TheNiche

It is perplexing that the lines that are least tied to our LRT's success have secured funding, while the lines that will be the most important are uncertain and haven't broken ground. I support the LRT expansion in its concept, but this has definitely confused in the priority of funding. Perhaps someone could explain this financial dubiousness.

My understanding is that it isn't a matter of want or need for the lines in question; it's a matter of whether METRO can finance them without running a high risk of insolvency. If Parker's concerns are legitimate (and I don't know enough to say whether they are or are not) then she'd be crazy not to at least take on an air of caution.

Your best bet for old road maps would probably be Ebay, or else try one of the large antiques markets.

Yep, I accumulated all of mine through Ebay.

So the new amenities at U of H are geared towards attracting richer students and in the meantime they raise tuition every year?

The tuition increases approved this year are happening all over the country as a consequence of tighter state budgets.

But yeah, Tier One is all about empire-building for the UH System. That should've become clear when UH-Downtown was founded just a few miles away as part of their effort to more effectively segregate and target different segments of their pool of prospective customers.

Any one know where I can find old texas road maps? Possibly from around 1970 to 1975. Im working out at the South Texas Nuclear Plant and very curious to what it was like through there before the plant was built. Im very curious about a road that appears to have run through it that is now fenced off and dead ends at the east end of the reservoir. Wondering if this road was the original route of FM 521.

You're in luck. I have a collection of official state highway maps that goes back to the very first issuance from 1938.

From my favorite among them, the 1971 map (titled "Land of Contrast" with the cover art depicting a young brunette pacing through some sand dunes in a vintage bathing suit as a guy trails not far behind and a little off to the side staring indiscriminately at her chest) depicts FM 521 as being straight.

I think Los Angeles has the best transit system of any "flat" city. They have a good mix of heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, and buses. I think that is what Houston should strive for.

The mission of a transit agency shouldn't be to ensure that a city has a diversity of options. It should be to reduce average commute times and increase the average velocity (i.e. enhance mobility) within a budget derived from legislatively-approved sources.

And Los Angeles is probably not a good example of a regional transit model. Their transit agencies are highly balkanized beyond all redemption.

Another factor to consider, btw, is that METRO's operating budget is $330 million ($4,740 per regional transit rider) ($507 per daily boarding), whereas MARTA's operating budget is $787.6 million ($8,718 per regional transit rider) ($1,632 per daily boarding). Atlantans are getting a raw deal.

93% comes from the Houston metro area, taken from a commuter rail study.

But since we are comparing mass transit systems, let's compare Houston city proper. Around 25% of Houston proper rides mass transit.

On the other hand, in Los Angeles, 42% of the city proper rides mass transit.

Let's look at some regional statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, since municipal boundaries are meaningless.

Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area

Selected Economic Characteristics: 2006-2008

Data Set: 2006-2008 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates

Survey: American Community Survey

COMMUTING TO WORK

Workers 16 years and over

2,629,955

100.0%

Car, truck, or van -- drove alone

2,054,470

78.1%

Car, truck, or van -- carpooled

330,510

12.6%

Public transportation (excluding taxicab)

69,623

2.6%

Walked

39,692

1.5%

Other means

49,168

1.9%

Worked at home

86,492

3.3%

Mean travel time to work (minutes)

28.5

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area

Selected Economic Characteristics: 2006-2008

Data Set: 2006-2008 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates

Survey: American Community Survey

COMMUTING TO WORK

Workers 16 years and over

2,543,992

Car, truck, or van -- drove alone

1,965,655

77.3%

Car, truck, or van -- carpooled

278,462

10.9%

Public transportation (excluding taxicab)

90,337

3.6%

Walked

34,016

1.3%

Other means

44,165

1.7%

Worked at home

131,357

5.2%

Mean travel time to work (minutes)

30.8

------------------

If you remove from consideration those people who either walk to work or work at home (because those metrics aren't useful for gauging the effectiveness of regional transit), we end up with 2,054,470 out of 2,503,771 commuters (82.06%) traveling alone in a vehicle in Houston versus 1,965,655 out of 2,378,619 commuters (82.64%) traveling alone in a vehicle in Atlanta.

And I don't have enough data to adjust the mean travel time to work so as to net out those that walk, but I can exclude those that work at home, whose travel time, zero, is a given. Houston's average commute time for those that commute is 29.5 minutes; Atlanta's is 32.5 minutes. The three-minute difference, applied to 500 commutes per year (50 weeks x 5 days x 2 times per day) equates to 25 additional hours per year that Atlanta residents spend commuting, even though Houston has a larger workforce, lower transit use, and less fixed-guideway transit infrastructure.

