wilcal

Committee is presenting their two ordinance recommendations to the Planning Commission on 12/19

Just got an email:

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Dear Residents,

 

A few weeks ago, the City of Houston Planning & Development Department held six Walkable Places and Transit-Oriented Development community meetings to introduce two proposed programs and collect public feedback. Based on the feedback we received at the meetings, we are finalizing ordinance language and a Users’ Guide for both programs. 

 

We presented a preliminary project timeline at the community meetings and announced that a project presentation would be made to the Planning Commission on December 5, 2019. However, drafting the ordinance language is taking longer than expected, therefore, we are moving the December 5^th presentation to the December 19 Planning Commission meeting. 

 

Here is the updated project timeline:

 

Presentation to Planning Commission

Thursday, December 19, 2019, 2:30PM

City Hall Annex Council Chamber

900 Bagby St., Houston, TX 77002

 

 

Public Hearing

Thursday, January 23, 2020, 2:30PM

City Hall Annex Council Chamber

900 Bagby St., Houston, TX 77002

 

 

You are welcome to attend the Planning Commission meeting(s) to hear the project discussion and share your thoughts with the Planning Commissioners. For project details, please click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to call 832-393-6600.

11 minutes ago, samagon said:

 

I guess when I said space, I meant room for specific aircraft. sure there's plenty of room for flights, but according to the article...

 

 

it says farther down that this will double the capacity for wide bodies, to 13, which means we only have 7 now, so if you believe their statement that wide bodied planes can fly farther, it is a space thing that this addition will help to alleviate. 

That's just for Terminal D, which United doesn't use for departures. 

As I kind of mentioned before, there is somewhat of a space constraint for foreign airlines flying to Europe just in the afternoon. The rest of the day it's basically NBD. 

IIRC, the previous plan had United giving up a portion of the old Terminal C for an expanded D, and in exchange they could use all of the Terminal D gates. Not sure if that's still the case with the current plan. Then again, I think the old plan also had terminal B getting it's old customs/immigration so the regional jets coming from Mexico wouldn't have to use D/E gates. Airlines like Spirit were having to drop international passengers at D and then pay to have their planes towed down to A. 

https://houston.eater.com/2019/12/4/20994884/1-800-lucky-opening-houston-midtown

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A true one-stop-shop, 1-800-Lucky is described as “equal parts food hall, record shop, convenience store, and karaoke bar,” which means that diners will be able to feast on taiyaki ice cream cones while sipping frozen beer and browsing the record shop’s wares or listening to live music. No official vendors for 1-800-Lucky’s Texas outpost have been announced just yet, but if the Miami outpost is any indication, diners can expect everything from sushi and Chinese barbecue to dim sum and Vietnamese deli fare.

7 minutes ago, Houston19514 said:

/\  Interesting analysis, but FWIW,  at least according to this article from Forbes, a flight has to be at least 8,439 miles to even crack the top 10.  The longest of the imaginary Houston flights would be only 8,055 miles, well short of even being the longest flight from Houston (Houston - Sydney: 8,596 miles).

That list is in statute miles, not nautical miles, which is generally what the airline industry operates in. 

This list has both on it.

EWR-SIN is 9,534 statute miles, but 8,285 nautical miles.

Second longest, AKL-DOH (which my sister actually got to fly in biz earlier this year. I'm just a bit jealous) is 9,023/7,848. 

IAH-SGN is 9,269/8055. It would be about 18 hours one-way. Woof. 

3 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

Houston Business Journal recently had an interesting article about the top 10 international destinations not currently served non-stop from Bush Intercontinental.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2019/11/27/these-10-nonstop-international-routes-fromdont.html#g/464257/11

#1 was a little surprising:  Ho Chi Minh City (FKA Saigon)

#2  Manila

#3  Mumbai

#4  Shanghai

#5  Rome

#6  Karachi

#7  Tel Aviv

#8  Seoul

#9  Delhi

#10  Bangkok

 

If only we had a major airline interested in maximizing their Houston hub.  As an example of how it's done, look at what American is doing at DFW. The Dallas Business Journal did the same analysis regarding DFW flights. Their No. 1 unserved destination was Tel Aviv and the passenger count was about the same as IAH's Tel Aviv passenger count.  Tel Aviv is #7 on IAH's list!  And more to the point, American is adding Tel Aviv service from DFW.   Any chance United will be adding service from Houston to ANY of our top 7 unserved destinations... ever?

Fascinating list of O&D demand. 

1) SGN 8,055 nmi. Would be the second longest flight in the world. Ain't gonna happen. Also, they don't even fly this from LAX or SFO, so can't imagine those being worse than IAH.

