JLWM8609

Interesting. I knew Chrysler had benefited from some parts-sharing back when the parent company was still DaimlerChrysler, but didn't know about this specifically. I assume by "underpinnings" you're talking about suspension components or subassemblies, and not the chassis itself?  

Yes. The control arm front suspension comes from the W220. The 5 link rear suspension, the firewall, the floorpan, differential, and ESP system all come from the W211.

I have never driven the Charger or Challenger - from what I read, they are great in a straight line but can't hardly turn a corner - I doubt there would be any test drives available but I sure would like to drive one....

They ought to be able to corner well. They share their underpinnings with the Mercedes-Benz W211 (03-09 E-class) and W220 (00-06 S-class)

That Hellcat is something else. If I had unlimited funds, I'd probably do something crazy like drop a Hellcat drivetrain into a Chrysler 300 made to look like a base model and have a helluva sleeper.

Brakes are powerful in most situations you could avoid hitting a pedestrian.

Braking power varies depends on a variety of factors including pavement conditions, weather, tire condition, car weight, brake disc/drum and pad condition, and even shock absorber condition. Stopping distance is a combination of reaction time and braking distance. The average stopping distance from 30 mph to 0 is 23 meters, or about 75 feet. That's in ideal conditions. If a pedestrian steps out in front of a car going 30 mph at a distance of 75 feet or less, there's a great possibility that car won't be able to avoid that pedestrian.

Jaywalking in traffic is similar to when drivers try to beat a train at the railroad crossing. The driver sees the large train coming and thinks its going slower than it actually is, and starts crossing the tracks anyway. The train engineer sees the car on the tracks a few hundred feet away and hits the emergency brake. At 30 mph, the train is traveling 44 feet per second, and it takes a 150-car freight train traveling 30 mph up to 2/3 mile to come to a complete stop. Do you think it's the train engineer's fault for hitting that car?

Northbound, it seems to be the traffic trying to come on from the Brazos/St. Joseph/Pease/Walker collector (many of whom want to make the left exit to the Katy just a bit up the road) duking it out with people trying to get on 10 eastbound or just to continue north.

 

Southbound, the first squeeze is the Houston/Memorial collector from the right at the same time that the Allen Parkway ramp is doing the Merge of Death on the left.  Neither ramp has an adequate acceleration lane, and the Allen Parkway ramp also has terrible sight lines.  The weaving for 59/288 at the other end of the Pierce doesn't help much, either.

The ramp from Houston/Memorial isn't as bad as the Allen Parkway ramp. I drive that ramp often and the acceleration lane isn't that bad. The biggest problem is from people in the mainlanes who insist on tailgating the vehicle front of them so people on the ramp can't merge with the mainlanes easily.

What does everyone think of those new developments going up in traditionally bad neighborhoods? I.e. North of downtown and off navigation. My husband and I are looking for our first home and have found that we can't afford the young areas we want like the Heights, Midtown, and and Montrose.

However, these new, cheap, neighborhoods still in the loop are bright and shiny but surrounded by "sketchy" areas. Is it a risky investment?? We really want to start renting out the house when we can afford a nicer one.

Those areas in "traditionally bad neighborhoods" are probably not as bad as you think they are. The Heights, Midtown, and Montrose aren't immune to crime. You can get assaulted, robbed, and have your home invaded in just about any neighborhood in town. People get a false sense of security when they live in so called non sketchy areas like the areas you listed. When crime hits their neighborhood, you'll often see residents get on TV and say "That never happens here." Well, it does. You have to be cautious wherever you live.  

Here are my top gripes about the 288/59/45 interchange.

1. The ramp from 59NB to 288NB merges 2 lanes with a 3 lane highway. The resulting merge should be a 5 lane highway, right? Nope. The inside lane of the ramp and the outside lane of 288 merge into one. It's an antiquated design. There was a similar problem with the ramp from 288NB to US59NB that was fixed by restriping one of the lanes into a shoulder lane.

2. The ramp from 288NB to 45NB. Prior to the reconstruction of the Pierce Elevated in 1997, you had a similar situation as above. The outside lane of the ramp from 288NB would merge with the left lane of 45NB. TxDOT restriped the ramp so the lanes would merge into 1 before merging with 45, but that causes the ramp to back up to 59 on some days. Better lane balancing by turning the ramp back into a 2 lane ramp and making the Pierce Elevated 4 lanes from that point on would fix that problem.

