wilcal

I'm not sure. Inside 610 is 97ish square miles and the H-GAC represents 12,444 sq miles (.779%). You can see in the linked PDF that half of the score that they calculate comes from a cost to benefit ratio, and that benefit is calculated based on usage. It's clearly not aimed purely at relieving traffic as the lower Westheimer scored pretty well while being classified a road diet. Basically, what I'm getting at is that they are attempting to normalize for usefulness without factoring in what part of the area it is in. Also, I did find a population number for inside 610. In 2010 census it was 443,949. The highest was the 1960 census at 493,377. I bet we eclipse that in 2020.

Basically, yes. BUT, I don't think it's actually a part of the scheduled bond referendum projects because they were counting on this. H-GAC said that they will have funds to fun only 1 of the 3 "major" projects. Also, from what I heard, this two-way HOV/BRT will be elevated. They are selling it as a flood-proof connection from dowtown Houston center of government to the Transtar/County Operations center thing at I-10/610.

Houston-Galveston Area Council serves a 13 county area in SE TX. Inside 610 really doesn't have that much population compared to the rest of it. Isn't the pop like 200k? It's pretty low.

The City of Houston submitted the Lower Westheimer S. Main to Shepherd portion to the Houston Galveston Area Council to try to obtain federal funding. It was the only road diet project submitted that I saw. They released draft rankings (PDF warning) in January and it was ranked 20th out of 63. Unfortunately, HGAC only has funding for the top 10 projects. The cost estimate was $33,432,000 and HGAC calculated the benefits to be $96 million. They requested funding for the 2023 year. It did not fare particularly well in the "Planning Factors Score" which I'm not sure how exactly that is calculated. I believe they are letting everyone revise their application once, so we'll see a new rankings in the next month - 3 months I believe.

Hopefully, they'll be limited to the suburbs? But yeah, definitely my initial thoughts 😕

It works on most sites. NYT is really hard to get just right.

TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismaili_Centre The Ismaili Centres are symbolic markers of the permanent presence of the Nizari Ismailis in the countries and regions in which they are established, characterised by the Aga Khan IV as 'ambassadorial buildings'. Each building is architecturally unique and functions as a jamatkhana (place of worship), but also incorporates spaces for social and cultural gatherings, intellectual engagement and reflection, as well as spiritual contemplation. They facilitate mutual exchange and seek to foster understanding between diverse peoples, communities and faiths. Collectively and individually, the Centres represent the Nizari Ismaili community’s intellectual and spiritual understanding of Islam, as well as the community’s social conscience, outlook and attitude towards the societies in which it lives.

Just hit escape on your keyboard before the page finishes loading. It freezes the loading of the page. The last thing loaded is the paywall stuff.

Agreed that this is the view from the North. Otherwise that crosswalk would be where Richmond is.

They diverted W. Alabama Rebuild Houston funds to 2021 or 2022 to do storm drainage stuff now.

Please email Peter Eccles and tell him that! I'm still bummed out we won't have protected lanes all the way through.

I don't think commercial/consumer GPS is good enough for that. Some cities have introduced specific parking areas for scooters on the sidewalk or in on-street parking spots and I don't think GPS resolution is good enough to determine if you parked on one part of the sidewalk.

It's a big disappointment. They did talk a little bit about it. I think the leading reason was that they've decided with certain low traffic thresholds it's not worth upsetting people by removing street parking.

