kdog08

Nice! Thanks for the updates.

Sounds north of 59 to me, maybe near Richmond and Kirby. Or closer to West Ave.

Put my money with where my mouth is eh.... Heh. Thanks for the links, I'll look into them.

The trees that didn't die from the drought look great. In my opinion, Houston really only has vegetation to make our city look presentable. I wish we would make it more a priority to take advantage of our sub tropical climate by mkaing this city even more green.

Which is why METRO needs to propose a system instead some piece meal transit project. Park&Ride for the suburbs and outer employment centers and rail connecting the densest employment and activity centers.

Some updates: IMAG0436 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0437 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0438 by dv1033, on Flickr Not sure if this is an add on as it is across the street from the main development: IMAG0439 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0439 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0441 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0442 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0443 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0444 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0445 by dv1033, on Flickr IMAG0446 by dv1033, on Flickr

Meticulously on-point? Delusions of grandeur? I take offense when someone implies that I'm slow. Just because I have a different background than you doesn't automatically make you any more right. As to my responses, you are more than welcome to condense them as I've done to yours.

Yay homeless people bashing!

Oh so it's me not being able to keep up, yet by your own admission you have a backwards way of responding by opening up multiple browsers... Perhaps it's your user error? Because other people seem to be posting and keeping up....

Nah locate your pair and reply or don't locate your pair. Not going to hurt my feeling if you don't want to or can't.

And why is it a good idea to keep sprawling outwards like you expect? Seems like a pretty crappy use of resources and land, but whatever. Not that I have notion that what you say won't happen to some varying degree. Also why does there need or why you bringing up how transit won't fundamentally change the paradigm of Houston? Is anyone suggesting that or do you see things as black and white? Either transit is a grand slam or fails? Again, of course it's cheaper now, here in Houston, TX. But does Tory's analysis cover things like pollution and sprawl when looking at private automobile use. How much are we spending and will spend on just flood control and damage because of our growth philosophy requires a lot of roads and highways to connect our overall low density. Pollution is subsidized mostly. What do roads really cost us? It's not a problem for light rail because light rail is just one mode of transit within a system. That's why in Houston's case you would have bus and P&R connecting to light rail to form some semblance of a system. They are quite common in other cities...but I can see when you view light rail in a vacuum how you could not understand. Well certainly but it depends on your destination. I doubt a person from Katy, Sugar Land, West Houston, Pear Land, etc. will have many alternatives besides getting on a freeway/tollway and taking a different exit. Not to mention that parking in the loop is a bit more scare and/or expensive then the suburbs adding additional incentive. Lastly, because it's not favorable for you don't assume it's not favorable for someone else, don't be self centered. No they favor a system of P&R and light rail serving commuters. P&R would bring the commuters into the Med Center, Downtown, Greenway, and Uptown and the light rail would serve as the "last mile". Pretty much how systems function throughout the world. I am. I also favor transit that involves bus and rail. Well yes, but it isn't very dense, walkable, has poor street grid for transit, and you have to drive everywhere for errands/lunch. Not to mention these places generally have weak or nonexistent management districts to guide much cohesiveness. These places shouldn't be focused on too heavily when the opposite type of employment density in our 3 major employment centers inside the core. I'm not saying they don't deserve P&R now or in the near future (I encourage it), but it seems like a farce to compare them. How do you figure when we a have a proposed line that will connect the largest, densest, and most cohesive of centers along with all of pro arenas, musesums/cultural centers/fine arts, and a few of our major parks? Have you looked what's accessible just within a few blocks of rail? This isn't the current fad of connecting an employment center to a museum district or arena with light rail, this is some serious shit if we can get some funding. I don't think it's as black and white as say. So it's worse to build infrastructure during a recession if you can get the funding? And so does that mean it will serve us well in the future? I guess if the future was the same as the present... Finally some I can instead of can'ts. I agree we need better government. The problem is that the issues won't go away or be put on pause while we become less weary. I am very familiar with LA's geography. In the context of my reply I was using it as an example of what happens when you put things off or don't address them adequately. Houston is certainly far away from LA's size but it does have quite a bit in common when it comes to form and feel. LA's inner core (albeit more dense and famous) is Houston's multipolar inner core older cousin.

And in the meanwhile your city will add more residents and need more expansions and maintenance. I agree in principle with you but it it just seems they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. In our case, we need really to figure out what we are going to do and how to fund it.

