wilcal

Wasn't able to grab a pic, but the mural was looking really good.

Four-way stop added to intersection Austin @ Holman by HCC. Really nice touch! Much safer imho. They also added bikeway wayfinding signs on HCC's campus.

This is a few dozen page PDF put ought by the city: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/docs_pdfs/User's Guide for WP and TOD report_6_24_2020.pdf It's pretty quick to scan though, and covers both Walkable Places and Transit-Oriented Development.

Fiesta to become "Greentown Labs" a green energy incubator.

I honestly think someone is living there. It seems like there is a vehicle or two there all of the time.

I'm just saying that Kamin said recently that they would be applying again for the HGAC funds during the next call for projects whenever that happened. HGAC call for project when they were rejected started in 2018, so they had to have funds allocated from before that. And yes, Harvey rebuild may have been part of it: that's what happened to the W. Alabama funds.

Houston-to-Dallas bullet train given green light from feds

City budgets vs national budgets make the difference there.

From the planning department's platting update email: Nothing we didn't already know, except that it's interesting that applicants can try to get a waiver on the sidewalk requirements. Also will be interesting to see how many SPAs are requested/granted. It was a mega PITA before, so hopefully it's actually easier now.

You're leaving the HGAC component out of this. They applied for HGAC funds, which require matching funds from the applicant. I honestly got the feeling that they only scheduled CIP funds for the lower Westheimer portion of the project to try to get the HGAC grant, and when that failed they decided to pull all funding and reallocate. They (I think Kamin?) said that they would be applying for HGAC funds again in the next round.

I'm kind of stunned why they would build a highway so close to another highway.

A bevy of building permits issued for the retail build-outs:

No joke. There's probably room for 50 things like this across the East End.

Stopping for the bus occasionally is still faster than having the bus passengers requesting stops/pickups in their own personal cars instead.

What about partial re-usage? I just want a bar with a view from the top of that front building. The skyline view would be amazing.

Ok, so I was confused about this. Talked with someone that was involved with the process, and they said that the secondary streets for University Line were added in now but the primary streets wouldn't start until the BRT stations are actually built and that there were no immediate plans to have any additional transit corridors designated at this time. Secondary TOD rules are opt-in, so by doing it this way, they aren't forcing anyone to do anything, but allowing new development to make changes since the BRT plan is gonna happen. I initially suggested (ok, complained) that Westheimer with the 82 service, and thousands of riders/day should qualify under TOD as well as the new BOOST lines and was basically told no. I think they are still pretty worried about rocking the boat with city council and land owners and they need to continue to make incremental steps at this time. Remember Climate Action Plan recommends eliminating all parking minimums by 2030 inside at least 610.

I think it'll be very interesting to see how the first WP corridors will go. TOD is all automatic, but WP can be petitioned by the city OR by the property owners. Also, WP designation still has to be approved by City Council. It also appears that WP corridors can be as small as one road segment. Would hate to see a single block opting out or something silly like that. I think that I read that some areas have already requested WP applications, but that they aren't done yet.

Dug from the Chronicle wrote a story about Dallas pulling their scooters this last week and how Houston never even tried https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/Dallas-pulls-plug-on-rental-scooters-ending-15533499.php TLDR about the Dallas situation is that younger people (16-twenty whatever) were hanging out in Deep Ellum and riding around in packs, watching street races, etc. There was a shooting or two at these big meetups, so they think that they'll stop by pulling the scooters I'm guessing. I actually bought two retired and refurbed Bird scooters and decided to make a coded map of where scooters (and ebikes) are currently banned by the city/county/etc inside the loop(ish) and this is what I got: Red = banned Blue = gutter "bike lanes" which aren't safe or really passage The one in the NW corner should be blue, too. I kind of harped on this in the twitter thread that Dug linked, but basically, shit is gonna have to change real soon. BCycle was given funding for 100 new e-bikes, and all of them are currently banned from every red bike path above. The current four ebikes have a small sticker that says please don't ride on the trails (lol).

Friend was asking my about any new coworking spaces in the East End, so we stopped by this weekend. The back building (northern most one) is still pretty much untouched. Held my phone up to the windows to take these two shots of the interior: I would hope that they are planning to do something with the floor. Old parking lines not a great look. Looking like it could be a really cool space!

*clutches pearls*

The parts that were demo'd were due to flooding damage. If the 59 realignment happens, all of Clayton Homes will be removed, so it's doubtful anything is built in the near term.

Did they seem to "get it" at all? Even the guy running their petition said that it wasn't that they were against the changes, it was that they didn't know how it would affect their neighborhood. "Where will we park?" So disingenuous. They have already put in a special parking application that's some borderline BS.

Not the case, evidently. Austin just voted last week to drop all speed limits in their neighborhoods to 25 MPH (along with many other speed drops). Counties, (cut not cities evidently?) have the ability to drop speed limits to 20mph, but it must be contextual in line with a church, school, or some other approved metric.

I saw that. Unfortunately I don't think that I can watch the Midtown SNC on Thursday. Will be interesting to see what they plan to change. There are not currently any minor collectors designated in Midtown, except for Tuam ending at Bagby. Def of Minor Collectors: I'm not actually sure what changes when the streets are deemed a Minor Collector. Here is the current map: Solid purple: sufficient width transit corridor (lol, close Main St to cars) Red: sufficient width major thoroughfare (lol, we took away one of the lanes of Gray for the bike lane this year, so also too big) Blue: Sufficient width major collector. Full size: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/transportation/MTFPMap/2019_MTFP_Map.pdf And to read the policy statement about the MTFP system: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/transportation/docs_pdfs/2015_PolicyStatement.pdf

I thought that the parking lot across the street from SeaSide could be used by their customers? Pretty sure I saw a sign that said that.