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So this is more-or-less done. Cullen Boulevard has been improved from Polk to MacGregor/Brays Bayou. Here are a few "before" snaps from Google Streetview: The project(s) included protected bicycle lanes on both sides from Polk to I-45 and a complete street reconstruction, including wide, off-street paths (with separate pedestrian and bicycle lanes, at least nominally) from I-45 to MacGregor. Pedestrian and bicycle treatments were applied to the intersections with I-45 (fantastic): Elgin (pretty bad): and Wheeler (very good).

If we as a city cannot understand the concept of fast cars being bad in certain contexts (e.g. busy neighborhood main streets), then we deserve our doom.

I'm not going to pretend that the 11th street lanes were as badly needed as, say, the Austin or Lamar lanes downtown, in terms of providing bicycle access to previously inaccessible areas. I also don't think that the Shepherd/Durham lanes do all that much of that. If it were just about bicycle access, then the optimal solution would have been to dedicate some streets - say some combination of 10th, 13th, 15th, 18th, 22nd, and 26th for E-W, and Nicholson, Rutland, Harvard, Arlington, and Micheaux for N-S - as traffic-calmed streets: narrowing, modal filters, chicanes, mini-roundabouts, textured pavers, planters, and crossing treatments (à la Nicholson@11th) for difficult intersections. This is essentially the Dutch concept of ontvlechten, or "disentangling" (different routes for different modes), and when done right it does a lot for bike utility, with a much lower per-mile cost than through-running infrastructure. That said, neither of these projects (11th or Shepherd/Durham) was or is about bicycle access. These were stroads, and bad ones at that. They were dangerous, ugly, and generally hostile to anyone outside of a car, and they weren't particularly safe for drivers either. The purpose of the projects was to reduce the danger of the streets. That means lower speeds. The improvement projects won't turn them into perfectly safe neighborhood streets, nor was there ever a real chance of turning any of them into highly efficient (and safe) roads, due to the amount of commercial development along all of them. But because both of them do have a lot of commercial (and, increasingly, residential) development, the move toward streetification makes sense. They need to be safer. Fast moving car traffic on a two-lane highway with miles between exits can be pretty safe. Fast moving car traffic on a street with many commercial driveways and intersections cannot. Unfortunately, TXDoT does not really permit the kinds of redesigns that can truly slow traffic, so when that is the goal - as it was for these projects - the best option we have is congestion.

Gotta love that you can't have a store or restaurant that sells alcohol on a major neighborhood corner within 500ft of a school, but you can totally have a Westpark Drive + Westpark Tollway monstrosity within 20 feet of a classroom...

Appears to be done.

Looking south fro. Houston@Wrightwood. Brick up to fourth floor surprised me, but maybe it's been there for a while.

It'd need to be pretty much a whole self-contained/self-sustaining community, though. The street "grid" between I-10 and Hempstead is pretty non-functional.

Is the whole Metro facility there being decomissioned/demolished? If so, I completely agree - it would be great to enclose Sterrett.

That has to be the most positive and unambiguously cool Nextdoor post of all time.

Good. That lot needs to be redone with housing and street engagement.

But only if they're scrapping MS2.0, which I really hope they aren't.

Ah okay. Makes a lot of sense.

The concrete masonry is quite nice, in my opinion.

Bicyclists: Hey, so it can get pretty dangerous out there for us. Maybe you could use bollards as modal filters to help calm traffic... City of Houston: Heard ya loud and clear

I have two minor complaints about this project: nothing but garage on all the ground floors, and sidewalk interruption for the food trolley. That said, I wonder if the design would make it easier to convert parts of the garage to GFR later on? The facade work is nice. Also, the brickwork - especially on the easternmost building - is really nice, in my opinion.

Minimum setback requirements are dumb, minimum parking requirements are dumb.

I stopped by to check it out a few minutes. Pretty cool. But I also noticed ropes on the big blank south-facing wall above this. I wonder if there are plans for that a mural wall? It seems to me to be screaming for it.

I would hope for a Shell Select over an EV charging station, only because it would seem like too much of an oversight on their part to build an EV station on a (future) pedestrian street. I certainly hope that they don't know something we don't about Main Street 2.0. On the other hand, if there is certainty around MS2.0, then a quick build convenience store is a smart play on Shell's part - safe, easy money on a plot whose value is likely to significantly increase in the coming years. Buy and build now, profit for a few years, and then sell it to a hospitality group in 2035.

It is a surface parking lot, but it also the site of one of the district's more striking murals. An actual gas station would be a step down, in my opinion, though it seems an unlikely outcome. A miniature Phoenicia-type market with a small patio fronting the mural, or a small night market/patio for the adjacent Hotel Icon would both be excellent uses for the parcels, in my opinion, but with Shell as the owner, that doesn't seem likely. Does anybody here know anything about the diversity of Shell Oil Products' properties? Also, even if it just a convenience store, I don't think that's a reason to give up all hope. Plenty of good gas station taquerías in the city and Downtown continues to desperately need decent breakfast taco option.

I sure hope so.

There is a compelling mural on the north-facing wall of that lot. Has Street Art for Mankind put me in the position of supporting a surface parking lot? Dear me.

That is pretty cool. Looks like there will be a Bayou connection as well. Would love to see more park "fingers" come into downtown out of the Bayou.

Not a huge update, but a bit more clarity. Looks like pretty standard school fare.

Something going up on the side of the Houston Academy for International Studies. I'll update in the morning. Figure it'll probably be done by the end of spring break.

We shouldn't be pitting neighborhoods against each other when it comes to trees (or sidewalks, for that matter, Mr. Whitmire), but we also shouldn't pretend that trees are not a major equity issue in this city, to the point where it really shouldn't be something that depends on neighborhood coalitions working with nonprofits. In fact, I'd say that this is really the only sort of project - already leafy and walkable location, relatively minor in scope - where that approach should be taken.