And we'll show them by not providing ourselves with the expansions and maintenance necessary to keep up with growth!!!!

So I talked to apartment management this afternoon and the new management happened to be there. Here's what they told me: Will be an Alexan apartment complex, with ~240 units, that is wrapped around a parking garage. They hope to have the residents out by November.

Per Swamplot: My comment from swamplot:

They were holding out for a free a road?

UH could/should start requiring freshman or those individuals with a certain amount of hours live on campus. It would certainly give UH a totally different feel and appeal. The grocery stores and amenities would follow.

What does peak oil have to do anything? Oil will continue to get more expensive over time as it costs more money to extract it. Same with natural gas over time. Nat Gas is definitely interesting right now, but these low prices aren't going to last forever. Furthermore, cheap energy leading to more car usage leading to more congestion will certainly lead transit being more affordability. Time is money my man. Well of course it is cheaper; we've had decades of lopsided funding and regulations that favored roads and highways over everything else. We already have a highway and road system in place and adding on to it just makes the whole greater than it's parts... What's wrong with taking drivers off the road? Those who would drive regardless might like the notion of other people taking a different option to free up lane space. Transit is primarily used during rush hour and commuters make up a significant chunk of ridership. Depends on what survey you read. Infrastructure doesn't happen overnight, we've been adding ~million people a decade for the last two and on pace to continue to do so. Also, you're putting too much emphasis on residential density or simply forgetting employment density also drives transit usage. I've already mentioned the employment centers tht would be connected to the light rail, bus system, and P&R. And what about land prices? What about cost of materials? It would have been cheaper to build the light rail under these economic conditions when prices are down. Of course there are no guarantees, but it's been my experience in life that preemptive and preventative measure are generally easier than the alternatives. And ironically we can't afford more highways and adequately maintaining our road infrastructure. Yet we keep adding more people and adding more economic growth. It's not a matter of "can't", it's "won't". Low cost of living and low taxes have consequences, there is no such thing as a free lunch. We have to decide if we want to afford it, that is if we want to raise our cost of living. Are we going to compromise or we going to let the status quo rule. In conclusion, we could afford better roads and transit if we wanted to. Perhaps you should visit LA. and ask yourself if you want to wait.

Well my mistake. Then please propose what you would like Houston's transit future to look like.

Because a system or the sum of it's part makes it more effective. Much like how one single bus line isn't too effective on it's own but when you add more lines... Because Houston doesn't really care about mass transit and we can pathetically only fund one thing at a time. These are more working class neighborhoods that rely on transit more so than their wealthier counterparts. Not to mention the students that rail will be able to connect to TSU, UH, Rice, UHD (not sure what is called now), and HCC. Then, finally there are the transit centers at the end of these lines that will feed into it. So basically this connects the near north, near east, and near southeast side to downtown, tmc, universities, and all the amenities on the red line. No offense, but I don't think any argument is going to be good enough for you. Rail is a good investment in this city which is my opinion. It has 3 relatively dense and large employment centers and one medium (Greenway Plaza) that will all be connected to rail along with all the professional sports arenas, higher education, cultural districts, and few of our city's major parks (can't wait for the Buffalo Bayou expansion to be complete). Not to mention a pretty diverse socioeconomic group (looking at all the proposed lines) and a gradually increasing residential base. That's just near the rail. If we can at least expand P&R we can use rail to it's fullest advantage to provide that last leg of commuters' journey.

No. He said every modern city this size, so your cities aren't comparable. Try again. And no the slavery part was an analogy.... Some people just don't see an all bus system for a growing metro as a smart plan going forward.

Nah son. Why would any person want to wait until "we really need it" (how subjective) when then longer you wait the more expensive it will be. How many hundreds of thousands of people do we need to move to this city per decade until we need this? We could afford it now if we wanted to. You have this all backwards. Just because these are tough economic doesn't mean you have to go cheap on our infrastructure. Especially since our metro has been adding ~ million people a decade. We have to decide how much of our cost living are we willing to increase to get better transit options. If we don't want increase taxes then I'd expect Houston to have LA style issues if Houston continues to add people at this rate or close to it.

Yes but it's not rail's fault, it's man's.

Well first of all, we would just get bailed out. Lastly, why would we go bankrupt if we incrementally build our infrastructure, possibly using funds at every level? Are you just assuming complete incompetency?

Ok let's spend and build a not half-assed design... Do you agree?