ToryGattis

Because the extra right-of-way for the freeway would move far more people than any commuter rail would, especially the HOT lanes in the middle. Space was kept for "future rail" in the Westpark corridor, shrinking the Westpark toll road to 4 very congested lanes, while there are no plans at all for rail in the corridor for at least the next decade or two. Far better would have been using that RoW for some HOT lanes like the Katy freeway, and filling it with commuter buses, vanpools, and carpools.

I think *anybody* who drove the old I10 west of the loop will agree that the new version today is a far superior - and less congested - experience.

Just came across some sobering facts on DART: http://environmentblog.ncpa.org/romantic-transit-in-dallas-and-san-antonio/ Excerpt: The second difficulty is that Lantham declares the Dallas rail system (DART) as a success based upon opinions, again without reference to a single number. The DART rail system was sold to local voters in the early 1980s as a means by which traffic congestion would be reduced (as virtually all rail systems are sold). Here are some facts about Dallas has changed since the first DART rail line opened: 1. Transit’s journey to work market share in Dallas County has fallen by one third, from 4.2 percent to 2.8 percent (US Census and American Community Survey data). Dallas County is the core county of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and all DART rail lines, and the line to Fort Worth converge in downtown Dallas). 2. Transit has become less important in the larger Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, having dropped 41 percent from a 2.4 percent work trip market share in 1990 to 1.4 percent in 2010. 3. DART’s light rail system has more than tripled in length since 2001. Yet, overall DART light rail and bus ridership was down from 2001 to 2011. 4. Traffic volumes in Dallas-Fort Worth have increased many times total transit ridership since before the first light rail line opened, and traffic congestion has risen by 65 percent.

Well, they'll have to get a team to play in it first...

How about no more of this? I've always thought of the Midtown homeless as relatively harmless, but this is very concerning... http://www.click2houston.com/news/Randalls-employee-stabbed-outside-Midtown-store/-/1735978/17813876/-/lqilf2z/-/index.html Randalls employee stabbed outside Midtown store Homeless man arrested after stabbing Published On: Dec 18 2012 06:56:42 AM CST HOUSTON - Houston Police are trying to figure out why a man stabbed a Randalls employee in Midtown. The employee was in the parking lot of the grocery store on the 2200 block of Louisiana St. when investigators said a homeless man approached him around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday. Witnesses on the scene said the two men argued, and that's when the homeless man stabbed the employee two times. The victim is in stable condition at Memorial Hermann Hospital. The suspect was arrested and the weapon was recovered. Charges are pending.

I do not dispute either of those points. I was just answering the earlier question on why private companies don't build rail on their own (although they sometimes will run bus services).

Huh? The question was, "Can a private company build light rail?" The answer is no, because they're not profitable. They can - and do - when governments pay them to. Same with free roads. But private companies are willing to build toll roads, because they can get paid back for their investment. It's just that simple.

Tollways do, which is why you'll see private companies willing to build those.

Well, light rail fares barely cover operating cost, much less multi-billion dollar capital costs, so, yes, theoretically any private company could come to Houston and build light rail if they had billions of dollars burning a hole in their pocket they wanted to vaporize. Richard Branson famously said the best way to make a million dollars in the airline industry is to start with a billion. I think light rail would fall into that same category...

Houston19514, this is the presentation I was talking about: "New IAH Master Plan Report to be complete by December 2013. Old master plan from 2006 to mirror ATL terminal setup has been "Thrown in the trash". Not feasible, estimated at 20 billion."

"New IAH Master Plan Report to be complete by December 2013. Old master plan from 2006 to mirror ATL terminal setup has been "Thrown in the trash". Not feasible, estimated at 20 billion." In a previous thread there was some debate about this. This is the presentation I attended.

My understanding is that the *new* money coming from the sales tax increment (i.e. they say Metro will go from keeping 75% of the penny to 81% of the penny, so that extra 6%) are the only funds restricted to buses and debt reduction. The original 75% is unrestricted, and can certainly still be spent or rail (as it will need to be to finish the 3 lines under construction). Can somebody confirm this?

