TheNiche

I got back into town just after dark. Figured that things were already winding down...or perhaps that yesterday's crazy weather might've put a damper on the plans. Perhaps next time.

I concur (mostly). It's going to be hard to reposition the brand. They'd sacrifice many of their elderly customer base in doing so, and I don't think that the business model can be repositioned in such a way as that appeals to a younger generation (except for me) at a similar price point. Even if they can, it'd take some doing, and I just don't think that they can afford the Apple® marketeers.

The other city's decisions do not support your argument. They merely indicate local preferences. Their agency's opinion is no better than ours and possesses no more powers of negation of our agency's opinion than do ours over theirs. You tend to put too much faith in the opinions and actions of other cities and individuals. You should strive to be an opinion leader, yourself, rather than merely echoing their messages. (I don't mean that as a personal attack, btw, but as constructive advice. You think outside the box and are willing to take unpopular stances, and I respect that because it shows character--even if I disagree with your conclusions--but you need to hone your argumentative skills a bit.) Judging from demographic trends which indicate a massive domestic out-migration from cities like New York to cities like Houston, it strikes me that at such a time as mass transit becomes the preferred way of getting around in Houston, we'll probably be losing residents to cities where they can still efficiently drive around...like Byran/College Station or Waco, perhaps. Post-WW2 market-driven transit use in the modern era is an indication that a city is becoming too big for its britches, more than anything. Another fault with your argument is that larger cities have higher transit use per capita, however still have higher and higher numbers of drivers of single-occupant automobiles. The number of drivers increases as the size of a city increases. In all fairness, Dallas does have more transit-oriented development than does Houston. It's not much, and most of it was only made viable by an improbable combination of municipal subsidies and capital markets that were on crack at the time, but you should probably concede that particular point. That, and radicalcartography.net defines mass transit as something that is necessarily on a fixed guideway. But that's not a very useful definition. This is what Houston looks like if you take into account our P&R routes, which function much like commuter rail, except that they're superior in almost every way. Red represents P&R routes, purple represents existing LRT, and green represents public-private-partnership alternatives. You will notice that the furthest extent of our P&R infrastructure is approximately 37 miles from downtown Houston...on par or exceeding the length of any given route shown on the radicalcartography.net image, including the Dallas-Fort Worth connection or the San Francisco-San Jose connection.

Pearland isn't THAT good, either. The Waterlights District was decades ahead of this submarket's ability to support it.

Your question depends on the route that is pursued by locals. If this new entity is a municipality, the municipality would have to assume the assets, debts, and operational responsibilities of all existing MUDs within its boundaries and would also have to provide municipal services that displace the services already provided by Harris County (even though residents would still have to pay the same amount of Harris County property taxes in addition to a new municipal property tax). Additionally, the City of Houston has already annexed nearly all commercial properties in that area, meaning that a new municipality's tax base would be entirely residential and would result in practically no revenues from a sales tax and a property tax rate that would be fairly high as compared to most other suburban municipalities. There are a lot of political pitfalls associated with this solution, obviously, and getting enough subdivisions on board would be difficult and probably fraught with all sorts of political intrigue and backroom deals. As for getting the City of Houston on board, it may not be as difficult as you might think. Houston already has the commercial properties and won't ever want to relinquish those. And the problems created in cities like Dallas, where suburban economic development programs undercut the central city, simply won't be a problem for the City of Houston in northwest Harris County because any 4A/4B economic development sales tax revenue going to a new municipality would be insignificant. Furthermore, Houston has absolutely no interest in annexing residential areas because providing services would be too expensive and because it would likely add another suburban Republican vote to the Democrat-controlled City Council. The problem with setting up a new municipality in northwest Harris County is that it probably isn't a very good idea for its own constituents. Instead, we should expect to see another attempt at getting a special district approved with the legislative authority to levy a property tax, without the obligation to interfere in the affairs of individual MUDs, and with broad discretion as to how the tax revenues are utilized. Such an entity would be able to include incorporated and unincorporated areas alike, allowing the commercial tax base to be tapped. And the City of Houston would be supportive of that approach because the opportunity to further stabilize northwest Harris County enhances the value of its commercial tax base in the area.

