IronTiger
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That would work in an ideal world. But remember, most of the air rescue crews during flooding (and accompanying deaths, usually) are from people who don't heed warnings and do other stupid things. -
A deck park would still be problematic though from an air-rescue perspective, though.
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Because usually the avatar are images are so tiny, I usually interpret your avatar as being a strange creature with big purple shades. For a few weeks I thought it was deliberate until I finally realized it was supposed to be a dragon (the "purple shades" actually being the mane)
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The recent floods have made me wonder if entirely sunken highways around downtown are that much of a good idea, and especially the idea of the deck park over a 59/45, making it impossible to air-rescue anyone unfortunate enough to get stuck down there. Dallas' "tunnel" under Klyde Warren Park doesn't have that same problem due to the Trinity River having a wide "right of way" so to speak, to flood over, but Houston doesn't have that luxury. The current set-up allows 45 to access 59 and remain elevated (as the Pierce Elevated drops below to Dallas), whereas the TxDOT plan basically paralyzes the inner loop highway system by having all highways going in and out of downtown remaining completely inaccessible during a flooding event. Just something to think about.
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For those interested, Google Earth is now updated to March 2016! - Tower updates! - Grand Parkway is now complete to the points where it is complete!! - 290 construction!!! Well, I doubt some of you would be interested in that last part. It's not nearly as interesting as the Katy Freeway expansion, though still stinks.
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Exactly, but I read some of these replies in this thread, and I'm not sure if everyone agrees on that.
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Yes, of course I was being facetious and I thought (wrongfully apparently) that I didn't need to have a smiley face because of how patently ridiculous the whole concept was. Guess not. Economic recession or not, Astroworld's land flat-out just wasn't worth as much as was believed. It wasn't developed prior to 2008 (probably because the asking price was too high) and wasn't developed in the last past few years (or even had a plan for development). Believing that the Pierce Elevated's land is similarly that valuable or could making a meaningful offset to the cost of construction of the whole project is going to be kidding themselves (and as for arguments for "but Astroworld's different", similar highway removal plans like in downtown Milwaukee or San Francisco resulted in parking lots for years and years ahead).
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Of course! Dude, they made bank when they sold off Astroworld, and now the area is looking like "Uptown South" now that some real cool office buildings are developing there. I can't believe there were still car dealerships there as recent as 10 years ago. I'm sure the Pierce Elevated's land is worth billions.
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Yeah, I noticed one of the "Asian cleaner" buildings on Gessner the other day. If only was a dry cleaners, I'd say it was a one-off former Chinese restaurant chain that the name of which has long been lost to time, but since all of the ones we've found involve dry cleaning, they were probably part of a dry-cleaner chain.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure I've seen the "lack of tall buildings in Midtown" used to get RID of the Pierce.
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So basically change nothing? Well, I suppose that satisifies both the "Let's not destroy EaDo" and the "Let's not destroy the Pierce" crowd, and one of the cheapest solutions to boot.
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I still believe that food deserts are a "manufactured crisis" but I'm also wondering if it's a way for backdoor gentrification. Let's say there's a poor neighborhood that the city wants to redevelop into a viable area but obviously can't go in with the bulldozers or wait it out among urban yuppies. So, the city (or at least the city council members in cahoots with a developer) promotes it as a "food desert" and offers tax incentives for a real supermarket to come in. They coax in, say, H-E-B, even though this isn't strictly Houston we're talking about. The city greenlights demolition of several homes and old businesses, probably closing a street or public alley as well to fit in. Land values go up around the new supermarket (likely it has other shops and a fuel center), and within a few years, the old houses are being torn down for new townhomes. As demographics change, people move out, and the neighborhood is transformed, developers and their associated city council members enjoy cocktails and have a good laugh over their good-publicity campaigning of "reducing obesity". This is all dramatized and probably not exactly the case, but I do remember reading about how some neighborhood activists tried to halt a Trader Joe's from coming in to a "food desert" (probably because they foresaw some backdoor gentrification coming in), so maybe it's not all THAT unreal. Thoughts?
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You wouldn't believe how much trouble I had with quote boxes today, and even trying to "Remove quotes and keep content" didn't work. I miss BBCode.
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OK, that was a bit of a lie, I rarely hit 60 mph that time, but the traffic was flowing remarkably smooth for the Final Four events.
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From my own experience on the streets, it's only a very narrow view of the world ahead of you, especially as you try to watch out for pedestrians and trains. Anyway. I was making observations, not trying to start fights. For a "Tear down the Pierce Elevated at any cost" crowd, there's nothing I can say, postulate, or compare that would make them (you?) change your minds. I believe that's exactly what the Purple City plan does, only their's keeps the Pierce as express HOT lanes.
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So Saturday I took the Pierce as part of a commute from Pearland to the Heights. The first thing I noticed is that the 59/288 area is very, very wide. The final product will certainly make an impact in a negative way. There seems to be a limit to how wide sunken highways can be before they're serious impacts (as if a highway itself wasn't an impact already). US-59 near Montrose, Beltway 8 near CityCentre, and the Dallas North Tollway have less of an impact. The second thing I noticed that sinking all the highways will completely hide downtown from most angles. I'm not sure what you're going for, because the skyline as the sun hit it in the late afternoon was stunning, giving all buildings a golden tinge, and it was more or less a complete view marred only by the McDonald's sign at Main. Personally, if I was concerned about height and urban blight, I would try to get that McDonald's sign, which is higher than the Pierce, removed. Otherwise, I don't see the obsession with depressing all the highways. Is the downtown skyline anything to be ashamed of? The third thing is that while the Pierce Elevated did feel dated (not having an inner shoulder didn't help the impression), it did feel a bit futuristic, as zooming through a downtown area at 60+ mph feels like a science fiction movie. As I finished up my whirlwind tour of the Pierce and tried to navigate toward I-10W, it struck me. Elevated highways make things more urban, not less. Things like parks make things more suburban-feeling. This isn't a criticism on urbanism or suburbanism, it just feels strange...and the most urban places on earth tend to have elevated highways. Take any given city in Japan and you'll see what I mean. And yet, the highway blends in thanks to space utilization and space beautification to the urban fabric. Not liking elevated freeways is understandable, of course, but it's just as "urban" as the rest of the area, if not moreso.