Blanking on his name. A senior exec with HAS did a talk at H-GAC. Might have been Lance Lyttle. http://www.fly2houston.com/0/3917577/0/0/ If you click on the IAH Master Plan brochure here you'll see the reconfigured terminal plan to look like ATL. That's what they've scrapped. http://www.fly2houston.com/about-master-plans

Pretty incredible vision, Niche. It would certainly more than rival Atlanta for flights and nonstop destinations. The tricky part is the cost of the tubes and riding them. If it's self-funding, I'm guessing it adds at least $100 per person round trip (and possibly much higher), which would more than wipe out the competition benefits. If it's subsidized, then the question is who's paying for it - the airport? (which will build it into ticket prices, see previous problem), the taxpayers? The cool part would be enabling intra-triangle high-speed travel at the same time as connecting the airport. Maybe the inter-city riders on that could cover the cost of making it cheap or free for fliers? The same competition effect might be possible with just very high-speed rail/tubes between IAH and DFW, allowing local fliers to pick flights at either and forcing AA and UA to compete on "nonstop" service (assuming the tube ride is so fast as to be irrelevant and not really the same hassle as a connecting flight). It would exclude Austin and SAT, but still hit ~75% of the triangle population.

I asked them about that IAH terminal reorg at a recent HGAC event, and he said they've (wisely) scrapped that plan. Not only was it potentially astronomically expensive, unneeded, and would create massive parking jams with a single pickup and dropoff point (my main concern), but he said it would be almost impossible to do while keeping the airport actually running. They now see incremental terminal improvements and expansions for the foreseeable future. The Hobby plan is way out of date now (2003!), and does not include the new international terminal. http://www.fly2houston.com/about-master-plans

12L and R look too close together for that, but I'm wondering if they could use 12R for landing and extend 17 south for southbound takeoffs, with the planes starting south of the 12R intersection so the routes don't cross? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/KHOU_airport_diagram.pdf

I believe the westside plan was killed a while back. Houston is fine for capacity for the foreseeable future. IAH actually has room for more runways, and the terminals can always be expanded. Yes, they are adding another pier to Terminal D (intl). IAH is also a big enough hub with enough destinations that a lot of our capacity growth may just be up-gauging existing flights to larger planes rather than a lot of new flights/destinations - so it will be more about handling people and parking than flights. Consider that IAH has as many runways as Atlanta (5), the busiest airport in the world with 2x+ our annual passengers - so we can certainly grow IAH a long, long time within its existing footprint. Hobby is a little more gate constrained, but I think it should be able to handle any growth SWA or anybody else wants to throw at it for the next couple of decades, at least. Consider that San Diego is the 2nd-busiest single-runway airport in the world and handles 550 arrivals and departures/day. Hobby is about half that with 3 runways (albeit crossing ones, which is more limiting) - so it has room to grow capacity.

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Editor's note: This thread was split off from the Heaven On Earth Inn thread. FYI, here's my proposal for repurposing this building as a startup dorm: http://houstonstrate...rtup-scene.html

Does anybody have an update on the status of this building? This is the latest I could find: http://swamplot.com/digging-out-from-heaven-on-earth/2011-08-04/

I'm with ya man. Fought the traffic, parked at least a mile a way on Hwy 3, and trekked across those fields with hundreds of other people. Crazy scene. Both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised it was so popular!

HBR on the rise of coworking and its benefits: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/the_rise_of_co-working_office.html

I'm running on the assumption that renovating an old abandoned structure is much cheaper than new, keeping costs and rents down.

The Facebook conversation was just for context/background. Not trying to move the conversation. Serendipity: large open shared work areas and common areas. People mingle. Talk. Ideas meet people who can help implement them. Ideas spark off each other. Technical experts combine their knowledge to work on a problem. Teams self-organize. It's a community. More at the Wikipedia article on coworking.

Not necessary. Definitely not an expert. Just an idea for discussion. And I appreciate your points/thoughts. I do agree with you that mixing in young professionals that are recent college graduates is a good idea. I also agree with your last points about Houston, and those are a definite advantage, but it doesn't create the serendipitous connections that people need in the entrepreneurial world. This kind of building could spark those. FYI, the Facebook discussion on this topic is here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/houstonstartups/permalink/349925645091586/