Yeah, Main Street is just fine south of US 59, and to be clear, I was only being critical of the Downtown and Midtown sections. But the last time I tried it was in the downtown area en route to our last HAIF Happy Hour (also around 7PM-ish), and it was a slow crawl from about St. Joseph Pkwy. to wherever the pedestrian plaza starts.

I don't disagree. However, I have not made any argument of the sort, nor do I intend to. What I am doing is arguing that METRO has chosen to implement light rail in a sub-optimal way. I am not making a claim that light rail has been a success or failure because such definitions are inherently subjective. Instead, I am making objective observations as to how METRO could have more effectively enhanced regional mobility for transit users and automobile users, alike, avoiding long-run operational problems, and accomplishing these aims at an additional cost that is not beyond the realm of reason. You said earlier that Houstonians weren't prepared to make such a dramatic move as to effectively eliminate a street in favor of at-grade transit; I disagreed on the basis that Main Street is effectively an example of this. And then I got dogpiled by HAIFers that apparently lack reading comprehension. Reference my response to Highway6 if further clarification is required. Inconveniences are always unfortunate. Our transportation agencies ought to evaluate and mitigate adverse impacts according to their severity. Although there has been tremendous progress over the last couple of decades to that end, I would concur that the adverse effects of freeways on adjacent neighborhoods are not always adequately addressed; and as the burying of US 59 suggests, sometimes such impacts are mitigated excessively. Either case is not acceptable. Just as we as constituents ought to hold TXDoT's feet to the fire, so should we hold any other transportation agency accountable for its decisions, regardless of the mode of transportation that they are attempting to implement. Nor is it any better reason to call it a success. My business partner and his wife ganged up on me a couple of months ago and told me that I needed to be more of a 'cup half-full' kind of guy. But I'm not. I told them that the x milliliter cup has y milliliters of z fluid in it, given that the temperature is a Celsius and that the atmospheric pressure is b millibars...and that since the temperature is trending downward, so too will the volume of fluid--provided of course that it does not freeze. I went on to provide a number of courses of action so as to optimize the "volume of fluid" as well as likely scenarios. Nobody walked away from that conversation very happily...nor should they have been. Apologism just is not a very useful perspective.

In the context of my counterpoints to samagon's remarks, I stand by what I said. I also agree with you that it doesn't especially matter that light rail ate Main Street in the Downtown and Midtown neighborhoods. To be clear, I have made no such argument. But since you ask...I think that it would have been beneficial for light rail to have been implemented as a subway, but only Downtown. And I am only so adamant about that for two reasons: 1) METRO signal prioritization screws up the City's attempts at signal timing, and 2) light rail ridership is sufficient at present to justify doubled-up trains with standing room only at three-minute intervals, but as the system is expanded and ridership along the Red Line continues to increase, either the frequency of trains will have to increase, geometrically compounding the signal prioritization problem...OR there will be a need to run trains that are longer than the standard-sized downtown block. The way I see it, downtown-area subways are a mid-term eventuality that should be addressed proactively rather than reactively. You will notice that the above rationale does not include opening up Main Street to drivers as a justification. As you point out, the Red Line has so few adverse north/south impacts on account of that there are many convenient alternatives. (I hope that you and everyone else realizes that this is a circumstance that will be unique to the Red Line.) In fact, were a subway to be developed, I'd prefer to see that Main Street be closed off as well as possible, allowing only for driveways where necessary and otherwise creating a pedestrian/cyclist-oriented thoroughfare.

I used to really like Williams Smokehouse up in that neck of the woods, but it burned down. Sad day. And then Thelma's burned down (which was inconsistent, but convenient and still usually very much worth it). Burns is all I have left of the good ol' days. There's always Goode Company of course, but I think that Goode Company is to BBQ what Chuy's is to Tex-Mex. Great for the poser yuppie HSL&R crowd. But expensive, overrated, and lacking in genuine atmosphere.

