At first I thought having another commercial airport so close to a big one like IAH would cause air traffic congestion and maybe even safety issues. However, at 22 nm, the distance would be greater than that between LAX and LGB (15 nm)

My family has had a house at the end of a canal in a subdivision on the west end of the island since 1983. It's been a real treasure for our family, a place for us to come together in the summer and on holidays, make memories, enjoy the great outdoors. There has been one chronic irritation, however, and it seems to have gotten considerably worse in the last few years. As I said, our house is on the end of the canal, ie it is the corner lot on our street, with the canals running opposite the street, so we are at the "cul de sac" so to speak, of the canal. Our lawn meets the lawn of the house across the canal from us exactly midway on the end bulkhead. Our lots are level with the street, no curbs or storm sewer or ditch. This setup seems to be an invitation for people (mostly from outside the neighborhood, but also short-term renters) to treat our lawn like a public right-of-way to access the canal to fish. This weekend I had to chase two separate groups off our lawn, they had both driven their large pickup trucks completely onto our lawn. This often results in deep ruts in our lawn and/or damage to our underground sprinkler system. We've also had people drive their golf carts straight onto our lawn to fish while we were sitting on our deck over our boat dock. On two separate occasions when we've told them to get off, they've argued with us, one insisting it was public property, another insisted that he had fished here for 10 years, then knew we had caught him in a lie when we said we'd owned the house for 30. The first one only left after we dialed the police. Golf carts are a special nuisance in our neighborhood. Parents set their kids loose to drive them around the neighborhood (ignoring the "Licensed golf cart drivers only" signs posted at every stop sign), and the kids cut through our yard to round the corner.

We've had underwater lights off our dock for about 15 years, we liked watching the sillouettes of the big trout and redfish at night, and sometimes fishing for them. Several times we'd walk out to fish our lights, and find someone in a kayak already on top of them, or we'd be out on our deck watching the fish and throwing shrimp to them when a kayaker would paddle up and start casting at the fish, scaring them away. I know the canal is public waterway and the kayakers have a right to fish it, but there are legal rights, and then there is common courtesy. So little of the latter has been shown, that when our lights burned out recently, we considered the cost of having them and the problems created by them being on, we decided not to fix them. The inconsiderate kayakers by themselves probably wouldn't have been enough to push the decision, but along with the attraction the lights presented to the pickup trucks and golf carts to drive onto the property, it did. By paying for the lights themselves and the electricity to run them, we were providing a free fish attractant for kayak fishermen, and would have continued to do so if it had just been kayakers fishing our lights when we weren't out there, but that was ruined by the rampant discourtesy and lack of respect for property rights of others. The removal of the lights has cut the traffic down somewhat, but as this weekend demonstrated, there are still plenty of people willing to disregard private property rights to get to canals.

I am posting this in the hopes that at least one person who might go down to Galveston in the future will stop and think before going into a subdivision of private houses on canals to fish. If you enter the subdivision from the water, via the canals, and stay on the water, you are fine, but if you drive in to fish from a canal, you are in all likelihood trespassing. And even if you are fishing from a kayak and fishing over underwater lights in the canal, please just be considerate of the private homeowners who paid to put those lights in the water, and if they look like they want to use them, move on to lights where there aren't people out.

I don't like paying tolls so I avoid them when I can. I've found they don't usually save that much time at peak hours, so not worth the cost for me. Plus, I had been using them more, so had a toll tag, and then when I stopped using them, still had the toll tag "just in case" (and probably had about $30 in the account at the time) but hadn't used a toll road in three years, so the credit card on my account had expired, when one day I got a notice that HCTRA had tried to charge my CC and got it declined. There was no reason they should have been trying to, so I was suspicious of them after that, another reason to avoid toll roads. Then hearing about all the people getting debt collectors after them for over $1,000 dollars in fines and fees for $25 in missed tolls, HCTRA just seemed like a bunch of crooks to me.

I get that HCTRA initially advertised the Sam Houston would be "free", once paid off, and that was a mistake, but that was 30+ years ago, the people still holding onto that need to let go of it (although maybe it would help if people at the County wouldn't deny that this was ever advertised, like Ed Emmett, who wasn't even here at the time, did. Just admit a mistake was made and explain the reason for tolls still being needed). I'd like to see toll roads remain toll roads, but/and a portion of the revenue generated by them be diverted to workable mass transit solutions. I'd much rather pay money to sit on a train than in my own car.