I'm betting that a lot of that can be attributed to our HOV/HOT/P&R system, which increases carpooling so much that we're able to beat out a city like Atlanta in addressing single-occupancy auto use. To its credit, METRO has always been ahead of its time with respect to HOV/HOT/P&R infrastructure and gets plenty of national praise in traffic engineering circles.

Another thing pops out at me from the data is that MARTA daily ridership is 482,500 (5.34 times the number of transit riders per the Census Bureau), while METRO daily ridership is 600,500 (8.63 times the Census figure). This reflects that transit boardings are counted any time that any passenger boards a transit vehicle, regardless of whether they're transferring lines or making a round trip or just making a pit stop at CVS on their way home. Most people who cite transit statistics confuse the number of daily transit boardings with the number of daily transit users. And taking this fact into account, frankly I don't think that either transit agency is doing an especially good job.

I agree with you. I've used MARTA before and I think that it's one of the better mass transit systems in the country and it's probably the best one outside of the Northeast with the possible exception of Chicago. But you can't use it as a comparison to Houston. The city of Atlanta is 132 sq miles. The city of Houston is over 600 sq miles. You could build the exact same system here and you wouldn't have nearly the same impact.

METRO's service area is 1,285 square miles, and by providing P&R commuter service to the geographic extremes of its service area that are extensively utilized by commuters that originate from outside of its jurisdiction, it is effectively serving the entire metropolitan area. This is evidenced by the relative scarcity of independent transit organizations in our region, as most of our region's cities would rather allocate their sales taxes towards economic development than transit, and also be able to piggyback off of METRO's service. MARTA's service area is limited to Fulton and DeKalb counties (806 sq. mi.), which include all of the City of Atlanta. Gwinnett, Clayton, and Cobb counties are populous suburban areas that recognize the need for transit, however they have opted to create their own independent and competing transit agency rather than join MARTA.

Niche have you ever ridden on the MARTA subway system? If you did you would know that all types of people ride it. Business men and women, lower class, middle class, upper class, housewives, etc.

I remember riding early in the morning and people getting on at one point and getting off at another for work. A lot of airport workers rode it.

I agree with what you just said in the above post, but it's not an issue that is in any way relevant to my criticism.

It's not a matter of which people. It's a matter of how many as well as a matter of convenience. And it's not enough just to say "a lot of them" and "fast" and that therefore it kicks ass...and that you know because you've been a tourist there and you saw it with your eyes, boarded it with your feet, and rode it with your butt.

This is why my sig is what it is. You need to stop thinking like a tourist and start thinking like a systems engineer. Set objectives, priorities, and constraints, and then OPTIMIZE.

I think the only road that needs extensive feeders is the beltway.

Be careful with that present tense. There's a big legacy issue to contend with. See, back in the 50's and 60's when the interstate system was initially being planned and constructed, feeder roads were immensely popular among rural property owners whose tracts of land were getting divided up by highway ROWs. State law guarantees access to real property, even if that means that the owner of a neighboring tract has to allocate some of his land as an easement to his neighbor, so it wasn't even just the people along the ROW that were affected, but their neighbors. And for the person whose property was divided up, if there weren't any feeders, it may have been necessary to drive for a long, LONG circuitous ways for that person to transit between one side of his tract and the other. Bear in mind, of course, that interstate crossings are few and far in between in many parts of the state. So there was originally a reasonable problem, and the solution itself was not unreasonable.

So we got feeder roads. Early on. The thing about interstates, though, is that they blur the line between rural and urban environments. That wasn't really understood back then. Feeder roads ended up pulling double duty as the landscape around them transitioned. And since state law still guarantees access, many properties that now count the feeder road as their sole method of access would no doubt just use the state-owned ROW as a means of access even if the feeders were dismantled. And in a vast number of cases, they'd have every right to do so.

So for the most part, we're stuck with feeder roads. Whether you think they look like ass...or whether you don't care about the ugly because you're too busy being a sane and responsible driver to notice it, like me.

Atlanta doesn't have light rail, they have one planned though that will surround the city. And have you ever ridden MARTA? Its far more superior than METRO light rail, and it goes pretty much to all of the important areas. And where it doesn't there are buses to transport you farther.

And that's precisely why it works well for tourists. The problem is, most people live or work in areas that you'd probably consider unimportant. And as you've already established, buses don't count as transit.

I thought it was earth, air, fire, and water. Or was it just Earth, Wind, and Fire?