3. The onramp from 288 from Hamilton is terrible. There's hardly any acceleration lane, and before it merges with 288, another ramp from Chenevert at Berry merges with the Hamilton onramp. A solution would be to shift the 288 SB mainlines slightly so there's a longer acceleration lane and maybe close the onramp from Chenevert at Berry since I don't see it being heavily utilized. The left shoulder is wide enough to accommodate the shift.

4. The onramp from Jackson St. to 288 SB is the same way. It looks like there's enough room to shift the lanes over to make the acceleration lane longer.

5. The ramp from 59NB to 288SB. This problem comes more from people who don't know how to merge since there's more than ample space to accelerate, but I think traffic would flow better if that ramp turned into an auxiliary lane that would terminate as an "EXIT ONLY" lane at Southmore.

 

I do have to add though, the trend in the black community to name their children more African sounding names does not seem to have adversely affected those kiddos.  When I see some of them in print I'm bewildered as to how to pronounce them but again, it doesn't seem to be a issue to others. 

 

I wouldn't say people with "African sounding names" haven't been adversely affected. Some probably haven't, but I'm sure that some have. Like Editor said, if you had a Michael and a person with an unusual name applying for a job, and both are qualified for the job, Michael is probably going to get the job. It's wrong, but it happens. It doesn't even have to be a first name. According to the census, Washington, Jefferson, and Williams are the top surnames among black Americans. When it comes to two well qualified applicants named Samantha Washington and Samantha Smythe, Smythe will probably get higher priority for callbacks. There was a study done in 2004 by researchers at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Half of the resumes were given names like Emily Walsh, and the other half were given names like Lakeisha Washington. The researchers found that names like Emily Walsh received as many more callbacks equivalent to an additional eight years of experience on a resume.

As for the original poster, I think Houston would be best reserved for a middle name.

I think references to Sylvester Turner's "special friend" might come back into the spotlight if Turner becomes the big favorite for the race. I could see old antigay activist Dr. Stephen Hotze throwing his support to Turner's opponent and trying to use that 20+  year old news story against Turner. He'd probably send out some mailers with Turner's picture, somehow make reference to the HERO ordinance and mention how Turner supports "teh geys" ordinance to let godless crossdressers into bathrooms so they can steal Houston's Christian children.

Me too. I purposely didn't write about it though b/c I don't want to give up one of 'my' good / semi-secret traffic work-arounds. 

 

At certain times of day, everyone else has the same idea, so it's not a big secret. I'm usually trying to access 288 instead of 59, but either way, when the Hamilton route is also clogged, that's when I'll decide to take... whoops! Almost let that secret slip!

Buying a 1911 didn't make the list?

These tips are geared more toward protecting your home from burglars when you're going to be away from home. Your 1911, while good to have for home protection, is not gonna do much good when you're across town at work when burglars hit.

The Weingarten mansion has been sold. The buyer's identity hasn't been revealed, but supposedly, the buyer is going to restore the property.

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/real-estate/08-08-14-sold-historic-weingarten-mansion-gets-a-buyer-will-property-be-restored/

The scott on-ramp causes serious traffic issues. It should either be closed off or a concrete divider should be extended from the 59&288 south / 45& 59N split so that people can't cross 4 lanes of traffic to get to 59S.

 

In all actuality this wouldn't reduce freeway access in the area either. If you're at UH, take the spur to get onto 45 then take the exit as normal. If you're in EaDo and need to get to 59 south, then take the 45 feeder and follow it just past 59. Then take a left on Hamilton. There is a 59 south on ramp just past the 45/59 exchange. 

The Scott onramp is so bad that I avoid it sometimes by taking the feeder road to where it turns into Pease, turn left onto Hamilton, and take the ramp from Hamilton onto 59 SB.

Now, to at least one realistic idea.

 

They should re-arrange the exit ramps from 45 to 59 (northbound lanes) and from 59 to 45 (southbound lanes).

 

There's the exit right after telephone on the northbound section of 45 for the 'downtown exits and scott street' and the entrance from downtown destinations into the SB lanes of 45. these elevated sections were designed to ease the transition into the spur 5 runoff that now goes nowhere (was supposed to be part of the freeway down 35).