43 minutes ago, lockmat said:

 

I don't like the ballpark in Arlington for a few reasons. One, once you're inside, you feel like you're in a box; can't see anything outside the stadium. Two, it's in the middle of a gigantic parking lot with nothing nearby. Only way to access it is by car.

Is there really that much to see in Arlington anyway? The coasters at Six Flags? 😉 I know what you mean though. I went to one or two games there when I was in college, back when it was brand new. The only other ballpark I had ever known was the Astrodome. I actually liked Arlington's architectural style, felt like classic Americana style at the time, especially compared to the Astrodome's 60s Modernism. I was also struck by how different it was to go to a baseball game at an outdoor park, felt to me like what it should be. Of course, it was a night game, and during the school year, so not yet in the heat of summer. Since we were college students, of course we had to climb up into the nosebleeds, and that's the other thing that struck me, how steep it was, so I can imagine that would contribute to the "boxed in" feeling you're talking about.

I can definitely see the appeal of moving it to Dallas where it would be accessible by DART rail. I guess though all the pro-stadium boosters did a good job of laying on the usual scare tactics of what would happen if the Rangers left Arlington to spook Arlington voters into approving another boondoggle to keep them there.

I'll tell you what, I'm not a huge fan of HEB, either, their cavernous stores with the one-way maze you have to go through in the produce aisle, they're kind of a nightmare to shop at, if they are at all busy. Also, no matter what time of day you go, there will be multiple aisle partially or even fully blocked by restocking activities. Sometimes it is an employee actively restocking, and they act annoyed if you dare reach around them to get the item you need that they are blocking, but just as often, they will have a big cart sitting there unattended blocking an aisle. It can even be a Saturday afternoon, the busiest time for the Bunker Hill store, and there will still be massive restocking activity going on, to the detriment of shoppers actually trying to move through the store to get what they need. Below is an excerpt of an email exchange I had with the manager of the Bunker Hill store:

Quote

 

I appreciate the fact that the HEB Bunker Hill store isn’t like a neighborhood Randall’s in terms of customer traffic or breadth of inventory, but the daytime stocking activity still seems excessive and inefficient. Last Thursday in a ten minute period around 9:45 I documented twenty-five (25) separate instances of stocking activity at the same time in the store, and of those instances, fifteen (15) were carts or forklift pallets left unattended in shopping areas with no employees around them. Several of these were empty or simply filled with empty cardboard boxes. It would be one thing if employees were swiftly moving merchandise in and rapidly stocking, and then just as rapidly moving their now-empty carts, trollies, etc. and empty cardboard boxes back into the back of the store, but shopping areas are being used as storage areas for to-be-stocked merchandise and stocking carts that are either empty or filled with refuse from stocking activities.

Attachment limitations prevent me from sending you all twenty-five photos I took during last Thursday’s visit, but I would like to call your attention to three. The first, titled “card aisle.jpg” shows a massive fork lift hand cart blocking the greeting card aisle. I guess your employees decided no one needed to purchase greeting cards just then, because it would have been virtually impossible for a customer to get in there. When I told my wife about it, she said “oh, yeah, there seems to always be something in there, they use the card aisle for storage.”

Next I’d like to call your attention to “sitting marshmallows.jpg” which shows an employee leisurely sitting down on the floor while she stocks. It’s unprofessional looking, and there is also no chance she’s going to be able or want to swiftly get out of customers’ way if they need to get an item she’s sitting in front of. You can also see one bag of marshmallows sitting directly on the store floor, but I assure you behind her were multiple bags directly on the floor. “On Floor.jpg” shows another instance where merchandise is being rested on the floor during stocking. Customers don’t want to see the food they intend to buy and eat so cavalierly set on the floors where hundreds of people a day walk in, tracking in dirt and bacteria.

 

Wow, how pathetic, The Cubs and Red Sox are playing in stadiums over 100 years old, so venerable that they are national landmarks, meanwhile here in Texas, once a stadium reaches the age that, were it human, would just barely be old enough to rent a car, and the team calls on the city to tear it down and build a new one - and the cities usually acquisece and build new ones. But not at the expense of the teams that use them, of course. An organization that spends $93 million a year on salaries for 15 people couldn't possibly be expected to pay for its own stadium, so let's jack up sales and hotel taxes for all the little people. 🙄

I'm not desperate to find the cheapest price either, and I think many Houstonians were happy to pay more at Randall's for decades when they felt they were getting a better shopping experience - better shopping environment, better service, better selection, and for years that was the case. But now all that is gone, and all that is left is the higher price, and that does play a significant part in Randall's decline, despite the OP wanting to slap anyone who says so. According to the USDA, a moderate-cost food plan for a family of 4 with kids between 6 and 11 is $1,051.80 per month (low-cost is $843.50 and thrifty is $639.80). With a price difference of ~15%, you're talking almost $2,000 more a year you're spending at Randall's for the same stuff. That's more than pocket change.

