Jump to content

Ross

Full Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3,561

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    5

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Ross

  1. Ross
    The London Underground is heavy rail. There are two type of tunnels there, cut and cover, which is the Metropolitan, District, and Circle lines. All the rest of the lines are bored tunnels, which disrupted the surface much less than the cut and cover. This article has some pictures https://www.theguardian.com/travel/gallery/2013/jan/09/150-years-london-underground-pictures Some more here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2259177/London-Underground-Amazing-images-houses-demolished-Tube-1863.html A few more here http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2013/metropolitan-line-1860s/
  2. Ross
    That makes more sense than subways. You still have to figure out how to get the commuters to the stations, and where they will park. And, the commute times will not be significantly shorter. Even in London, it's only 15 or so minutes faster to take the train over driving, but there's limited parking that makes the train more attractive. And METRO prob ably still thinks that there has to be a complete light rail system to handle the heavy rail commuters before the heavy rail can be built. I'm not sure Houston has reached the stage where the public will accept rail as a viable alternative.
  3. Ross
    Subways are a bad idea here. Not because of flooding risk, as there are mitigations for that. The biggest impediment is the existence of thousands of old oil wells scattered all over town, and no one knows exactly were they are. There's probably some arcane laws governing the subsurface that make things even worse. We could build cut and cover tunnels under streets, but no one would be happy about the mess and traffic disruptions. London quit building tunnels like that over 100 years ago for that reason.
  4. Ross
    It could have been El Dorado Country Club, which was on the site where Golf Club of Houston is now, next to Fall Creek subdivision. El Dorado opened in 1964.
  5. Ross
    US90 traffic has to rejoin I10 West of Sealy, so you still get a lot if backup. 90A is s great alternate, especially if you take 10 to Schulenburg and then go South to catch 90A.
  6. Ross
    Land vslue seems to be by HCAD neighborhood. I made a lot of noise years back when the land value for one half of a city block in Midtown was $5 per sq ft for a commercial property, while the townhouses on the other half had a land value of $20 per foot. Each half of the block was in a fife rent neighborhood. I made the argument that dividing a block didn't make sense, and the next year, the commercial property had the same land value as the townhouses.
  7. Ross
    No
  8. Ross
    I've known a number of folks over the years who thought that was the best German car repair place in town.
  9. Ross
    Cool stuff! This would be fair use in any case, as far as copyright goes. That development didn't turn out as they planned. And, that's an awesome example of puffery and hard selling,
  10. Ross
    To be clear, this is 1107 Shepherd. 1107 N Shepherd would be more like the Popeyes at 11th and Shepherd. In any case, at least there's now some idea of what will be going here. I assume this means the restaurant fka Floyd's/Mardi Gras/etc on Durham that used the parking lot will never reopen
  11. Ross
    Hilcorp principals own it.
  12. Ross
    I didn't say I am opposed to rear parking, just that I won't be patronizing this place if that's how it's developed. There's been many stories about break ins at restaurant parking lots, even if nothing is visible to steal. I just choose not to park behind buildings where theft can happen unobserved.
  13. Ross
    Not really. The last 3 times my brother parked behind a restaurant, his truck was burgled. One of those was at House of Pies on Kirby, one at Houston's, and I don't recall the third one. That's 3 windows he's had to replace. I don't like rear parking because it's hard to tell if there are any spaces, and it's often difficult to keep an eye on your vehicle.
  14. Ross
    I probably should have worded that as not having the inclination to look up the amounts for the campus at the time. The full picture is hard to get, because the industrial district the campus is in doesn't make the bills available on their website. The rate for the ID is 1.33, so that's going to generate $13 million in taxes without even looking at the school and county amounts.
  15. Ross
    Not much research on that article. The ExxonMobil refinery in Baytown paid $18.3 million in school taxes alone for 2016. I would bet the ExxonMobil campus paid at least that much as well.
  16. Ross
    You can have nice things, I likely won't be a patron. I just don't see the attraction of parking in the back. And, since this place is 2+ miles from where I live, I am unlikely to walk there for a meal, which makes parking important.
  17. Ross
    Rail in London works great if you want to go from somewhere in the suburbs to central London. If you need to go across suburbs, then it's nearly impossible. Until Crossrail opens, there's no easy way to get across London on rail either. London banned construction of surface rail and stations in 1846.
  18. Ross
    I don't go to places with parking in the back, it's too hard to tell if there's an open space. And this is too far away to walk to.
  19. Ross
    Not really. The viaduct was narrow, had no shoulders or sidewalks to safely pull over, and was near the end of its useful life. It was an excellent place to drive really fast, though, at least for a short distance.
  20. Ross
    Although, probably not the same size space. The old building had a bunch of space for administrative personnel. But, given the current state of retail in this country, I doubt there will be much investment in Downtown Houston locations for traditional retailers.
  21. Ross
    She didn't exactly lie, but when Macy's sold the property in 2010, they had to know that their time would be limited. Presumably, they did a sale and leaseback, but there's nothing public on the terms.
  22. Ross
    That's not how trains work. There's no way to store all of the trains in the central location - there's no room. If you have a 17 platform station, you can store 17 trains, that's it. So, those trains head back out to the other end of the line, pick up more passengers, then come back to town. Any storage of trains happens on sidings in the suburbs. It's more likely that rush hour is handled by increasing the frequency of trains, plus adding a few trains for the peaks.
  23. Ross
    Macy's actually owned that property, and sold it to Hilcorp, and chose to leave Downtown. They presumably were not making enough money to justify staying, and had no desire to move to another location Downtown.
  24. Ross
    If the Katy Freeway had not been widened, how bad would the congestion be now? Where would all of the people who moved to the West be living? I've seen arguments that they would move near their jobs. That's patently ridiculous, since very few of them have any interest at all in being Downtown, except to go to work. They odon't want to live downtown, have thier kids go to school downtown, or do much of anything Downtown. They want to go home each evening to their nice suburban home. Exactly.
  25. Ross
    Total property taxes on the Days Inn for 2016 were less than $110k. I would imagine demolition would be several million.
×
×
  • Create New...