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I've been working and unable to respond recently. I don't know, man, but your avatar is of a Houston tower in a Houston forum talking about a freeway in Houston, and your username is "H-Town Man". Where, indeed. Are you kidding me?? I'm not sure if I can find a downtown set-up <i>exactly</i> like Houston's, but New Orleans, San Jose, and San Antonio's downtowns are clustered closer to where the freeways meet up. If anything, existing development patterns suggest that "walkable"/"touristy" downtown clusters around the freeways encircling the most inner area, not apart from it. This is one of those things of why it's a bit difficult to take your posts seriously. Yeah, I know you're using hyperbole, but if we go with the popular theory that removing the Pierce will cause land values in the area to skyrocket, then it probably won't be APV for much longer. Well, no, it's not exactly the same thing. For starters, the depressed freeway will be twice as wide as that part of 59 (at least). If 59 was widened to Katy Freeway-style widths and required demolition on one or both sides of the freeway, I guarantee you that it would not be nearly as beneficial to the area or as well-liked. But in many ways, the "new" Pierce will have less traffic if they turn it into HOT lanes, which will cut down traffic considerably. If the Katy Freeway is any indication, it doesn't even need to be three lanes, as the third lane could be converted to inner shoulders. Actually, the Pierce Elevated seems to have been built to avoid downtown (this crying about Pierce Elevated "cutting through" the area is highly overstated), and was built as an elevated to allow traffic to continue unabated underneath (highway planning at the time considered elevated to be the least disruptive style of highway. You bring up a good point, admittedly...as apartments get older, the neighborhoods usually change too. What if Midtown is no longer (or less) trendy and EaDo is the place to be, as build-up makes it politically impossible? What if developers wanted 59 to be redirected around the north and west parts of town, and a giant canyon separated Midtown and Downtown so the elevated portion of 59 could be removed?
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How would any of these ordinances be enforced? The speed limit rarely is. Maybe it might help to put up blinking lights at I-45 S to tell all through trucks to take I-10 E to 610 S, though.
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Ideally, there should ALWAYS be alternate routes, because predictability and regularity is a moving target. For example, yesterday evening, a stalled truck in the center lanes of Katy Freeway near Eldridge caused a backup on the main lanes all the way back to 610.
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Slimming down the connector doesn't make removing the Pierce necessary. The TxDOT plan DID straighten out a few freeways, and that was an improvement. Secondly, while TxDOT is not going to do the "prettying up" of the Pierce Elevated, they certainly aren't going to fund a deck park over 59/45, and the former will be substantially less expensive either way. Thirdly, I'm pretty sure the "net amount of pavement" is going to increase substantially with the TxDOT plan. For what it's worth, even Slick "Freeways are the Devil" Vik admitted that overpasses (and by extension, underpasses) make less of an impact by how wide or narrow they are. Would you be under a two-track railroad viaduct or an 8-lane freeway? Does a canyon nearly the size of the Katy Freeway separating EaDo and Downtown not matter (especially given there will be more limited road access) or does it not matter since it's an underpass? Even if "impact" is that much of a matter, the amount of space "freed up" will be parking lots for the next 15-20 years, if we take the removal of the Central Freeway in San Francisco as an example. As for Clayton Homes, there's 296 units and given the Houston "affordable housing" situation, I would wager that all or most of them are full (calculating for spouses and children, that's probably at least 700 people affected). Hardly "a couple of dozen residents" you're claiming. So adding another 125 units from the Lofts at the Ballpark building (the full complex has about 375 units), you've got all that, some 19 businesses and restaurants (that's just from "things from Google Maps that are in the direct pathway" and thus a very conservative estimate), a soup kitchen, and a plastic fabrication company, not to mention the whole impact it will have on that entire neighborhood, all so you don't have to look at a freeway on your morning walk.
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Even from an urban perspective, the removal project does far more damage to the urban fabric than it fixes. You're trading nine half-blocks in Midtown/Downtown for 19 blocks in EaDo, with all but three of them having buildings on them.
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Pinkerton's BBQ - 3801 Farnham St.
IronTiger replied to IronTiger's topic in River Oaks/Upper Kirby/Greenway Plaza/Bissonnet
The Katy Freeway location was torn down when the highway expanded and I don't think it ever returned in any form. Today, there's a McDonald's on the spot, which functionally replaces the McDonald's that was right next to the 59 Diner (the old McDonald's pad is used by the Exxon, as it expanded).- 14 replies
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Problem with the ship channel tours is it's really hard to find. The current maritime museum in the Medical Center isn't super-convenient to find, but it's a reasonably urban area with good access. The ship channel tours require exiting from the Interstate, driving through a lot of industrial area that's often curvy and potholed, then turning down an unmarked side street, crossing two railroad tracks (no lights or gates), and then just when you think you're lost, you arrive at the rather lonely-looking overlook. I'm exaggerating this, if only gently.