2) MNL 7,416 nmi Would be 8th longest in the world. I've read that yields are super low, so likely doesn't make biz sense.

3) BOM 7,792 nmi This one is approaching business/yield reasoning at least. Sounds like Air India might try it, but they're kind of a mess. 

4) PVG 6,581 nmi Houston to Asia is kind of saturated. I can't see this one launching unless economy yields start coming up. Cargo has supposedly taken a hit with tariffs, so that hurts, too.

5) FCO 4,938 nmi Could definitely see this as a summer seasonal. I met with the Italian tourism board when they were in town a few years ago and they said Texas is their second biggest market in the US. 763ER has a 5,990 nmi range and could easily handle it or if United had some underutilized 787s,.

6) KHI 7,371 nmi Zero chance.  

7) TLV 6,141 nmi. Anything is possible. Evidently biz class to behind to TLV is crazy high, so who knows. 

8 ) ICN 6,138 nmi. Korea Air couldn't make it work. I guess UA could? Would rather see Asiana fly it. UA evidently sucks at marketing themselves in Asia which is why ANA operates one of the two NRT flights.

9) DEL 7,276 nmi. Same thing as BOM. Could see it, but BOM a better choice.

10) BKK 8,033 nmi Would also be the 2nd longest flight in the world. Ain't gonna happen.

2 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Any guess what is the most likely reason for this? My thoughts, in no particular order:

 

- We pissed off United's management with the Free Hobby thing and they have put us on the backburner

- American is a much better managed airline than United (Texas vs. Chicago business culture)

- United has structured its four main hubs so that overseas flights are generally funneled through the coastal hubs (unless very profitable elsewhere); Chicago is an exception because it is their home city

- DFW has more room for expansion and more efficient facilities than IAH, at least until the new terminal is finished

 

They care about making money. They can make more money elsewhere with their planes. United plays to the strength of their hubs, like every airline, and their strength in IAH is central and south america. 

1 hour ago, Houston19514 said:

 

It may not be a spite thing. But it is definitely not a space thing.  The added international gates they are working on are to provide more room for non-United international flights.  United has plenty of room for additional international service.  IF Terminal E is currently fully booked, they could easily shift a domestic flight or two to their gates in Terminal C or even Terminal A to make room for an additional international arrival in E.

Agreed. United could absolutely squeeze in more wide-body flights if they wanted to. Other foreign airlines trying to fly to/from Europe and peak times? Not so much. Off-peak times, absolutely. 

International wide-body destinations:

Europe: LHR (2X daily, occasionally 3), AMS, FRA, MUC

Asia: NRT 

South America: UIO, LIM, SCL, EZE, GIG, GRU

Oceania: SYD

14 whole wide-body international flights per day! I believe E has 6 wide-body capable gates and C has 8, so yeah, underutilized just a bit. 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/Christmas-ho-ho-holds-up-testing-of-Uptown-bus-14879800.php

Christmas decorations causing hold up on Uptown BRT testing

4 hours ago, rechlin said:

 

LEDs are good but not that good.  With equal brightness on lights that you'd typically see for lighting (the equivalent of 15 to 150 watt incandescent bulbs), you normally see about 1/6 to 1/7 the electricity usage for LEDs.  Not "almost nothing", but still a large savings.  That's because incandescent bulbs are typically around 15 lumens per watt, whereas LEDs are typically closer to 100 lumens per watt.

 

Now, I realize you are talking about lower wattage decorative lights, which can be a bit more efficient in LED form, but in my experience, bulbs like the 0.1 watt C9 ones you linked are quite a bit dimmer than the 7 watt incandescent C9s when you get the wattage that low.  C9 LED bulbs of brightness comparable to that of 7 watt incandescents still use over half a watt and sometimes closer to a watt, which is again approaching 1/7 (but perhaps a bit better) of what incandescents use.

I just assumed that the C9s were equal, so if there is that much of a difference, then that would be understandable. 

47 minutes ago, bobruss said:

I wonder what the electric bill for all of the lights will be. The Boulevard looks great in the day time. I can't wait to see it at night!

They look to be LED, so almost nothing. 

https://www.christmaslightsetc.com/pages/how-many-watts-amps-do-christmas-lights-use.htm

TLDR: LED lights use about 2% of the electricity of incandescent. 

39 minutes ago, Angostura said:

 

If you're working within an existing building envelope and want to maximize capacity, or if you have a height restriction, then it may be worth paying a premium for a robotic system. 

 

But if, as in this case, you're building on a greenfield, without height restrictions, then the reason to go automated instead of traditional is because of construction costs, not land costs. That is, it has to be cheaper to build and operate than a traditional garage. Estimates I've seen (granted these are mostly from parking system suppliers) put the construction costs somewhere between 60 and 100% of a similar capacity traditional garage.