I was subjected to a joke about this last week, so it's still fresh in my mind. Attica got it right. They condensed air and water into 'Wind' and added 'Heart'. The show promoted environmentalism, after all. And you can't be a true environmentalist zealot without ignoring historical precedent, casting facts to the Wind, and doing so with Heart so that you don't have to stop to explain yourself.

I guess when I talk about Dallas, I'm talking about the Uptown area. And when talking about Atlanta's CBD, I include midtown, and Atlantic Station, because its all connected. Atlanta's CBD is lively. Not on the level of NYC, but it still is. In Atlanta though, a lot of the development is concentrated around Peachtree St. So that ads to the urban feel of the city because it goes on and on all the way to Buckhead. Houston's Downtown has more depth.

Sweet unintentional double entendre on that last sentence. Houston does have more depth, figuratively and literally. We have plenty of vibrancy, not that a drive-by tourist can see it...and not that most of us that live here care. And that's exemplary of how we do things around here; efficiency, subtly, pragmatically, and usually ascetically.

I use to think the exact same thing, until I visited other southern cities and was shocked. I thought all southern cities were extremely car oriented until I explored cities like Atlanta. I thought it was going to be like Houston, everybody driving and no people on the street, but there where lots of people walking around, street vendors, stores, people heading to the subway, etc. I remember thinking this is what city life is supposed to be. And from what I have seen of Dallas, it is the same way.

Houston has lots of potential, but it needs leaders the lead it in the right direction for that potential. Imaging if Houston had built a rapid transit system back in the 70s where it would be in the world today. I believe that Downtown would be a lot more vibrant than it is.

There's a big difference between living/working in Atlanta and merely visiting Atlanta. And as for Dallas (particularly the CBD), I just haven't got the slightest idea what you're talking about; it's damn depressing is what it is. And each of those cities' CBDs pales in comparisons with Houston's, by nearly any objective metric.

So there's literally nothing there they can put in the meantime that pulls in more money than a surface lot?

If you mean a one- or two-story building...no, not typically. New structures take a long time to pay for themselves, particularly net of lost contract parking revenues.

Speaking of which, when and where is our next happy hour?

You are putting words in my mouth, I never said that Houston's downtown has more surface parking lots than any other city in the world, I said that Houston has more surface lots than MOST other cities in the US.

You asked at one point whether anyone could provide an example of any city that had more surface parking than Houston. Unless you already know of one and are disingenuously keeping that example to yourself so as to inflate the rhetorical effect, it would seem implied that you believe that Houston tops the list.

Has your friend been to Houston? Because I have been to San Antonio and there are many more parking lots in Houston than in San Antonio. I am not talking about how "inexpensive" they are, I am talking pure quantity. Let me change my statement to "most people" instead of "anyone."

Your last sentence is rather confusing. When the photo I previously posted was taken, in my opinion the condition of downtown Houston, compared to other cities, was a travesty. Today, I would not use that strong of a word, but there is still too many lots IMO. No, I do not think your friend is a "travesty." He has the right to have a different opinion on something than me.

BTW, you did not answer my question, you are dodging it: Do you or don't you think that Houston has an unusually large amount of parking lots in its downtown for such a large city? By sheer quantity (no I am not talking about "inexpensiveness") I think we have more than other large cities, and this is because: a) we have no other transit options besides the automobile, and the reasons I listed in my original post on this thread. What was so wrong with my statement?

Probably higher than average. But certainly, surface lots and open fields do exist in significant number in many other CBDs...not always in such a way as that they detract from the experience. They are viewed as a convenient amenity by some people.

Along those same lines, I also dispute your rationale as to how Houston came to have its surface lots. Older coastal CBDs were more economically vibrant during the 19th century and were able to be built in such a way as to cater to pedestrian, horse-drawn carriages, and early forms of transit. We never really had the wealth or population growth (even of Galveston, at the time) to make that an option, early on. And seeing as how adequate sanitation and the communicability of disease was still a huge problem in the 19th century, such high density wasn't exactly viewed as an amenity so much as a necessary burden...so new residents weren't exactly clamoring for it, because we were small enough that it wasn't geographically necessary or economically feasible. With the advent of the automobile, the combustion engine, our oil wealth, and vastly-increased population growth during the 20th century, it was not necessary or desirable for people to live near downtown, however the centrality of downtown still made it suitable for offices and light industry, so the retail base suffered at just the same moment as that parking became a valuable commodity. All those low-rise commercial buildings became victims of their own inherent opportunity cost. It had nothing to do with the unavailability of transit...which served downtown Houston throughout the 20th century, btw.