The last time I was up in this part of town, during Harvey when I evacuated up to my parents' house, I was shocked by how much this intersection has changed. When I was a kid living in Cypresswood in the early 80s (we moved to Champion Forest in 1985), this intersection had the nearest grocery stores, and served as a kind of "town center" for the nearby neighborhoods. It sadly seems fairly run down now, with the turnover in types of businesses definitely going downmarket. Here is what I remember being there c. 1984:

There were farms of the northeast and northwest corners.

Northeast corner had a grocery store we almost never went in, I think it was a Minimax? I can't remember the other stores in this complex at that time, but I know by the time I was in high school there was a photographic film developing store in the center, because I had a friend with an after-school job there.

Northwest corner was anchored by a greenhouse-style Kroger that was our usual grocery store. I remember it had a little cafe inside that was fairly popular. I feel like there was also a video store further down the strip, and an Eckerd's pharmacy. There may have been a Chinese restaurant and a Mexican restaurant in there, but we never ate at them, as Chef Chan's was right outside our neighborhood, and so good, and our favorite Mexican was Las Brasas, on Kuykendahl south of 1960, across from the Bammel gas field. Back to the southwest corner of Louetta and Kukendahl, I remember in the middle of the Kroger parking lot there was one of those 1-hour photo processing booths that looked like a toll booth, was it a Fox Foto or a Fotomat? Another place I remember in the strip was Rainbow Popcorn, which sold all different flavors of popcorn, from pizza and sour cream & onion, to rootbeer and bubblegum. They also had a business hand-painting 2-gallon tins with whatever you wanted on them, and then filling them with bags of their popcorn. They were very popular for birthdays and graduations - last time I was at my parents' house I saw the one my older brother got for his graduation from Haude Elementary in 1984.

Alright, so I just shopped at Kroger the same basket of of common staple food items and household goods I had shopped at both HEB and Randall's (remember, Randall's was 13% higher than HEB), and Randall's was 17% higher than Kroger. With all due respect to peoples' feelings (aka gut instincts) about what they personally tend to buy, or cherrypicking a special promotional item, comparing the exact same basket of common staple goods is the only reliable method to determine whether Randall's is actually more expensive, and it is more expensive than both HEB or Kroger. I doubt I need to go through the same process to demonstrate that Randall's is more expensive than Fiesta, Walmart, and SuperTarget.

I knew some of that, but appreciate the detail. I do think though that the dismissal of Randall’s higher prices (ie, him wanting to slap anyone who mentions it) is off base. I did a quick comparison of Randall’s prices with HEB because I happen to have an HEB account for curbside ordering, which made it quick for me to be able to compare Randall’s to a competitor and show they are in fact more expensive. I think his “feeling” that Randall’s is no more expensive than Kroger’s is just that, just a feeling, not based on comparing the same products side by side like I did with HEB. 

On 1/16/2019 at 6:49 AM, MikeRichardson said:

 

I want to slap the people who keep repeating the same garbage about the "high prices". Yes, it was true a long time ago. It is no longer true anymore.

 

I also shop at Kroger regularly. The prices are basically the same as Randalls. They both average out to about the same. 

I'm sorry, but you're wrong, Randall's higher prices are still a salient issue. I just compared the same "basket" of goods between Randall's and HEB, and Randall's total was 13% higher than HEB - even with the Remarkable Card discounts from Randall's and no discounts of any kind with HEB. Randall's was able to get away with higher prices for decades when the Houston grocery shopping market was smaller and Randall's had a reputation for superior service, selection, and shopping environment, but when HEB repositioned itself in the market, going from "Pantry" to "Central Market" in the 2000s, that was the death knell for an already ailing company. Even Kroger was modernizing its store layouts and inventory starting in the late 90s, while Randall's made little to no changes to layout, and was actually contracting its inventory, reducing choices, like when it stopped carrying Boar's Head so Safeway could push its in-house Primo Taglio brand. On top of contraction of selection, inventory management has gotten worse, as new owner Albertson's has closed the Houston-area Randall's distribution center and is now distributing to Houston out of DFW area. Randall's was able to ride on hometown customer loyalty for about 20 years to justify its higher prices, but when Houston's growth is mostly due to newcomers to the area with no loyalty to the brand, and it's alienating its longtime customers by no longer carrying their favorite items and running out of what it does carry, even long time customers start to notice they are paying a significant amount more and getting less for it. The nearest grocery store to me is a Randall's, though I usually go out of my way to either HEB or Fiesta, and even if I just want to quickly run in for something, I go to the next-nearest store, a Kroger, even though it's an old, small one, I know it doesn't run out of the things I buy regularly, is faster to get in and out of (usually because it has 2 to 3 times the number of checkouts open), and is cheaper. When I do run into Randall's, it's after a workout because it's right next to my gym, and I've noticed the clientele is getting older and older looking, the little old ladies who've shopped at this Randall's for 40 years, and when they die out, I'm sure this Randall's will close, if it doesn't do so before that. Another reason not to shop at a Randall's - they usually only have two checkouts open, and there is a very high probability that whichever one you choose, ahead of you will be a bluehair who waits until the checker has finished ringing up the entire cart, then fumbles in her purse for paper coupons, and then waits until after the checker has credited her for those coupons before fumbling in her purse for her checkbook to write a paper check.