Report from last night: first of all, it was surprisingly packed. Every seat full plus 30-40 SRO, so maybe around 100 people? PDF of the presentation not available online yet, so my phone photos will have to suffice. Timeline: 50% design early Feb. 90% design late Feb, 100% design mid-March, Construction begins late March. Here is the proposed system as a whole. They are thinking that construction on all 4 of these will be mostly done by the end of the summer! The detailed #2 segment: The route will extend from a soon to be built plaza at Austin street on the north end of downtown, where the parks board will be joining the westbound and eastbound bike trails together. They originally were going to split the north and southbound bike trails to Caroline and Austin, but due to Caroline being a clusterf*ck with construction for the next 2 years, they are going to go 2-way just on Austin. So a reduction of one lane and parked cars between the street and the protected bike lane. Big thumbs up for this solution. This will run from the north side of downtown all of the way to McGowan. Next section: This is where the only negative comments came from. Several townhome owners from the Anita/Tuam area were there and mildly perturbed that there would be a parking reduction. Peter Eccles actually handled this pretty well. Total loss of parking spots would be 37 spaces. One homeowner, who identified himself as a bicyclists, was unconvinced that it made sense to eliminate the parking and had they studied it. He said that it had been studied, and that the parking in the area never topped out above 45% utilized, and that was actually during the day when it was likely that construction workers were parking. At night, it varied from 30-35% utilized. The 37 spaces were equivalent to 7% of the parking. (Ed. comment by me: rekttttttt) One homeowner said that although his parking would be affected, the bike lane was so so much more important (raucous applause followed). All intersections with lights would have the bike traffic lights added to give bikers a few extra seconds to enter the intersection. At HCC, the project would dogleg over one block, and that dogleg would occur in HCC's campus at Winbern. Everything south from there would be sharrows, so shared on-street with cars and bicycle arrows painted on the street. At either Prospect or Calumet, the sharrows would dogleg over to Crawford. Crawford at Hermann will likely be turned into a four-way stop. They received feedback from the children's museum that they didn't want to have the bike lane going through when they have so many buses parked along the street there. Let me know if y'all have any questions. Edit: presentation looks to be up now http://houstonbikeplan.org/implementation/infrastructure/austin-corridor/

I asked last night, and the dogleg is going to be on HCC's campus (at Winbern). About to do a writeup.

Yep, mentions of needing to fill in hundreds of acres of wetlands to do the project at the meeting.

Yep, you're right. And that makes much more sense. From what I understand, they are both going to have them. Each being a one-way.

First of all, there is a public meeting on this tonight at 6:30 PM. I'm planning on attending, so if anyone has any questions that they want me to ask I'll be more than happy to do so. You can see how this fits into the Houston Bike Plan here, on the greater 3rd Ward section http://houstonbikeplan.org/implementation/infrastructure/third-ward/ I was initially upset that nothing was planned to connect all of the way to Hermann Park, so it's welcome to see that extension. HOWEVER, it appears they are not going to utilize both La Branch and Austin with a dogleg on Alabama? Hard to understand how we can't find a single street to continuously run a straight bike lane on. Based on the flyer stating partnership between CoH and Prct 1, have to think that this will be funded by part of the $10 mil from Ellis.

Found some screenshots of the story on another forum: http://www.andhrafriends.com/topic/786199-foreigners-funded-houston-development-to-get-eb-5-green-cards-they-were-duped-sec-says/

Totally forgot to post, this is from Dec. 20 when I was taking a bike ride. Soil samples happening in NE corner of lot.

https://www.houstontx.gov/ecodev/tirz/10.html It's an old one actually. They are spearheading an expansion of Northpark Drive right now, and just got an extension on the life of the TIRZ to borrow the money to pay for it. The TLDR of the Herons portion of the meeting is that everyone that lives anywhere near the area doesn't want it (insert shocked pikachu). TIRZ is authorizing up to $100,000 in funds for a drainage study for the greater Kingwood area to help the county/city spend the flood/drainage bond in the area, and one of the nearby HOAs wants to use that info against the Herons. Right now, the Herons is not in the city permitting process, but with the federal government/Army Corps of Engineers. Councilmember Martins office encouraged feedback to go to national legislators Crenshaw/Cornyn/Cruz as they don't have any effect on the process at this moment.

They are discussing this at the Kingwood TIRZ meeting tomorrow morning. May have some kind of an update after that. I heard something about some kind of permitting being done.

Won't be there for long with highway expansion. Huynh is walkable, too of course.

Totally agreed that a Torchy's would have done very well. Asian missing in this area as well tbh. I'm not really seeing too many of the families that are going to Discovery Green venture over to eat at GRB, so any type of low cost option is better. Still hard to eat at Saltgrass for < $10. Torchy's or a fast food option would have given people that as a choice.

Re: that Galveston electric scooter sharing article. "People already treat the beaches bad enough, so seeing scooters lying around the streets would not be good either," Galveston resident Michael Ford said. "It's using public property to store your private property to showcase your private property," O'Neal said. "It's irresponsible, and its unsustainable." Nice to know that he's so progressive he is against parking cars on public streets. Should make it much safer to bike.