august948

If you go in and tell them you don't have a quarter for the carts, they'll give you one or give you a cart. When they first started popping up, I talked with the manager at one of the stores on hwy 6 and he told me they were concentrating on the outer areas of town due to real estate prices. Don't know if that is still true, but I know of only one that is inside the loop, on OST in a fairly low-rent area.

I wonder if this will kickstart Chacho's next door to opening up their 24/7 lobby again.

The westward expansion started a long time ago. Note that River Oaks was built west of downtown and the Heights was built northwest. Most likely development moved west because in the east we have had refineries for a very long time. People who can will move away from industrial areas and will take their higher spending with them. I recall an article written a decade or so ago had the population center of Houston somewhere around City Centre.

Doesn't that depend on whether or not the coffee is dreamy?

I believe @aachor said the positives far outweigh the negatives for most people. Most people in the Houston metro choose to live outside the loop, where suburban single family home development is the norm. Why do they choose to do so?

I'll have to work my way through the list, but reading through the paper on noise exposure in Danish cities it sounds like that might fall into the category of correlation does not equal causation. Definitely needs additional confirmation, as per the authors in the final paragraph. Let's assume, for the moment, that long-term exposure to road and rail noise raises dementia risk. That would indicate that it would be better to have residential development spread out and farther from road and rail development. Dense developments near roadways or rail would put more of the population at risk for dementia. Under this model, cul-de-sac designs with limited through traffic would be ideal. Oddly enough, that's exactly how suburban subdivisions have been laid out for at least the last 50 years. I would guess then that the next logical step would be to tear down all those dense developments along the rail lines and replace them with a buffer zone or perhaps single family homes with large front yards, all in the name of public health of course. Let me know when that happens.

Is public transportation a better option? As configured or in an some optimal configuration?

I think it would be more accurate to say if Houston wants less parking it needs to provide transportation options that are better than privately owned vehicles.

There's a difference between need and want. There are plenty of places you can live in Houston where you don't need a car to survive, but having a car increases your options by magnitudes, even downtown. It will be up to the prospective tenants to decide if they are willing to go without or walk a block or two and pay extra for a parking space. At any rate, this will prove or disprove demand for this model to future developers. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I10 works every day. As do the other highways in the metro area. Road solutions work for their purpose. Not sure why you think roads don't work. Nothing wrong with building out infrastructure within the city limits. That happens all the time, but Houston isn't really just confined to the city borders. Houston is the entire metro area. You can't divorce one from the other.

Induced demand is a flawed model. If a city is growing, as Houston has by about 3 million people in the last 20 years, that considerably factors into the traffic flow. No doubt, had we not rebuilt I10 it would be much worse today. But by just building out I10, we've connected a large pipe to smaller pipes. For best traffic flow we need to expand out the other freeways, including the loop, the beltway and grand parkway to the same standard including interchanges that can smoothly handle the larger capacity without creating bottlenecks. If you go back and read my earlier post I suggested that we run park and ride buses along hot lanes on all the freeways creating a faster public transit system that would allow those who don't want to drive the option to reach any destination relatively quickly. However, for most trips the most efficient and preferred way to get from point to point will always be the individual vehicle unless artificial restrictions are put in place. Whether that vehicle runs on fossil fuels or renewables is a separate question. Trying to re-create a medieval urban format by eliminating cars, which is really what this is about, is a truer example of induced demand.

I'm still amazed by how apples to oranges comparisons are passed around so uncritically.

Exactly. The problem you have to watch out for, other than using a portion of the data to present things in a certain light, is that there are other factors at play.

Thank you for posting that link. Reading the article led me to this: http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/hist/hist_traveltimes_menu.aspx This is the source cited for the four year increase in travel times from Pin Oak to downtown. It shows data gathered by transtar for average trip time broken down by 15 minute increments and sections of roadway. Here are the 2021 highlights from transtar: Travel time at peak in the morning for 2021 on I10 is below where it was 10 years ago. 2020 was clearly an anomalous year due to the shutdowns in the spring. I'll be curious to see where this goes over the next year or two as work patterns have changed, hopefully permanently. What I've noticed, anecdotally, is that I10 is gloriously open during non-peak hours. The bottlenecks I've found are now where it meets smaller narrower roadways.

I10 is awesome, not awful. Every mile of freeway in the city should be built out to that standard, including the loops. Then, if you want good public transport, just run park and ride buses all day long in each direction and connect to local lines at the park and ride locations. Development is already clustered around our existing highways so it makes it much easier to get to pretty much any destination in just two or three bus hops, including one that moves at highway speeds down the hot lanes.

For me it'd be more like "Hey kids, Dad's already seen the giraffes 10 billion times since he was a kid. I'll be over here waiting while you look around. Take your time..."

It's just Houston's latest parkour course.

Lol on thinking only 13 parking spots is a good thing for a residential building. I'd guess the twitter poster isn't actually going to live here. What's the going rate per sqft for rentals downtown? It'll be in that range * 420 sqft unless it's subsidized.

Took me a little digging to realize that "The Hub" is what's normally known as the "Satellite". Anyway, found this video about the new project. Sounds like they are attempting a food hall.

Two hands holding a chicken sandwich with macaroni? Fingers a bit beefy for a girl, so I'm guessing a guy with at least three stick on, stripe painted nails. The spirit of Montrose lives on? Honestly, it's the macaroni that gives me pause here.

Which road is this you're talking about? Are you saying it's about 20 feet from the front edge of properties to the ditch on each side? Including the ditches and the road itself that would be about 60 or so feet, perhaps more, all the way across from the front edge of one property to the front edge of one on the opposite side. Seems a bit generous given how the Heights is laid out.

I'd take one look at the ladder and be like....

I'm guessing this was predictable...

I'll have to stop by when they open and see how their flat white is.