I've been thinking about the negativity about the 80s some have expressed in this thread. I remember when I was a kid someone explaining to me nostalgia meaning "remembering the good and forgetting the bad." I'm not sure what the word is for the opposite of nostalgia (forgetting the good and remembering the bad), but I think that's what's going on here. Things really didn't get bad until 1986, and by 1988-89, they were picking back up again. Every decade has its low point, and condemning an entire 10 year period for a 2-3 year nadir is a bit unfair.

On the issue of Houston's murder rate, this was happening at a time when crime was at an all-time high around the country (peaking in 1992). Still, white flight had already largely occurred, most murders were happening in low income areas within the city limits, so the average middle class and above Greater Houstonian wasn't worried about being murdered in his own backyard. Unlike cities like LA and Miami, where the crime was more evenly distributed. My grandfather, for instance, was pistolwhipped in his own backyard in Coral Gables, the West U of Miami, in 1988.

1986 really was the watershed year for Houston, because though the price of oil had been declining since 82, 86 was the precipitous price drop, and it occurred at the same time the Tax Reform Act of 1986 eliminated the tax shelters for passive real estate development, even wiping them out retroactively. Suddenly deals done years earlier were much less, bursting the Texas real estate market bubble of the 70s-early 80s, and helping initiate the S&L crisis.

So 1986, that watershed year, cleaved Old Houston from New Houston. It precipitated a lot of Old Houston institutions going out of business, like Sakowitz and Jamail's Grocers. Sadly, Houston lost a lot of its unique local character, and New Houston became culturally a lot more like most other major cities - we went from Urban Cowboy to Reality Bites, but it can be argued that this change made Houston more attractive to transplants from other parts of the country, and allowed the city to become as international and cosmopolitan as it is today. But coming back to the "pre-1986" Houston, I think it is worth reminiscing over, because it was the apogee and last gasp of high flying, unique Old Houston culture.

Has anyone noticed the old Astroworld model at the Downtown library, ground floor? I hadn't been by in a while and this was the first time I had seen it. Looks to be from before the park was first opened. I took a few pictures, posted one here that is focused on what was my favorite ride when I was a little kid in the early 80s, the River of No Return ride, a blatant copy of Disneyland/world's Jungle Cruise. I think it was probably the best ride Astroworld ever had, when it was a genuine theme park, before SF turned it into just another roller coaster park in the mid 80s. I'm not sure exactly when the RONR was closed, but I know XLR8 was built over where it was.

And a bonus, some commercials from Astroworld's heyday in the late 70s-early 80s:

Was that, though, conclusively attributable to being landlocked? The time period you are talking about is one where practically every city, including unlandlocked Houston, was suffering from urban decay and White Flight. 

And I’m not sure a city reaching the limits of its corporate boundaries and not being able to sprawl out more is the end of the world. At some point city planners need to adjust to the fact that low density sprawling suburbs were a bad idea. 

So, I'm wondering, and asking this of people on both sides of the issue, do you think people commuting from outside the city they don't live in burdens the city (ie road maintenance, etc) more than it helps it economically (ie, through having a large workforce to attract companies), and if so, what do you think is preferable:

A. A city being able to tax and/or annex an ETJ

B. A city being able to charge a commuter tax

I’m happy to drop it, just so we’re clear that there would be nothing to drop if you hadn’t made an issue out of something so inconsequential to score cheap points in the first place. 

3 hours ago, Ross said:

Which I am opposed to. If Cypress wants to incorporate, either beg Houston to allow it, or beg Houston to annex the area. There's no need for more cities to surround Houston and suck all the tax money out, which is what happened to Dallas. Houston would be stupid to allow itself to be surrounded.