Had there been denser development remaining from 19th-century boomtimes that never happened here on the scale that they did in places like Philadelphia, then the opportunity cost for knocking down four-story and higher structures would've translated to many more of them being preserved. ...of course, they'd have been viewed as visual blight (perhaps even "travesties" of an urban environment) for several generations before becoming appreciated again. There'd have been little stopping the Urban Renewal movement from getting its teeth into our hypothetically historical CBD the way that they did in so many other older cities. Cest la vie. [shrug]

All of those cities you named all have surface parking, but no city has as much as Houston. Anyone living outside Houston will tell you this, but most of us defend Houston because we live here.. understandable.

The friend with whom I was touring SA's Riverwalk actually tried to brag on the ready availability and inexpensiveness of surface parking lots as compared to Houston. So yeah, you need to be more careful with the use of words like "anyone".

Agreed. The word "travesty" comes from personal opinion, I would rather have an urbanized downtown and park cars in garages that look like buildings (see Chase Tower garage).

You must think my friend to be a walking talking travesty, then, on account of that his opinion on the subject differs from yours.

That's an interesting idea. Put all the highways below grade and then use them as spillways in the event of major flooding? Not sure anyone would go for it, but still an interesting idea.

It's been policy for decades. That's the primary reason that so many of our freeways are submerged, particularly I-10 and SH 288. And for new subdivisions, the stormwater detention capacity that is created by grading the land to make streets flood can allow developers to cut back on detention ponds by half or more.

A simple look at Google Earth will show that Houston is one of the only major US cities that has massive amounts of parking lots in its downtown area, and open fields just outside of downtown.

I was checking out one of the new sections of the Riverwalk earlier this afternoon, and right across the river from the SA Museum of Art is an open field. And a couple hundred feet to the north of it is a very large parking lot with barbed-wire-topped chain link fence abutting the Riverwalk. But according to you, the $5 all-day surface lot that I parked in shouldn't exist, either. Maybe it was an optical illusion, a phantasm conjured by the spirits of the Menger Hotel's bar.

I'm guessing that you've never been to Dallas or Austin, either.

I'm not so sure submerging the highways would be such a good idea. Unless you mean that literally...

Better a flooded freeway than your flooded living room. The water has to go somewhere.

You may want to get out of Sugarland now before it turns into Liberia West.

Because it's coming, oh it's coming.

Probably not so much Liberia West as Missouri City, but yeah...the slow march of entropy continues.

I say its doing well in the recession because of the way much of the state develops, making for cheap land and a host of other factors that make the state favorable for businesses.

I say it's because we don't have as much exposure to high finance or the manufacturing of consumer goods.

Can you give some examples of your last sentence?

Sure. Check out the Downtown Houston 2025 visioning project. It's the pinnacle of fluff.

For a more concrete example, consider all the funds that were used on the Cotswold Project in north Downtown, how few funds are allocated for its maintenance, how little an impact it has had on new development, and what else might have been done with those funds to enhance traffic flow, transit availability, or to enhance pedestrian mobility.

So many of Main St's vacant lots are owned by developers who want to cash out by putting a high rise up. With the little propoerty tax they have to pay on them, they can easily hold out for 20+ years before cashing out. It's corporate capitalism at work unless the city can enforce some kind of building codes for these corridors.

I can only think of one parcel of land along the Red Line that fits your criteria, and that's Camden. Most developers aren't actively in the business of land speculation. The additional holding costs from paying interest and property taxes on the land bust the deal.

I would also point out that even if the City adopts the 'Urban Corridors' recommendations, that would not detract from landowners' or developers' profit motive. Even taken to an extreme, such as in a city like San Francisco, increased barriers to entry only mean that consumers have to pay more, developers' projects are less likely to succeed but pay off much much better when they do, and that existing owners reap higher revenues. A cynical observer might point out that barriers to entry are a means by way of which a city's Old Money applies capitalism to the political process so as to latch on to their citizens and neighbors like ticks, parasitically tapping wealth that isn't their own.

Sure they are not in Texas. Pretty much all of Texas went about developing livable inner cities the wrong way meaning they designed them for cars and not humans. Luckily cities like Dallas and Austin have caught on to the success of cities outside of Texas and began to make their inner cities more dense. Houston finally tried to catch on in the past few years, but by that time the financial crisis came.

I know what you're trying to articulate, but I'd point out that CBDs such as in Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco were built to accommodate 19th-century technology. They're anachronistic, as evidenced by those cities' very own sprawl. But not for the era in which they came of age, they'd look a lot more like Houston.

I would submit to you and to the OP that urban planning should not condone an approach that places subjective aesthetics as a pinnacle of achievement, but that rather works towards regional solutions intended to enhance the productivity of labor.