 

Here's why that's interesting: Currently, a lot of neighborhoods fall into a trap where land values aren't high enough to justify the cost of structured parking, so the spaces required by the city's parking requirements get built as surface lots. The resulting low density prevents the underlying land values from increasing to the point that structured parking is viable. If the lower end of that construction cost range turns out to be true (and it should get cheaper over time as the industry matures) then the land cost at which structured parking makes sense falls from, say $100/sf to $60/sf, and there are already plenty of neighborhoods in Houston with land values in that ballpark, which means more new retail development could include structured parking instead of surface parking, which would add to density, and in turn make the land value higher.

 

That's very interesting. 

I just spent some time looking at this solution provider: https://cityliftparking.com/solutions

My thinking is that surely there would have to be significant size requirements for an automated system to work, but this may not be the case. 

IIRC, this site was originally rendered to have parking on the roof before some design changes, so they clearly thought that there was a shot at having some expensive/extreme parking options to add more retail.

That's still a huge chunk of the lot on parking with none of it covered. 

I wonder how much this design could be changed to integrate more retail space even with houston's parking requirements.

The only system that CityLift offers that might work is the Puzzle Mechanical Parking. Spec sheet

I think this style requires you to have one open space on each level except for the pit and the top level. This is a four level with pit example, so I think you would get 10 spots in the space of 3. They offer a tandem version (double thickness) so it might even be possible to have a system that allows for tandem parking just above certain levels which would allow to to effectively park cars on the roof.

You could end up with something a little bit like this. Green would be additional retail space. An increase of about 40-50%. There's 50 parking spaces I think, so lets say you need about 75:

It's probably feasible (assuming you could get pickups to fit), I just wonder what the ROI would be getting one extra tenant and everyone getting some extra SF.

Got a targeted ad for the crowdsourcing campaign on Facebook and here is the post/ad about it. No new info but funny to read some of the comments https://www.facebook.com/CrowdSt/posts/3033582783337571

27 minutes ago, samagon said:

 

 

I mean, 70% of voters want transit in this city.

 

anyone who would specifically block federal funding coming to Houston for the purpose of transit might have a harder time than they did when it was barely 51% of voters that wanted transit.

 

besides, the people who would have attempted this are no longer representatives, right?

Logic and politics.... oil and water.

And yes, the aforementioned person is no longer a rep, but it's very much a swing district. 

4 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

I actually think its a good video. Very simple, but helps illustrate the basic functions.  If anything, even if it doesn't save money overall it will save money in the long run because you should be able to dedicate more space to people than to cars. I don't know why we aren't switching to this model more and more if its out there, functions, and is already a proven concept.

Ok ok it's not too bad

I think that we probably haven't switched to this model because the electronics would have to cost less than the space savings, and that probably only makes sense where the land is $$$.

Nice to think that we're getting there in Houston

Was traveling this past week and spent some time in Bratislava and came upon a cool coffee shop called Urban House http://www.urbanhouse.sk/

I think that you could convert El Real to a similar concept. Coffee shops in Montrose tend to do pretty well and you could do alcohol/food.

Urban House was a former small department store, but was still able to make it feel cosy.

Keeping old theater theme would of course be required.

Urban House

54 minutes ago, Nate99 said:

Still wondering how the automated part works. 

Most work with the car parked on a little sled, and the system moves the sled around. This video isn't great, but you will get the gist.  

22 hours ago, Toopicky said:

You people are dreaming.

Metro won't change their plan other than perhaps a simple reroute until AFTER all the money is spent..... the voters have spoken.

 

Almost all of the plan is contingent upon matching federal funds. If those don't materialize they'll have to change it on that basis alone. 

See: the last referendum and the university line. 

6 minutes ago, Purdueenginerd said:

 

The entire building is about 10k sq feet. 

 

 

Just looked up the lot on HCAD, and it's only 23,749, so they must be going up. 

They are also now in the market based parking area, so they could axe some of their current parking. 

Edit: Building sq ft listed as 10,300, so you were basically right on. 

I asked a Metro PR person about how much latitude they have in deciding what to do with the bond authority... and it sounded like a lot.

If they wanted to change the plan to include university line as light rail then I'm pretty sure they still can. 

I'll bet the lines in the grass are for the layout of the site.

Anyone got a drone that they want to send up?

Looking at a zoomed in version of them holding the model, it looks like a BUNCH of trees. Like 50-70?

And 2 or 3 structures. Largest one along the western edge and two smaller ones along the eastern edge. 