Has Dallas really done all that badly?

3 hours ago, samagon said:

 

you know cars were a novelty once, as were escalators, as were lights, as were a lot of things that we all take for granted. I think you are confusing novelty and fad. a fad is something like Furbies. a novelty is something that is new and shiny, but that shininess wears off after you've done it once or twice, and they become more common. besides, if they are only a fad, and will be gone soon, then why are we even worrying about whether laws are made or not? if would be an irresponsible waste of taxpayer money to make a law for something that will be a flash in the pan.

 

there are two kinds of bike rentals. docked and dockless. Houston operates docked bikes. there are also dockless varieties of bikes. your assumption that people don't ride bikes on sidewalks is not accurate. other cities have dockless bikes, and they are left all over hells half acre as well. Houston seems to be expanding their network of bikeshare. 

 

using the wrong homonym is not a typo. your proper (or improper) use of vocabulary words only reflects upon you. I wasn't pedantically harping, just pointing out the correct word to use so you could potentially grow. your correct response would be to note the mistake and try not to make it again. getting defensive only shows that you aren't going to learn from your mistake and it's a waste on my part to have even pointed it out.

 

I was told once by someone that spent a lot of time studying the English language (and sorry, I respect them more than I do you, specifically regarding the English language) that being consistent is far more important that following formatting rules. if someone writes with the same formatting throughout their entire submission, while it may be jarring at first, it becomes expected. you go from having one or two mistakes, to that being a signature, so to speak.

 

vocabulary and grammar have little to do with e-scooters.

 

I do like some of the thoughts you posted about how to enforce rules around scooters. one glaring problem is if someone parks the scooter correctly, then some angry scooter hater gets all crazy and starts moving scooters that are stationed correctly into the wrong place, then the last rider will be punished unfairly. the answer there is one I think that is already in place by a lot of scooter shares. take a picture of the scooter inside the app after you park it to show you have placed it correctly. those users get a discount on their next ride. I think I remember that being how it went.

 

I also absolutely love the idea about having these things share bike lanes. we need more bike lanes though. 

Yes, I do know that cars were once a novelty, and the introduction of the car had a lot of growing pains as people struggled to figure out how best to incorporate them into society through regulation, etc. Since then we’ve learned from experience that new technologies and paradigms that may impact public safety should be rolled out slowly, with proper oversight. Unfortunately, though, Silicon Valley is a perpetual adolescent, quite often seemingly ignorant of painful past experience, apparently thinking AirBnB was the first to ever think of unlicensed boarding houses, Uber to “invent” the unlicensed gypsy cab.

Back to when cars were first a novelty, it actually looked for a while that electric cars would win out over internal combustion. But they, along with the Stanley Steamer car, did not prevail. For electric cars, the infrastructure and technology had not kept pace with the promise, and the idea was effectively shelved for 100 years, and now its time has come. My read is that infrastructure and technology has not yet caught up to dockless e-scooter apps as a practical last-mile solution on a mass scale. In this case, it is not electrical infrastructure or battery technology, but city infrastructure. American cities have been built around the automobile for the past 90 years, making them an unfriendly place for smaller, slower, more vulnerable wheeled transportation, and the technology seems not yet ready for efficient distribution of scooters to where they are needed and to keep them from underfoot. Their moment has probably not yet come.  And you are right that it wouldn’t make sense to make new laws for something that may be a flash in the pan, but we don’t have to make new laws, do we? There are laws against blocking and littering public sidewalks. There are laws requiring businesses that operate in public areas to get permission from local authorities, which indicate that the authorities have the power to review and require certain conditions, even deny activities.

I’m a part of the riding community here in Houston, and I say you a vastly exaggerating the number of bicycles ridden on crowded sidewalks, and from my observations of e-scooters in San Francisco, they were being ridden on crowded sidewalks far, far more commonly than bikes.

While you continue to double-down on making yourself look like a prat with your self-important pedantry over “shear” vs “sheer,” I’m just going to put this out here.

https://www.sciencealert.com/people-who-pick-up-grammar-mistakes-jerks-scientists-find

“People Who Constantly Point Out Grammar Mistakes Are Pretty Much Jerks, Scientists Find”

As if we needed science to tell us that.

