kdog08

Nice! Thanks for the updates.

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

Donate. Get involved.

http://treesforhouston.org/

http://www.houstonbeautiful.org/

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.

Tory is right. If Metro takes too much money out of GMP and puts it in Houston rail, the County and other entities will use the legislature to resolve the issue, and that's not good for anyone.

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

If being meticulously on-point in my responses is backwards, then call me backwards. Ho hum.

Meticulously on-point? Delusions of grandeur?

Try not to take personal offense that I won't spend two hours crafting a proper response to every one of your dozens of points.

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!

Actually, no I can't. I have to open up a separate browser tab and bounce back and forth, delineating each of his responses from the next, figuring out what I had said that he was responding to, and then figure out what I was responding to in the first place (in a third browser tab). Just going through the first part of his responses, I know that they're a bit off from what was intended. So that pissed me off.

The conversation went too fast for him to completely keep up. It's probably not his fault. I've been out sick and you're just some kind of zombie machine of transit apologism or something, so there's been an unusual quantity of back-and-forth content generated. He fell behind and I haven't got the patience to go back for him. If my impatience (also signaled by bolded replies to over-parsed posts) is a character flaw, so be it. At least I'm honest about it, right?

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....

One of the dangers of over-parsing from a variety of posts on a message board is that one loses grasp of the context within which comments were made.

Try again.

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.

In the life cycle of a good or service, supply initially creates demand. And then demand creates supply...pretty much at any cost. Consequently, I expect that energy shortages will result in research into new energy extraction methods and alternative energy sources, as well as that geopolitical constraints will likely find effective (if perhaps bloody) solutions for themselves. Where transportation is concerned, I expect more cars, more congestion, and more solutions for congestion. Those solutions will involve a mix of infrastructures, including transit, however it is less difficult to imagine a circumstance whereby employers move to the suburbs and families move to the city, where most householders simply drive a shorter distance to work rather than take transit...than a circumstance whereby mass transit fundamentally changes the paradigm of Houston, Texas.

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?

Tory provided data that estimated the private and public costs of private automobile use, and it seemed to point to private automobile use being generally less expensive than transit. There is nothing wrong with taking people off of a particular road insofar as it costs less to do so than it would cost to expand that road or add another parallel road for relief. Of course, those calculations will vary from project to project and also based on how many people are intended to be displaced from the existing road.

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?

This is true, however that's actually a problem for light rail. If you look at the surveys of downtown employees and how they get to work, very few that live within a five-mile radius rely on transit. The transit users are commuters that do not tend to live inside the loop.

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.

I can say with confidence that it is easy to get around inside the loop during rush hour if you know your alternative routes. It's just not a problem. If there were a train that ran directly from my residence to my place of employment, I'd still drive because it is faster and because my time is valuable; never even mind that the sum of the private and public costs also should favor that I drive.

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.

So circumstances like these would seem to favor P&R-like forms of transit or transit that is geared to households that can't afford to drive. That's where the demand is.

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.

If you're hanging your hat on employment density, then you should be favoring investment in highways, flyovers, grade separations, and toll roads.

I am. I also favor transit that involves bus and rail.

There's so ridiculously much office and industrial space getting built in the suburbs, at the fringe of METRO's service area and beyond it, not connected or even effectively connectable to transit, and totally ignored by METRO, that it makes light rail built on that premise into something of a farce.

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.

The tough question is what we're going to do about our polycentric city wherein those centers can be so amorphous and/or inaccessible to the dominant transit agency.

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'm absolutely in favor of identifying and protecting urban corridors where setbacks are enforced absolutely and without exception. Keep those corridors ready for the taking. However, if we do not need them yet then they should not be taken. Rising land prices correspond to an increase in property tax revenues! Keep them on the tax rolls! Do you want even want more infrastructure or do you want our local governments in a position where they can only possibly struggle to make good on employee pensions and the bare necessities!? God damn, what kind of an infrastructurist are you!?

I don't think it's as black and white as say.

As for commodities prices, the best predictor for where inflation-adjusted prices will be a year from now is where they are today. That's how efficient markets work. If you think that you know better than the guys at NYMEX, then you and Exxon should be hording tangible inventories of whatever you think will increase over and above the inflation rate.