On 11/21/2019 at 10:18 PM, Toopicky said:

 

If you were trying to include the densest population areas you obviously don't know the city well .... in fact you chose some of the least densely populated  areas in town  (downtown, west Eado, Hermann Park and the TMC)  outside of 'refinery row'.  Are you from Houston?

I was specifically using the areas that Texasota said that I quoted them on in my post. 

4 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

Yeah I really could care less. That wasn't the objective of this exercise. This was a very isolated discussion between I and @Toopicky to explore a potential planning scenario. I also could care less about more connections to downtown. The immediate goal would be better connections from Almeda to Elgin as both are major thoroughfares which have an interruption point at this intersection from seamlessly connecting with one another. If nimbyism is a parameter which you want to throw in then go ahead, but that would be a severe limitation on an exercise which is suppose to be experimental and exploratory.

Sorry, I really wasn't trying to be an angry internet guy or anything. I like fleshing out ideas like this. 

It really does make logical sense to increase car throughput, but not in a community-sense to me. 

4 hours ago, Texasota said:

Not a remotely apples to apples comparison. Downtown Houston is extremely small - that link is using "Greater Center City" as downtown Philadelphia, which is bigger than Downtown Houston, Midtown, the Museum District, the Medical Center, and EaDo combined.

For fun, I drew an area with about the same area as Philly for comparison.

These are some of the densest areas and Houston and there's probably what, maybe 80k people that live in that box? As low as 50k?

On 11/17/2019 at 3:49 PM, Purdueenginerd said:

Thought i'd share this book. I burned through it on one flight from Houston to Chicago last weekend without falling asleep. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865477728?pf_rd_p=183f5289-9dc0-416f-942e-e8f213ef368b&pf_rd_r=ZVY9XHD60ZJT1W7AJ7RB

 

Nonetheless, little dated, but Houston is mentioned a few times, in a negative light. There's some good data points on pedestrian infrastructure and policies to create more walkable neighborhoods. I found the book rather compelling. 

The book is really quite good! I also highly recommend it. He has a fairly active Twitter account, so if you ever have any questions there's a decent shot that he'll answer. 

17 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

In the "6 Ways to Make a More Walkable Houston" article, Speck says, rightly and obviously, that our 8,000 housing units downtown is not enough.  But then he says that "Most places strive to come as close to a 1:1 ratio as possible". In the context, the 1:1 ratio clearly means 1 housing unit for each job.  But even if he meant 1 resident for every job, is that a rational expectation?  I'm not sure there is a downtown/CBD in America that comes close to meeting that supposed goal.  I don't think Manhattan even comes close.

Just looked up Manhattan. 3.1 mil workers:1.6 mil residents. And of course they have significant issues with transit with 1.5 million people commuting into Manhattan every day. 

I also found this list, which takes some liberties, but finds how many people live in downtowns versus the city and metro populations. No surprise, Houston is one of the lowest in the country of cities with a metro population > 1 million https://iamemenhiser.com/2017/01/08/downtown-residential-population-by-city/

If we were to by like:

Chicago 5% - Houston needs 115,000

Seattle 10% - 230,000

Philly 11% - 253,000

Miami 18% - 414,000

Manhattan 50% - 1.15 million

This somewhat presents a problem with downtown Houston only having just over 100,000 jobs.

15 hours ago, TheSirDingle said:

Imagine damn near 200+k people in Downtown at all times. Not only would the sidewalks be full, but the tunnels would be too. Honestly would probably be the most pedestrian activity in the world, all within a 1.7 square mile area. 

Manhattan is 22.82 mi^2, so to match number of residents/jobs per area you would need 121k population and 231k jobs. 

Twice as many jobs is reasonable. 10X as many population would be rough. SkyHouse has 336 units. The Marlowe only has 100. Aris Market Square has 274. The Rice 312. You would need a LOT of buildings. Like 10 times as many for each existing and planned high rise. Not sure that will be feasible in our lifetimes. 

On 11/15/2019 at 12:11 PM, Luminare said:

 

Maybe something like this?

 

gray is the new road

light yellow would be the abandonment of these streets and turning them into pedestrian roads. most of la branch at this portion is already a pedestrian walk, so wouldn't be out of the question to do the same with the rest. This new connection from la branch to almeda would also help give the campus a defined edge.

 

That parking lot is probably the best bet for reconfiguration as you proposed. Would actually be pretty easy to do. Maybe someone should pitch this idea to the city. It definitely would make traffic flow better here.

I can't imagine HCC being on board with this, and certainly not the townhome owners in that area, which have been easily able to flex their muscles having themselves excised from market based parking and at least temporarily preventing the Austin St bikeway from being put in. 

I also don't think that Almeda needs slightly faster connectivity to downtown to continue to grow. Not all roads need to lead to downtown.