quite the ego trip there. The path to self-awareness can be a long and bumpy one. Do keep us posted on your travel (mis)adventures in the future!

The root problem is land use. Everything else is a symptom. Transportation is a derived demand. I'm not sure what people think they're proving by writing articles such as this.