On 1/11/2019 at 2:24 PM, BeerNut said:

For those that are against scooters under what legal/technical frame work would you allow them?  The parking could possibly be handled by geofencing parking areas that are determined by the built in GPS.  You could encourage users to park in these areas by a implementing a "good neighbor" refund or ride bonus.  As for riding on sidewalks,  I see people ride bikes on the sidewalks all the time.   Maybe slow down traffic speeds through road design and have bike/scooter lanes in areas that people travel.  I'm not sure what the right answers are but scooters/dockless bikes fill a niche for people that would probably take an Uber for short range trips.

That all sounds pretty reasonable.  If the gps resolution is a problem, then I guess the cities are going to have to get tougher, have their parking enforcement officers collect any scooters that are left out irresponsibly, and let the companies know they have them, fine them for every day they hold one, and at the end of 30 days they get auctioned off.  Then the companies could start charging their users a surcharge equivalent to the cost of the fine if the last user left one somewhere it got picked up. That would encourage more responsible parking. The companies would need to require that only permanent credit cards or debit cards linked to a bank account be used when registering, no prepaid cards, because from what I read, that is already causing a problem and would be a way for people to dodge the fines. 

E-scooter aps or no, all cities need more and better protected bike lanes, and that would be the only place that these would be appropriate to ride. These devices should have highly visible (maybe even RFID) identification for each unit, so if a cop sees someone on the sidewalk on one and can’t take the time to stop him, can report it, the company gets a fine, which it passes on to the renter just like if you get a parking ticket in a rental car. 

I don't go nearly that far back, but some of my fondest memories from high school in the early 90s was driving into town from the suburbs with my friends on Friday or Saturday nights, browsing for hours in the Bookstop where Trader Joes is (we were artsy nerds who also went to foreign films as Landmark River Oaks and sipped cappuccinos at Dolce & Freddo on lower Kirby).

On 1/8/2019 at 4:27 PM, wilcal said:

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.

I think a more apt comparison is not to cars legally parked in designated parking areas, but to people setting up "shop" on sidewalks, spreading out their merchandise they are trying to sell, so you have to walk around them, creating bottlenecks, etc., for that's what these dockless scooter services are, private companies using the public space to run their business, leaving their equipment out for people to have to step around. In places where sidewalk vending is legal, it is usually regulated, with the city approving locations people can set up their business, so that people don't set them up in places that cause foot traffic congestion problems and/or safety concerns. When a dockless scooter company's customers can just leave scooters just anyone they want, that kind of sensible regulation can't happen.

Here's another article about Des Moines that shows suburbs without sidewalks is not some unique Harris county thing:

https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/nation-world/national/article116122278.html

"Like Windsor Heights, most of the disagreements are in neighborhoods built in the 1950s and 1960s that were designed to be different from the larger cities they border. The absence of sidewalks was intended to give the neighborhoods a rural appearance and more privacy at a time when walking for exercise was less common."

And one documenting the phenomenon in Minneapolis-St. Paul:

http://www.startribune.com/sidewalks-gain-in-suburbs-even-as-some-residents-protest/210719691/

"For proof of the fractured history of sidewalks in suburbia, look no further than Katherine McManus’ block of Zarthan Avenue in St. Louis Park.

On a street where children and parishioners walk to the school and church at the end of the block, the sidewalk simply stops at her property line and starts up again three homes down the street. Pedestrians veer into the sometimes-busy street to avoid walking on the grass.

'Walking dogs or having kids in the street seems ridiculously dangerous,' McManus said.

Once, cities had sidewalks and suburbs had lawns. Not anymore. Next week, the St. Louis Park City Council is expected to approve a 10-year plan to put a sidewalk within a quarter mile of every resident (fixing the Zarthan gap in 2016). Hopkins and Edina have programs to add sidewalks."

Trae, your premise is that you perceive unincorporated Harris County as so "very weird" and "different" from other metro areas where the suburbs are incorporated, and you blame lack of incorporation for that weirdness. One of those differences you perceive as being "specific" to Houston area is our suburbs' lack of sidewalks, but per above, that's obviously a nationwide phenomenon. Since your perception was not accurate in that respect, perhaps you should reexamine whether it might also be inaccurate in the other ways you find Houston area "weird" compared to other metro areas?

1 hour ago, Trae said:

 

Drainage improvements includes a lot of things and it's up to that particularly city to decide on what gets done, then they'll bring that to flood management agencies for final approval. After that, it gets put up to vote by citizens of that city. Obviously the way Houston has been doing it now (your preferred way) hasn't worked at all, especially recently. It's time stop the status quo and allow for change.

