IronTiger

I'm going to Houston again for an interview. The other interview did not work out, sadly but I'm going to be back in town, this time in the East End. I'm going to stay on I-10 east until my exit, where it is isn't important, but I'm curious about the new I-10/US-290 ramps since I've never used 'em. Do I just exit just past 34th to get on the ramp that will eventually split between EB and WB I-10, or is it more complicated than that, and on the way back, is there a similar way or do I have to jump over 4 lanes to be able to exit at 290?

Here's another ad from the 1989 Houston Post. I have no idea where this was exactly, no address given, and its all indoors, so there's no obvious signs of where it was. I've heard Jungle Jim's briefly operated at least the old Fame City at Memorial City Mall (and maybe the current Funplex). While trying to find out where this was, there seemed to be a large motel where Allen Samuels Chevrolet is now (torn down between 1989 and 1995), but I can't find what that was, either...

Cain Hall is right across from Kyle Field, and there was talk of tearing down Cain for a hotel as recently as October (heard nothing since). See here for a few articles.

I'm back with another 1989 advertisement from the Post advertising smut. This time it's from three theaters. I immediately figured that all three were once real legitimate theaters at the time, but had eventually deteriorated to the point of showing X-rated movies (and Karate Kid III for some odd reason). I couldn't find much on Cinema West. It appears to be in the same building as "Tarab Café" is in now. The second, "Star Theatre" still came up as "Adult Video" in Googling the address, but it was the Santa Rosa Theater, which was opened in 1946 but torn down in 2007 (closure unknown). It's now a small shopping center (link). The third has the address for Family Dollar, but it's not there anymore. It seems that it was where Capital One Bank is in what I presume was a Deauville Shopping Center at the NE corner of I-45 and Greens. (The fact that an adult movie theater was already cropping up just north of Greenspoint Mall in 1989 suggests that Greenspoint has been in decline for a while now)

There was some chatter not too long ago about replacing Cain Hall with a hotel.

Well, the Galveston train certainly is interesting, admittedly, and of course, no thread is complete without the whole "vast anti-rail conspiracy" thing Slick likes to hawk. Anyway, it is true that the "road to rail" is littered with many, many failures.

I've read that article, and it's different than your re-interpretation. Sounds like he wanted the Union Station for rail use, was out-bid by Enron, briefly enthused by the idea of a hybrid baseball stadium/train station (done by someone at the architect's team and probably not representative of the final product), and then was disappointed when the rail component was dropped (which would've been a bit more complicated if it were serving dual uses from an engineering/pedestrian accessibility standpoint), that is if it ever existed and wasn't just a pipe dream by him and some folks at HOK Architects. Even then, it's just him talking (no one else's side of the story), complicated by the fact that this "Mike Surface" guy was a criminal, too. Some of these "What Could Have Been" discussions in terms of unbuilt projects, we don't have a real idea of how close to a reality it would've been. For example, the full-scale Star Trek Enterprise attraction at Las Vegas in the early 1990s was killed by a Paramount exec, but only five months of preliminary planning had gone into it and could've been stymied or killed by a variety of other factors.

I'd take all that with a grain of salt, of course.

Tempting, but no.

I'll have to look it up again, but I seem to recall that the HOV lanes (at least the originals built along 10, 290, 45, etc.) was underwritten by the feds with transit funds. The $1B price tag, I imagine, was probably including the enormous park and rides built outside the Loop.

Ah, my mistake. 90 miles is the entire system (I just worked a night shift. Excuse me.) Richmond isn't the best way to calculate that since the railroad would have to loop back from downtown. If we're going northwest, then 55 miles would only go a bit north of Hempstead. And yes, the D.C. METRO does have more cars and a higher capacity, but the trade-off is the higher cost (mostly the stations, which would have to be longer and no longer allow for at-grade crossings at the stations). In any case, I fail to see how a drastically more expensive system would equal significantly higher ridership, which is what you seem to be advocating. Anything else would be another one of those "Why is there no more rail in Houston" threads, which I personally am sick of.

Part of my argument was that it seems to me that in terms of time and distance (and maybe there's differences here in stations that would account for this, it isn't an airtight comparison) that a fully-grade-separated heavy rail system like the Washington DC Metro isn't a whole lot different than a partially grade-separated system like DART, and granted, in the Red Line, there is a significant portion of elevated and below-ground. Personally, I'd love to see light rail go out to FM 1960 on the Northwest portion, as well as paralleling Westpark Tollway (which METRO took half of the ROW of for that very purpose). As for commuter rail, the Northern Virginia Commuter Rail that connects the suburbs to Washington DC's Union Station is 90 miles long. Guess what's also 90 miles? Downtown to College Station. Connecting CS to Houston makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, but there's not enough dense stuff between that to make it worthwhile. I imagine even you hardcore railfans will find the prospect of linking College Station to commuter rail dubious, but for what it's worth, I think it's a nice thought, just not an economical one.