Irrelevant. The mission of a transit agency is not merely to provide an option. It is to enhance regional mobility. And don't forget that fixed-guideway transportation infrastructure requires a major long-term capital outlay. There is no botching major aspects of it and then going back and reconstructing things correctly once money is raised. Paying for things twice limits the rate at which new lines can be built, so even YOU shouldn't want that for Houston.

I take it you haven't attempted to drive down Main Street through Downtown or Midtown in the past several years. It's aggravating as all hell, and you end up stopping at almost every light. The street that exists there serves mostly as a driveway for parcels that would otherwise be landlocked. And further down the line at Fannin and the South Loop, light rail contributes to horrible congestion. There are a few other hot spots on the line, but that one was a travesty. There should've been a light rail grade separation there, but METRO compromised its mission, to enhance regional mobility. The Red Line was intended as a proof of concept for the FTA, not quite so much for constituents. What ought to have been proven to constituents is that FTA funding was (and still is, even though the rules have changed) tied to vastly inadequate criteria that cannot begin to allow for resource allocation optimization. And unfortunately, the design and implementation of the Red Line looks to be vastly superior by virtue only of the geography of the neighborhoods that it traverses than will be many of the new lines, particularly the Uptown Line, the University Line, and the Southeast Line. It seems that you're trying to argue that the Red Line's problem areas should be forgiven so that METRO can be allowed to create even more and more serious problem areas. Citykid and I disagree on a lot of things, but we both genuinely want what we believe is a better system for Houston, even if that means that we have to spend more money, even if we have to arrange some creative public financing. Regional mobility is key to Houston's future, and it matters less how people are moved and more that they are able to get where they need to and that they can accomplish that efficiently, safely, and affordably. From nothing to anything? Seriously!? You make it sound as though we were but a crossroads in the vast prairie. And then METRO said, "Let there be light rail!" And there was. And thusly, Houston was born. And it was good. METRO said so.

I know that that was a dig at folks like myself, but I agree with you that the commercial certainly garners the audience's attention, and probably appeals well enough to a market segment that would respond well to it and to Houston. Like yourself, I wish that there'd been more shots of Houston, but that'd require more air time, and that gets expensive. I think that the message got through without it. I also think that the commercial conveys an aura of genuineness that is appropriate for a city like Houston, which always seeks to leverage its strengths rather than apologize for its weaknesses with cheap imitations/simulations. We tend to allocate scarce resources only to those projects that yield the highest bang for the buck, whether that's pertaining to tourism or economic development or transportation. We're a city of engineers. It's what we do. And no, we aren't cool. That's why we're so cool.

They're part of the same media market for that reason, however cross-commuting is fairly limited.

Is the purpose of transit is as a hedge against fuel costs? Or as Mayor Parker claims, is it to provide mobility to people that cannot afford cars? Or as I believe, is it to enhance regional mobility in such a way as reduces commute times? Figure out our objectives and priorities and the appropriate system design will follow.