So it's worse to build infrastructure during a recession if you can get the funding?

The status quo has served Texas cities pretty well, I'd say.

And so does that mean it will serve us well in the future? I guess if the future was the same as the present...

There are some exceptions. The easiest fix is that the gas tax needs to be expressed in percent terms or otherwise needs to be adjusted each year according to the consumer price index. Regional transit districts regulated under state law but administered locally should be set up to master plan regional transportation networks including every kind of transportation infrastructure, including highways, major thoroughfares, secondary thoroughfares, mass transit, toll road authorities, freight rail, airports, and seaports...soup to nuts, but with numerous checks and balances to ensure that nobody can get too overzealous. TXDoT's involvement should be reduced to the maintenance of rural infrastructure. Special districts (such as the Midtown Management District, but there are many dozens like it) should become more transparent and accountable to their constituents, and then (thereafter) there should be more of them in order to fund neighborhood-specific transportation initiatives (and other initiatives) according to a tax rate that is acceptable within that neighborhood according to the people...within the context and framework of the regional agency.

Finally some I can instead of can'ts.

Its not that we shouldn't want better infrastructure, it's that we need better government. I am confident that if we fix the way that we administer government so as that public confidence in government can be enhanced, then the public will be less weary of signing over more of their hard-earned money.

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.

Perhaps you should look at a map.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside CSA has nearly 18 million people wedged between a coast and within mountain valleys. Houston's CSA has a bit over 6 million, all spread out to such an extent that if you drove as far away from downtown Houston as Spring, you'd find yourself in an arid and desolate desert if you did the same thing in the same direction from downtown Los Angeles.

These are not the same species of animal. It'll be a very long time until they're even remotely comparable.

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.

it's like raising children. when they're doing the wrong thing over and over, 1st you've got to stop them from doing it, then the retraining can begin. with elected/appointed officials you stop them and they are either replaced or learn to do the right thing (we've already seen a bit of this with METRO when Annise Parker cleaned house, but she just didn't get rid of enough of the exec bureaucrats that survived her Frank Wilson purge).

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.

So here's some interesting news. The citizens of Atlanta have overwhelmingly rejected (63% against) a proposed one-cent sales tax that would've funded additional roads and transit. The opposition was a triad of the Tea Party, the NAACP, and a smattering of environmentalists in all 10 of metropolitan Atlanta's counties. Their $15,000 campaign beat out an $8 million campaign backed by establishment politicians from both major parties as well as numerous corporations and consultancies.

From the sound of things, the citizens have lost faith that public officials will use money wisely. Sound familiar?

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:

Tenants of the Andover Richmond Apartments at 1301 Richmond Ave. near Graustark got notice today that the complex has been sold to an entity connected to investment company Behringer Harvard... as earlier rumored to be on Trammell Crow’s Alexan radar.

My comment from swamplot:

I currently live in this apartment and completely love it due to the proximity to everything and the affordability. I knew this was happening when I asked a few weeks about upgrading to a 2br. They got all weird and vague with me when I inquired and continued to inquire up to all about 3 days ago. I received my notice on the door today. I started off 3 years ago with rents being 650/month for 1br now it’s 730/month.

I hope whoever knocks this down does try to keep some of the mature trees.

And I thought that UH didn't want this because of a loss of parking spaces? So now all of the sudden they're okay with losing those parking spaces now that they have an extra driveway? Seems weird.

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.

You are grossly misinformed.

1. With public concern over peak oil apparently abated and with structurally low natural gas prices possibly providing an economical alternative to gasoline in the long term, the affordability aspect of mass transit as experienced by consumers is threatened.

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.

(Never mind that transit is actually more expensive than private automotive transport and that the only economic justification for transit is to make make private automotive transport more efficient by taking some drivers off the road.)

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.

Meanwhile, as much growth is occurring inside the loop, there does not appear to be unavoidable gridlock in most places. It's still easier to get around by car.

Transit is primarily used during rush hour and commuters make up a significant chunk of ridership.

People are not clamoring to get to transit.

Depends on what survey you read.

And moreover, Houston can't grow quickly enough to achieve NYC, Chicago, or LA densities just overnight. So yeah, we don't need it yet.