 

Adding more brains in the room that oversee cities would make things easier, in my opinion. It'd reshape the H-GAC to be more like the North Texas Council of Governments. It's hard to do much when there's so much ETJ land that's not governed well. Really, Harvey's damage could have been mitigated had their been more individual municipalities that needed to take care of their population. You see this in DFW where the construction of all of their area lakes was partly due to help with drainage and was pushed by some of the suburban cities. With so much of the developed land in Houston falling under an ETJ (and most within an ETJ of a city with no zoning and lax ordinances), most developers were in it for a quick buck. That's the only reason why I could see things like Canyon Gate/parts of Cinco Ranch neighborhoods that were built IN the reservoir. If those areas fell within an actual city then I doubt it would have been approved.

 

As for your last paragraph, it's always been a wonder to me why stuff like that is specific to Houston, while other metro areas don't have that problem when they've all experienced white flight. For example Dallas had a lot of white flight, yet it's suburbs still all built (mostly continuous) sidewalks. Los Angeles had a TON of white flight, yet its suburbs all built sidewalks (and many developed before Houston started to really grow in the late 60s/early 70s). There are sidewalks in many affluent/former white flight areas all across the country. The reason for the lack of sidewalks in Houston is due to weak ordinances and the tendency to do things cheaply. It's good that most master-planned communities are built with sidewalks but the problem is that they lead to nowhere once you leave the development. I used to think like that too being from the Houston area and thought that sidewalks meant "poorer area" because that's what we were told. Once I got older and moved around it showed me that was bullshit. In fact, one of the areas that needs sidewalks most (North Katy-South Cypress) doesn't have any. It's a shame to see moms pushing strollers, people carrying groceries, or kids pushing their bikes on dirt paths along the streets there. That's what happens when your tax dollars are sent elsewhere because you're an ETJ...

Actually, the way Houston has been doing things is NOT my preferred way, I've stated my preferred way as being to create a regional flood control and land use management authority that would supersede the flood control districts of multiple counties in Southeast Texas, like the way the Texas legislature chartered the Harris Galveston Subsidence district, but greater in scope and geography. I've talked about it in five different posts before this one, so I'm perplexed as to why you're claiming that the status quo is my preferred way.

I agree with you that incorporating unincorporated parts of Harris would absolutely make a lot of things easier and better (I have from the start), just NOT flood control and emergency management. As I have already said, I'm not saying that means a bunch of new municipalities would HAVE to make things worse, but in my opinion based on 20 years of professional involvement in this issue, the best thing to prevent then from contributing to the problem and to actually fix the problem would be the trans-county regional authority I've now advocated for six times in this thread. Emergency planning/response could still be handled at the county along with mutual assistance agreements between the new cities.

On the no sidewalks issue, from the time I was a kid, I always thought it was lame the neighborhoods I lived in didn't have sidewalks, and when I heard the supposed reason for that, even without talking into account the racial undertones of that, I thought that was the dumbest reason not to have something that would be nice to have I had ever heard. However, it's not unique to Houston-area suburbs. My cousin and brother have both lived in the Atlanta-metro suburbs, and has lived in three different metro DC-area suburbs, and I've visited them in both areas numerous times. There are plenty of middle-class-to-upper-middle suburbs in both areas that have no sidewalks. And as you live in Los Angeles, you should know that Bel Air has no sidewalks, a deliberate decision on their part. With the exception of Bel Air which made its decision decades sooner, the most common vintage for these sidewalk-free neighborhoods is about the same time as Houston area's neighborhoods, an interval from about the early 60s into the 80s. One sees more sidewalks in neighborhoods of this demographic built from the 90s on. Why things changed, I don't know; maybe the HUD requirement sunsetted maybe people forgot about the HUD requirement and/or realized its stupid not to have sidewalks. Now I see a lot of sidewalks in newer neighborhoods built from the 90s on in unincorporated northwest Harris just north of Louetta near 249 (I mention that because it's where my parents live now so I know it fairly well). Just looking at Google Earth I can see sidewalks in Colony Creek Village, Bridgestone West, Charterwood, Glenloch, Memorial Springs, I could go on and on.

Check out this link (from the DC metro area) that talks about different neighborhoods not having sidewalks. It certainly demonstrates that it is not just a Harris County thing, though the reasons for this may be more varied than the one I was told so long ago:

https://ggwash.org/view/37058/ask-ggw-is-there-any-reason-not-to-have-sidewalk

There are parts of DC and other cities with no sidewalks. As pedestrian safety has become a higher priority in road design, DC and other cities have been adding them, though sometimes residents oppose the idea. Is there any good reason not to put one in? Do we have statistics?