That certainly sums up my experience. And I knew from the first hour or so at my freshman orientation that there was an imbalance. They asked for a show of hands of incoming students that were from Houston, and that was a little over half. Then they asked for people from outside of Houston and still in the U.S, and that was about a quarter of the audience; then they randomly called on a bunch of those people to ask where they're from, and most of those folks were naming surburban communities of Houston. There were probably only a few dozen U.S. citizens coming in from outside of the Houston area. All the rest of the crowd were international. ...actually, I guess I should've figured it out from before then. Few people in my graduating high school class in McAllen had ever even heard of UH, nobody else went there (most that left the Valley went to UT-Austin, TAMU, Southwest Texas, or UTSA), and the counselors didn't know the difference between UH and UH-Downtown. UH touts its diversity as an asset, but I think it hurts the experience. All those different cultures can get pretty cliquish. Add to that the Cougar High crowd all retain strong local social networks and never have to leave their comfort zone, and for a somewhat introverted guy like myself it was just very difficult to form friendships that weren't superficial. And at the graduate level (at least for the economics department), the "diversity" was overwhelming. Their roster of grad students reads more like what you'd expect from a joint program between China and Romania than any program based in the U.S. A few upper-middle class white kids would've helped bring balance to the program and provded a more culturally-rich experience for all the foreign students. But my experience, I think, highlights the importance of my earlier argumet. If UH can shift the Cougar High population over to UH-D, offsetting that popuation by appealling to a more geographically-diverse pool of students, then that aids in providing a more traditional college experience and lifestyle. And for the record, I don't think that dorms are the best way to generate interest. Who picks a college because they just built new dorms (particularly when those dorms are overpriced)? Focus on anything that communicates positive messages to graduating high schoolers. UT has a good sports program, a motivated alumni base that encourages their own kids to go there, highly-visible landmarks either on campus or very close by, including "the Drag", and a well-reputed nightlife scene; it has plenty of dorms, but it also has plenty of off-campus housing in nice neighborhoods nearby. TAMU is positioned very similarly, but with a different feel and a lower cost of living. UH, meanwhile, is bordered by some pretty crappy neighborhoods chock full of poor black people (and yes, for the sake of marketing it matters that they're poor and black) that contribute to a perceived crime problem (although I took a lot of night courses and never even knew of anybody that had any problems), offers mostly fast food as a retail component, and is not within walking distance of a business district or a nightlife or a music scene. And whereas Austin or College Station are small enough that their alumni tend to exhibit school pride and get scattered to the wind, UH's alumni have a tendency not to talk about their school unless asked and to remain locals. (One of my parents is a UT alum, the other is a UH alum, but although I'd been to plenty of UT football games by the time I graduated high school, I didn't even know that UH existed until I started researching colleges.) Part of this last problem is related to economic geography, and UH can't change that, but they desperately need to foster some semblance of pride and tradition among their graduates in order to enhance brand loyalty. And by trying to accept a more geographically-diverse student body, perhaps over the long term they will be more able to enhance their brand awareness.

If you're going to thow in Waco, then you really ought to throw in Temple-Belton-Killeen-Copperas Cove.

He's only looking at cities alog or within the Interstate Triangle, except that his other comments indicate that he's looking at state-by-state comparisons...even though he knows better than to rely on political boundaries to provide economic descriptions as evidenced by his use of MSAs rather than municipalities. Bottom line is, IronTiger needs to better organize his thoughts before putting them out there. Oh, and as for South Texas, Hidalgo County and Cameron County are considered their own separate MSAs.

Let me give you a specific example of what I mean. Upstate New York has the Adirondacks (*sp), Niagra Falls, the old canal systems, and the Finger Lakes. It also has plenty of golf courses, B&Bs, luxury hotels and spas, an aggregious number of tourist traps and all the other stuff you'd expect to find in one of the travel brochures sitting in a rack at a hotel lobby or disbursed by an economic development entitiy. These amenities are advertised because out of the combination of business and pleasure travelers, and out of whatever combination of single, married, family, or elderly travelers, that's where the money is. Any decent golf course is going to perform better, financially, than the majority of state or national parks. And someone that plays golf is probably going to drop a fair bit more money into the local economy than will someone enjoying a few nights of lakeside camping. Just because you aren't aware of a particular amenity or are not personally interested in it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or doesn't have value.

The money should be spent according to whatever will create a larger pool of better-qualified applicants. At the undergraduate level, that has very little to do with academics and more to do with lifestyle amenities and sports programs; these are also the programs that foster alumni involvement. At the graduate level, research spending is the name of the game. If they can select from a better pool of prospective students (more like UT-Austin) then they're going to do better on average, one way or the other, and corporate recruiters won't need to be sought after...they'll just show up.

It ain't the top of Texas unless it tops out at an elevation of 8751 feet, the same elevation as Guadalupe Peak in west Texas.

You aren't much of an outdoorsman, are you?

Excellent! And luckily, the anticipated buzz happens not to interfere with my schedule for MEPS. I look forward to meeting you and Portent.

The two events are not mutually exclusive.

