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004n063

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Everything posted by 004n063

  1. 004n063
    Yes, that's the one. It made me uncomfortable. The phrase "perfectly good three-foot sidewalk" doesn't belong in the English language, let alone anywhere near a conversation about Washington Ave. It feels like he's pitting two underserved needs against each other, but with car streets it's "we need whole new slabs," not "why does San Jacinto need four lanes?"
  2. 004n063
    I remember reading an interview with him somewhere in which he described 8-foot sidewalks on Washington as "wasteful". I've had an uneasy feeling about him since then. Turner was no Anne Hidalgo, but it did feel like the safe streets movement was finally starting to gain momentum under him. I do also remember reading something about Whitmire supporting a better bike connection to Memorial Park, but there really wasn't anything at all in his campaign about alternatives to cars. I don't feel like he takes transit, pedestrian, and bicyclist needs seriously. But again, this is just a general uneasiness - I can't currently point to any specific policies or actions to legitimize that sense. Hoping Triton's wrong, though.
  3. 004n063
    Here it is around 4pm yesterday (sorry, had about 0.75 seconds to snap the photo before my phone died).
  4. 004n063
    For a painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe, I've always thought that mural was a bit...well, anyway...
  5. 004n063
    I agree, but at least it's full. Better than the "Built for Black Friday" lots near my work:
  6. 004n063
    I think a more precise argument would be that removing parking requirements will not automatically - and certainly not quickly - reduce the present demand for parking, so parking will continue to be built, which will do a pretty good job of preserving that demand, ergo the amount of parking. But the mandate skips the market middleman and preserves the parking excess all on its own.
  7. 004n063
    Had some fun chats with my ninth graders about Friar Laurence's lines there. Bit of a 180 there, sir.
  8. 004n063
    All the more reason to make it a pedestrian-priority space!
  9. 004n063
    Can't make every restaurant super expensive and expect them all to survive.
  10. 004n063
    "Elevated" strip center
  11. 004n063
    Point being, long, runwayesque streets originally (re?)designed for trucks pulling out of warehouses are dangerously tempting to the city's many speeders. Given the likely impact of NHHIP on St. Emmanuel and the five or six currently active or planned developments along McKinney, I could see a well-designed McKinney street emerging as a true main street for EaDo. But as development picks up, if the district doesn't get ahead of that, it will be really hard to convince drivers that they don't need all of that right of way for cars. Anyway, this project looks cool. I like that building.
  12. 004n063
    McKinney is really starting to make something of itself. What are the chances the TIRZ makes it a more hospitable street before it's too late? Would really love to see the roadway narrowed to reduce speeds (that ghost bike at the CT intersection came from a car going >70mph, iirc), sidewalks widened, and high-comfort bicycle facilities added. There's plenty of ROW for it. I think the long-term success of EaDo will be defined by its willingness to remain above the off-street parking fray. That'll require more places that are pleasant to walk or bike around.
  13. 004n063
    Between this and the new restaurant on Montrose@Alabama, I'm wondering if Retrospect's success has had an influence
  14. 004n063
    True, but if that disruption led to massive transit improvements, I'd make that tradeoff any day.
  15. 004n063
    Is this the first confirmation of its being mixed-use? Or did I just miss it earlier? Either way, excellent.
  16. 004n063
    Looks like it's time for somebody to make La Tapatía an offer they can't refuse...
  17. 004n063
    Hope this lives up to the renderings. Would be great to have a ready-to-go response to the "5-over-1s are inherently terrible" crowd.
  18. 004n063
    I think chances of plenty of good bike parking are pretty good. I think chances of increased frequency on the #11 and #30 buses are okay at best. I think chances of an EaDo-2W-5W streetcar are basically nil, as cool as that would be.
  19. 004n063
    Which is fine for a local bus or a classic tram. But I think anything calling itself "rapid" transit should have at least half a mile between stops. The 1.2 miles between the Uptown Park stop and the Westheimer stop - which include stops at Four Oaks (redundant), San Felipe (necessary), Ambassador Way (redundant), and Guilford (redundant) stops - take about as long as the 2.5 miles from NWTC to Uptown Park (1 stop). I think in a city with summers like ours, any viable transit is going to need to be able to seriously minimize walking. But that's why I think those stops should be on request. Or maybe run express service in nice weather and local in super hot or otherwise inclement weather. I know this all seems very nitpicky, but the thing is, I think it is actually important to the health (fiscal, cultural, economic) of a city that it maximize the number of actual pedestrians, not just provide transit alternatives with car-like doorstep service.