Ben Ross gives some historical perspective on why neighborhoods might not have them:

The original reason for not building sidewalks in suburban neighborhoods was to give the development a “high-class” non-urban image by discouraging walking.  See Dead End, page 16.

Sean Emerson lives in one such area:

A reason I’ve heard people in my neighborhood (Woodmoor in Four Corners) use for opposing sidewalks was the preservation of the “rural” feel of the neighborhood.  My neighborhood and several others nearby were once anchored by Indian Springs Country Club, so you can imagine that the clientele originally buying homes around here were doing so to escape the city and its associated “urban” infrastructure like curbs and sidewalks.

The streets in my neighborhood close to University Boulevard and Colesville Road were built in the mid-1930’s with no sidewalks or curbs (these streets comprised the original development anchored by the country club).  When the county installed curbs about 10 years ago, sone people complained that the curbs changed the “character” of those streets, and several think that sidewalks would make it worse.  There are many 1930’s era neighborhoods in and around Silver Spring which still lack curbs of any kind, much less sidewalks (Hillandale, North Hills of Sligo, and parts of Woodside come to mind).

Retaining a “country” or “rural” feel might not sound like a compelling reason to prevent the installation of sidewalks to most, but it is for some.

So does Nick Keenan:

My neighborhood, Palisades, had a protracted debate about adding sidewalks on a neighborhood street, University Terrace. Ultimately they were not put in.

Some of the arguments were expected: there are people who never walk, who don’t see any utility to sidewalks. Landowners who would lose part of their front yard were predictably opposed. What surprised me was how many people expressed the viewpoint that sidewalks actually detract from a neighborhood. People even used the adjective “rural” to describe our neighborhood. I’m not sure they really knew what rural meant — Palisades certainly isn’t rural —  I think they were looking for a word that meant non-urban and that was the best they could come up with.

Like so many personal preferences, there’s no right or wrong, but there’s also very little room for persuasion.

4 minutes ago, terra002 said:

So, just like a bike...

I would try to explain explain it to you again, but that's obviously futile, you can believe what you want to believe, I'm out.

Okay, it appears he does at least support his constituents having the option to be able to vote on whether they want to become a city (and I agree with him on that). They'd have to vote themselves out of Houston's ETJ before they could even get to that point, which even your article says is a long shot, and supporting constituents right to self-determination is no guarantee how he himself would actually vote if such a vote went from being a far-fetched hypothetical to actually on a ballot. And even his support for incorporation for his neck of the woods would still have no bearing on whether it would be better for regional land use management and flood control.

Honestly, yes, there has been too much development, and in the wrong places, throughout the region, and the Katy area has a lot of those places (so does Houston). Drainage improvements constitute more than just detention ponds, there are still jurisdictions doing channelization, even though the evidence points to channelization actually making flooding worse. Absolutely channelization in cities upstream on Buffalo Bayou worsens flooding downstream, like in Houston. And yes, there are overarching agencies that cities have to report to. Not one, but separate ones of varying quality based on what county a city is in. A city in Fort Bend has to answer to a Fort Bend Drainage government agency, which does what it thinks is best for Fort Bend county, even though the water that is drained out of Fort Bend County becomes Harris County's problem. Fort Bend doesn't even have a Flood Control district, it has a Drainage District, which county residents obviously have come to understand is not adequate, because since Harvey there have been calls to finally establish a Flood Control district there

https://communityimpact.com/houston/katy/city-county/2017/11/21/fort-bend-county-considers-flood-control-district-in-hopes-of-modernizing-drainage/

We're in the mess we are in here in Southeast Texas because of a patchwork of independent jurisdictions with land use planning and flood control agencies of highly variable quality of oversight and little coordination with each other. Throwing a bunch more independent jurisdictions into the mix is not the solution to that.

Oh, and an aside, something I missed that you said earlier in the thread, really just more interesting trivia information than anything else, but you pointed to lack of sidewalks in unincorporated suburbs. From what I heard from a long time ago, so take it with a grain of salt, but that doesn't actually have to do with lack of services, it's a vestige of Houston's White Flight in the 70s and 80s. Neighborhoods which took HUD funding during development, which was intended to make the houses more affordable to lower-income people, had to meet certain requirements. One of those requirements was they had to have sidewalks. New subdivisions  that were marketing themselves to the middle class and above White Flighters deliberately didn't put in sidewalks as kind of a racist dog whistle to let prospective buyers know they didn't take any HUD money, so they didn't have any low-income, ie., black residents. Do we really think that Don Hand couldn't have afforded to put in sidewalks in a high end, expensive neighborhood like Champion Forest, if people really wanted that?