I don't know what you're trying to stir up, but HOV/HOT lanes are completely different than commuter rail service, and that's akin to saying that roads are just "inferior, cheaper" versions of highways, which they aren't. Anyone can tell you that. That said, the big problem with most of the HOV/HOT lanes is that it's only one lane, which is not effective in any case (after all, can you imagine a single-track commuter rail?), and no, it's not the same thing as a dedicated bus lane (like a BRT lane). I do know that in parts of the Museum District, the outermost lane is reserved for buses (unless you're turning right), which would cut down on some of the problems I imagine. Furthermore, DART's mistake was going out to places that aren't really conducive to where people want to go, and part of that is the fact that not everyone wants to go downtown, and part of that is the fact that Dallas isn't dense enough to reach critical mass on rail service (though that isn't necessarily a bad thing, nobody really likes packed train cars). But the DC Metro and DART are both comparable in total travel times (or at least with my rough calculations), and anyone concerned about total travel times shouldn't be talking about commuter rail as that would drag out the commute even longer (transfers too).

Still, if you look at Hempstead Road on Google Earth today, there's a significant ROW between the railroad and the road (at least the single-tracked portions), enough for another four lanes to be added to Hempstead Road (in theory, of course, as that would make the crossings difficult). It's at least a 50 ft. ROW, which should be plenty for the HSR. No demolitions, no road reconstruction, fairly painless. Except for that railroad-themed restaurant there at Gessner. Small potatoes compared to the Katy Freeway-level destruction proposed before.

The plans that I saw for the 290 master plan did include the Hempstead Tollway but also an HSR corridor. Problem is, that such a thing would require a ton of right of way clearances from what I saw, which would raise the costs by a significant margin. There is, however, an ample space between the railroad and the road to put an HSR without demolition or trying to build it directly over the freight line. There would need to be at least one freight line at ground level to provide access to spurs, unless you want to up and abandon all of those as well.

If he just changed two letters in his last name, I'd bet he could gain a significant margin just on name recognition.

Well, remember that the Allison flooding was one of those "100-year-flood" events, as was Sandy, which flooded the NYC subways. As for soil conditions, I believe it would be because it's generally wet (close to sea level). But...doesn't Amsterdam have a subway AND it's below sea level (or if not, just a bit above it?) Therefore, either of those, I think would be a non-issue. Also, even if something like a Washington DC Metro was created, I found it interesting that as the crow flies, it only goes about 17.4 miles out at its longest line (the Red Line going northwest, which at least seemed to be going out the longest way as of the 1998 map—I had newer ones, but I felt that a 1998 map would be a better estimate if it didn't take into account line extensions). Comparing that to Houston, if we're going northwest from downtown, we would be roughly at FM 1960/290, which if we're going to the Eastern Seaboard Way, we'd need a commuter rail to go even longer distances. Then I compared that to the *allas light rail (see what I did there?), which goes 18 miles on a line that goes northeast. A trip takes about 40 minutes. At D.C., a trip from Shady Grove (on the Red Line) to Metro Central (which *isn't* all the way to the Mall, due to the fact that the Red Line doesn't go that way) is just about 30 minutes (which isn't that much of a time savings, assuming that the Red Line went all the way to such). Where D.C. thrives and *allas fails is that they're built on a model that people want to go to downtown to suburbs and vice-versa, which isn't quite how cities here in Texas were built and developed. (California also developed much earlier than Texas did) tl;dr A true "metro" with a traditional "lines radiating out of a center point" would be kind of cool but impractical (but technologically possible, make no mistake) and just be a massive money sink. I personally think that had the 1983 heavy-rail system actually been approved by voters, it wouldn't start construction for a few years, and the bust could've scuttled it indefinitely until it was scrapped due to budget cuts or killed off by politicians. Nothing would change, and you'd still be blaming Lanier for his crimes against rail.

Supermarkets and discount stores already had pharmacies by the time Phar-Mor made its brief dominance. Phar-Mor's schtick was a deep-discount, buy-in-bulk strategy that almost put Wal-Mart on the ropes.

The Washington DC Metro, if I recall correctly, was developed instead of a comprehensive freeway plan, thus where at least some of the funds came from. I don't know, based on current congestion and traffic patterns, if this actually was better in the long run, but it would've mucked with the L'Enfant's city plan.

Of course! I see it every time I drive through the area. I always assumed it was built as a shooting range and remained as the area started to urbanize around it.

The article talked about Jay B. Crossley, not David Crossley as being with Houston Tomorrow. David Crossley is the anti-freeway/pro-rail advocate who, to put in the kindest terms possible, I would not want to associate with. That said, what Houston needs is a master plan. College Station and Bryan do, and you'll notice the major arterials are outlined. Forced densification is bad, I think, and you shouldn't plop down high-rises anywhere you'd please (Ashby High Rise, specifically), but it needs a plan and to create real density, not just cancerous townhomes. So part of the problem is set-backs? We can use that to our advantage: it makes no sense to sabotage major road corridors (which we need) for light rail (which we also need). That way those set-backs can be eliminated for new ROW. In reality, what I think is just a master plan and then start working toward those goals.

I'll trade one Whataburger for an In-N-Out.

I thought they sold that to St. John's.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the man before, probably in a TAMU history book. Was he affiliated with Texas A&M at all, or barring that, the transportation system?

If the cop car was driving, his brake lights would be on.