 

So, shut down the ramps from 45NB to 59 NB/SB and build them onto that spur section. same for from 59NB/SB onto 45SB. this would at least ease part of the interchange. it would eliminate people waiting until the last possible second from cutting over from 59sb exit back into 45nb traffic (which does cause quite a stir and often wrecks). It also eliminates people entering at scott who are trying to jog over to the other side of the freeway to get to the 59sb ramp. that's a really short distance to do that in and really slows things down as well. people who want to get from scott to 59sb could easily ride up to the entrance at gray street.

 

anyway, it would resolve the part of the problem with the pierce elevated, which is the horrible transitions from 59 to 45sb, and from 45nb to 59. the lanes on that elevated portion of freeway are horrible under utilized at all times of day.

That sounds like a good idea, similar to what they're doing at the 610/290 interchange to allow drivers access to from 290 to I-10 without weaving across 610. Now, as for those who would still need to access 59 from Scott, I would propose a ramp from the feeder road just west of Scott to the Spur section that would connect to 59. That way, they'd still be able to access 59 without all of that weaving that backs up the mainlanes. I would also eliminate all of those antiquated left lane entrances and exits like the ramp from 288 NB to I-45 NB and I-45 SB to US 59 NB. Those left lane exits and entrances screw up the flow of traffic by putting slower traffic into what is supposed to be a passing lane.

Uber and Lyft have been given the green light to operate in Houston.

http://abc13.com/news/houston-city-council-gives-green-light-to-uber-lyft/245069/

Also do you seriously consider 130 miles a feasible daily commute?

When I worked in League City, I had a co-worker who lived in The Woodlands. That's about 120 miles a day.

For those who are curous, here's everything you wanted to know about I69 in texas...

 

A good board for 'road-heads' 'road-fanatics'.

 

Start of thread:

http://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=41e6b1fae1b9862e8758855f9aa007f5&topic=3624.0

 

Current page:

http://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=41e6b1fae1b9862e8758855f9aa007f5&topic=3624.725

 

We prefer the term "roadgeek."

I've gone under the shepherd underpass hundreds of times and never seen a single person trying to walk under it.

I've seen people walk, bike, and jog underneath the Shepherd underpass all the time.

If you want to see some doozy stupid politican quotes, just Google Louie Gohmert.

Didn't 281 get the new IH-69 designation as well as 59? I thought that was the point of coverting from U.S. highways to Interstates, so that it appears as a continuous, single highway to the border.

Only part of 281 will get an I-69 designation. Once I-69 gets to Victoria, it's going to split into I-69E and I-69W. I-69E will follow US 77 from Victoria to Corpus and Brownsville. I-69W will follow US 59 from Victoria to the World Trade Bridge in Laredo. There's another branch called I-69C which will branch off from I-69W at George West and follow 281 to Pharr.

Here's some more that will be of interest to you.

There was a Taco Bell at 610 and S.Main. It was torn down around 1999 or 2000 when S. Main was widened. There was a Burger King at 610 and MLK. It closed down prior to 2008. Its address was 5305 South Loop East. There was a Luby's on Buffalo Speedway between Westpark and Bissonnet. The HEB sits where it was. It closed in 05 or 06 since Google Maps Street View shows it boarded up by 2007. There was a McDonald's on Main between Ruth and Rosewood. It wasn't demolished for the light rail, but I believe it closed down shortly after the line opened.

There was a DQ at 10601 S. Post Oak between Willowbend and McDermed. It's now a CiCi's Pizza. I think the DQ closed at least 10 years ago.

I've never understood why UofH doesn't move to get Spur 5 named 'Cougar Freeway'.  It just makes sense.  

Spur 5 has a sign designating it the Dr. John B. Coleman Memorial Highway.

Here's Dr. Coleman's bio:

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fcoep

That explains that. What then is the rational behind naming the US 59/I-69 - S. H. 288 interchange after Lloyd Bentsen? Perhaps it could be renamed the John Boehner/Harry Reid interchange since it is always so gridlocked. 

The interchange isn't named after Bentsen. Only the stretch of US 59 between I-35 and I-45 carries that designation. Now, there is a named interchange in town. The 610/225 interchange was named the "Juan N. Seguín Memorial Interchange" a few years back.

Now if we're renaming freeways, let's rename 288 inside the loop as the "Beyonce and Bun B Trillway".

I don't know how much good reduced height limits would do if the area is inhabited. A plane with engines out 10 miles away from IAH in any direction is going to be over mostly developed land, and there's not many options, whether there's tall buildings or not.