  20. 004n063
    That's a good point about Central. And yes, it's still faster than walking even through the downtown section. I think the downtown segment is really meant to be a classic tram (i.e. a walking accelerator through a dense part of the city) whereas the rest of the line is more rapid transit. I really don't have any major issues with the line - in fact, I think it's one of the best tram lines in the US. I think if south Downtown development would ever catch up with north Downtown I'd have no complaints. The Boston commuter rail lines have some optional stops, where they only stop if there's a passenger request (like a local bus). Maybe that's what Bell should be? (Though the stops that really need to either be eliminated or made optional are the Ambassador Way and Guilford stops on the Silver Line, but that's a separate conversation.)
  21. 004n063
    I can't figure out what TIRZ this falls under, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's time to reconstruct McKinney from St. Emmanuel to York. It's already shaping up to be a "main street" of EaDo, and with the right treatment I think it'd surpass St. Emmanuel and Hutchins. What do we want? 8-foot sidewalks, bicycle facilities, and street trees on McKinney! When do we want it? Like, pretty soon.
  22. 004n063
    Preface: this is just for thinking and discussion - no news or information whatsoever. Does the Red Line have too many stops through Downtown? I think if I could make any non-alignment changes to the line, I would discontinue stoppage at the Bell and Main Street Square stops. Central Station and Preston are also too close together, but it's not a big deal if it's just one pair, especially when both are high-value stops. The stop spacing for the rest of the line makes a lot of sense to me.
  23. 004n063
    That's why I'm a little confused by the phasing of the project. I would have thought that MKT-11th would be the most sensible phase 1, and then proceed north (and south, via a different projec) from there. I'm not sure what the thinking was on starting at 15th and then going north. Maybe they didn't want to be inundated with bikes from the start? Maybe they are studying for unanticipated pain points or something.
  24. 004n063
    Some progress photos. Nothing major to report, though it seems that the initial parts of reconstruction on the second phase (20th to 610, for some reason) are well underway, even though the first phase is unfinished. But I've been thinking a lot about this project since exploring yesterday, and I thought I'd share my thoughts. 1. This is serious stuff. The east side of Shepherd has or will have a substantial pedestrian realm with a comfortable and very clearly differentiable bike path. The west side of Shepherd has or will have eight-foot sidewalks. The east side of Durham is not quite as commodious as the east side of Shepherd, but it's substantial and still has the through-running bike path. And maybe most significantly, every (I think?) street crossing the "island" between Shepherd and Durham has or will have 8-foot sidewalks. They did pretty nice work on Lower Shepherd from 59 to Westheimer, but this blows that out of the water. This is Bagby-level treatment, but for a strip that's much more destination-rich, with much higher local population density. When all is said and done, I think it'll be the best stroad reconstruction in the city by far. But... 2. It still is and always will be a stroad. There is still a ton of fast-moving traffic, and signalized crosswalks can be a long way away. It'll be safer and more pleasant to walk or ride along when reconstructed, no doubt. But crossing will still be dangerous and frustrating. The glorious new pedestrian realm will always be noisy and polluted. It has not been transformed into a street. But this isn't like Memorial, where apart from one small dense section, the general function is just road. All of the business activity along Shepherd scream to be a street. Except the road funtion of Shepherd/Durham is and probably always will be essential. It crosses 59, Buffalo Bayou, and 610 - it's the only non-highway road that does that. So adding more signalized crosswalks and/or further reducing the number of vehicle lanes would have a considerable impact on a lot of commuters. Would it be worth it? I tend to always favor safety, and I tend to feel like if a segment of roadway has the local demand to become a street, it should. But I don't drive on Shepherd as part of my commute. I don't take the bus on Shepherd as part of my commute. And I'm a bit of an urbanist radical, so there's a chance I'm a little biased. But yeah, I think it'd be worthwhile to add signalized crosswalks at 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. Truthfully, though, I think the whole project would have made more sense on Yale.
  25. 004n063
    What is left on the Phase I docket?
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