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.

2. All goods and services (including labor) are more expensive in the long term. It's called inflation. However, as sales taxes are based on a percentage of expenditures and expenditures will have to increase, that means that METRO's revenues will also increase as a function of inflation (in addition to local economic growth). Therefore, in developing a cost-benefit analysis, we have two options. We can either project for inflation of both the sources and uses of capital or we can ignore it completely; it actually does not matter at all in the scope of such a long-term project so long as it is accounted for consistently.

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.

3. We cannot afford more light rail now. Even METRO's backers that are wanting their GM payments back have indicated that they are not in a position to fund the University or Uptown line immediately. And from the sound of it, they probably won't even be asking for the entire GM payment back. State law prevents METRO from tapping funds over and beyond their one-cent sales tax. True, state law could be changed willy nilly if there were broader support for it. There does not appear to be that support, however, and so our hands are tied.

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.

When Houston has LA-style issues, then Houston should implement LA-style solutions. Let's not put the cart before the horse. Houston needs light rail like Brenham needs a subway.

Perhaps you should visit LA. and ask yourself if you want to wait.

Neither do I. Try again.

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

Declining ridership means just that, declining ridership. It doesn't mean buses are empty as you've claimed time and time again.

You're also back tracking on your claim of rail = ridership. Now the Red Line is not enough to have any effect on overall ridership. Then how will these three additional lines have any effect when their potential ridership will be much less than that of the Red Line?

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...

Also, population has increased in the 11 years since peak ridership and today. Yet ridership has declined. So you can't just explain away the massive increase in bus ridership with population growth.

Because Houston doesn't really care about mass transit and we can pathetically only fund one thing at a time.

You still haven't explained how these three new lines will draw riders, where from and what their destinations will be. What white professional type (the demo rail usually targets) needs to go to 2nd Ward/East End, Moody Park/Northline, or the Palm Center. The only major draws are Minute Maid Park, Dynamo Stadium and TSU/UH. The first two destinations are within a few blocks of the western terminus. Is the cost outlay for this system worth shuttling yuppies a few blocks?

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.

You still haven't proven why rail is a good investment for THIS city. I've already proven that expanding bus service and maintaining that system brings ridership. Your personal opinion of the system or those numbers is irrelevant. The fact remains peak transit usage in Houston came under a bus only and bus focused system. You can't dispute that.

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.

So this city is no different than New York? Chicago? Los Angeles? Toronto? Tokyo? Lagos? I can go on and on.

And are you comparing having a bus only system to slavery? You all are truly rail zealots.

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.

Absolutely. But only you agree that we should build it only once we really need it and can afford it, perhaps in fifteen or twenty years.

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.

yes. if the design is not halfassed, but in the specific case of the Univ Line halfassed has proven to be the only design politically feasible. do you see a scenario where that could change? I don't.

and yes if the money is available w/o big tax increases on Houstonians during these tough economic times. right now there is a pretty serious question about the availability of federal money during METRO's current Univ Line buildout timeline even if METRO gets its .25% local increase.

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.

Your arguments aren't coherent because they aren't coherent, not because I don't agree. You're not consistent from post to post. You state that ridership dropped after the Buy America scandal and the New Metro regime took over. But in the first post you stated the ridership peaked in 2001 and has declined ever since. Your words, not mine. The site where you got your data verifies this.

And the Wilson administration was very rail centric. Chairman Wolff is the one who stated that "there's no demand" for the 50% increase in bus service that was promised and help sell the 2003 Solutions plan. Wilson and Wolff both led the agency during unprecedented bus service reductions while overseeing and bungling the build out of the rail system. Wilson was brought in to see the Solutions plan to fruition, the whole plan, but he and his regime totally tossed out the bus portion and reduced already existing bus services, some decades old. Also, the Buy America scandal occurred because of procurement violations regarding the purchase of RAIL CARS. So yes, they were crooks, rail centric crooks.

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

I am wholly in disagreement with the notion that governmental bankruptcies should be allowed, and so I am in disagreement with you on this notion.

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?

I could give several more examples for the Univ Line but maybe I've made my point about why taxpayers like me that are not anti-rail are vehemently anti-spending billions on a halfassed design.

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