For the record, I agree with you that light rail, as implemented, is inadequate. I agree that a greater degree of grade separation is called for and that METRO is not adequately addressing regional mobility. However, I also recognize that there are financial constraints. METRO is ultimately dependent upon fares, it's one-cent sales tax, and FTA funding to cover its operating costs...and that has to be covered before it can even begin to talk about increasing the capital budget. Short of receiving special attention in the state legislature, the only realistic option is for the City to give back the quarter cent share that they currently demand as tribute...but the City has it's own budget crisis to address and that property tax rates already look poised to increase, so that's unlikely. And if there is a shortfall in sales tax revenues, for whatever reason...well that certainly doesn't help their cause. Even given these financial constraints, I'd rather see METRO build its infrastructure to a higher standard at a slower rate, so again, like yourself, I have misgivings about their strategic direction. But at the same time, they're so far along in the process at this point that I'm not sure that canceling construction contracts is a reasonable option. I hope it is (or wish it were). However, I have no faith in the ability of anybody to "come together" and resolve to accomplish anything worthwhile. I took a number of classes that directly address the subject matter and formerly provided consulting on transit-oriented development (TOD) and related urban issues. The coursework I took at UH was divided about equally between economics (my major) and architecture (which I started to make my minor but later dropped), and let me tell you...it was a divide! UH architecture is taught in an art school format. Consideration is primarily given to aesthetic form, and students are counseled to sell a vision to their future clients if budgetary objections are raised. There wasn't as much emphasis on client-focused or user-focused design as I would've liked. And urban planning was addressed as a subset of architecture, rather than as a multidisciplinary field of study. I couldn't stand it, personally. The economics side of things was far more thoughtful. Various urban development paradigms and theoretical frameworks were reviewed and criticized on the basis of objective outcomes and empirical research. Political organizations were discussed, as were the means by way of which projects were financed. And the culmination of all of my economics training was a rigorous cost-benefit analysis course taught by Bart Smith. Most people think of economics as being basically the same as finance, where it's just about dealing with money; that's not even close. In the normative sense, it's about determining how to optimize social welfare given a far-reaching universe of alternatives...and realistic constraints. In the context of all of this, I've come to find that Houston is an anomaly in many respects. It lacks zoning (obviously), the central city is gigantic and actively prevents encroachment by suburban municipalities (which means that there isn't as much regional in-fighting), and it relies on special taxing entities like MUDs and Management Districts far more than any other city in the country to pay for infrastructure down to the neighborhood level, according to the preference of small and relatively homogeneous groups of residents. There are literally thousands of different combinations of taxing districts that any given property in our region might be subject to, and all of them are subject to restrictions provided by state law. Urban economists recognize that Houston's circumstances cannot be replicated anywhere else, so it is often studied as a comparison case to determine the validity of a theory under various conditions. We're viewed as something of an experimental city, viewed with fascination. To that end, one of the things that comes up time and time again is how much bang for the buck we get with our P&R system, which is probably the most developed system int he U.S. if not the world. And we've also had successful experiments with toll roads and HOV/HOT managed lanes, also implemented by METRO. HCTRA comes up with some frequency, as an organization that has had success implementing contracts tied to incentives for construction work completed on time. And TXDoT gets praise for Transtar as a traffic management and emergency response system initially rolled out in Houston. Where transit is concerned, the light rail vs. BRT vs. bus debate is ongoing. However, heavy rail and commuter rail are largely dismissed as not being feasible except in very narrow circumstances, such as the Northeast corridor and sometimes Chicago. Systems such as BART and MARTA are not considered cost-effective and do a poor job at enhancing regional mobility, as implemented; very few cities continue to pursue that model of developing fixed-guideway transit. Interestingly, Dallas doesn't get talked about too much...and that's unfortunate because they have a hybrid/multimodal system that I'd have liked to have seen more thoroughly picked apart.

Yeah, I've wondered for some time whether Marksmu is a double agent. His arguments are just so extraordinarily WEAK and TRANSPARENT, yet seem genuine. I can't imagine that anybody but an exceptionally skilled and highly-motivated satirist could possibly come up with them. And maybe its just me, but I tend to prefer to think that the people that I interact with on a regular basis are rational and cunning than, well...the alternative.