august948

Very cool.  Keep it up!

You have to go on 610 for a short time before you hit 10, then you take 10 east to downtown, then 45 to 288

Drive much?

It's people like you why they have junky coupons instead of cash.   

 

Seriously though, it's people deliberately gaming the system to rack up rewards ruin these types of things. Remember the stamps that Subway used to give out? I think Little Caesars did something similar.

No doubt.

It was a spur-of-the-moment experiment on my part to see if they had any controls.  Without some controls this sort of thing is pointless unless it's been set up to rake in money from grants or from the stores providing the coupons.  Could be that it's just a web version of the ValuPak coupon packets that I get in the snail mail every month.

Or 290 to 610 to 10 east to 288

Say what??

Say, how does this website know you're not BSing your commute (or at least fudging it) entirely?

They don't.  I logged a daily, recurring trip on public transit from here to Vancouver 10 days ago.  Just signed back in and I've got 2,000 points already for my pretend commute.

 

My thought on this topic has always been simple logic:

• if a neighborhood can stay the same, get better, or get worse
• and getting better = gentrification = bad = we enact policies to stop it
• so neighborhoods can only stay the same or get worse
• then how does a city do anything other than decline over time?...

 

As a practical matter, I don't think there are many cases where gentrification is stopped cold in it's tracks.  Most of the time the policies enacted to slow it down just cause costs to go up as developers and remodelers have to navigate another set of regulations beyond the typical building codes and that costs time and money.  Since the demand that drives gentrification is still there, you get slowed down release of inventory while demand remains or increases.

The answer is that officials aren't interested in including rail, it doesn't fit their best interests ($$$)

Among the choices officials are imposing higher toll prices during peak times, redesigning key street connections with the freeway to eliminate delays at entrance and exit ramps, limiting when some entrance and exit ramps are open to better control traffic, and moving more quickly to re-open lanes after traffic accidents.

I was more interested in what the others at the meeting had to say in response to his question.  The article leaves that completely out.  An oversight?  Poor reporting?  Maybe the Dug Begley got the info second-hand?  I'm sure if the question was asked someone gave a reason, not a knee-jerk reaction.

It's not an oversimplification. 

 

Go to Boston, midtown Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Miracle Mile in Chicago, downtown Seattle, San Francisco, etc... and compare the amounts of people walking with a place like New Territory or Bridgelands. 

 

Then compare the body types. 

 

I spent 17 years in Boston. Texans are FAT. I've gained 13 pounds since I moved home even though I actually go to the gym 1 more time a week than I used to. Why? Because I no longer walk to work. I no longer walk to dinner (well, I sometimes do if it's in the Rice Village). I no longer walk to the grocery store and then carry bags back 18 blocks. I no longer walk to MLB games. When I run out of toothpaste or toilet paper, I now hop in the car and drive to CVS rather than walk 10 blocks.

 

Quite frankly, I am not complaining. While I liked walking and my waistline was smaller, it was also a pain in the rear, especially in the dead of winter. Nothing like running out of cat food at 10 pm when it's 7 degrees out and knowing I am either going to risk the cats killing me in my sleep or hiking 20 blocks round trip while carrying IAMS on the way home with snot freezing in my nose. 

I've gained more than 13 lbs since I moved to Houston 15 years ago, despite working the yard, walking the dog, chasing the kids, and trying to get out on my bike as much as possible.  I blame it on an aging metabolism and the restaurant food here, which is just too damn delicious and plentiful for our own good.

And the answer to his question was...?

 

Considering there are at least 260 workdays in a year, I'd rather pocket a $520 check every year, if you were getting $2 worth of points a day.

 

Instead, it reminds me of the scams that used to be pulled on elementary schools, where if kids sold enough overpriced crap door to door in the name of school fundraising, they got some piece of overpriced junk. [i certainly went to school in that era]

That era started a long, long time ago and is still going on today.

To be honest, I was considering taking Hempstead Road past the Beltway, if for nothing else to avoid the 610/290 interchange.

I haven't been on the stretch of 290 from Eldridge to the 610/290 interchange in quite a while so I don't know what construction is going on there, but that interchange isn't too bad in my opinion, especially coming in from 290.  It's wide and well marked in that direction.  I always have the most fun on 59 from about Kirby to the 59/45 connector where there always seems to be a lot of traffic and there's a lot of merging and lane changing going on.

Take backroads! You'll see tons more!

That's the best advice.  If you really want to experience the freeways maybe take them one way and take a backroad tour going back, or vice-versa.  Biggest problem I can think of is the shortness of the merge on some of the onramps.  Make sure you are up to speed, or maybe a little faster, when entering the highways.  Bring a gps for the backroads tour.  If you want to plan your trip out in detail, you can also look things over on google streetview so you are aware of the places where you have to move quick to get on the freeway and then cross lanes immediately so you can get where you are going.

Don't worry too much about pissing other drivers off, that's normal.     

This is where Americans are getting stupid. It's basic science.

 

If you live in a dense urban environment and walk to work, dinner, shop, movies, etc... then you will burn calories.

 

If you live in a suburban environment and drive to all of those places then you wont burn nearly as many. 

 

Some things aren't up for debate no matter how badly you may disagree. 

While the above may be true, it is also an oversimplification.  Most, if not all, of the master planned communities that make up a majority of the outer suburban neighborhoods have sidewalks/hike/bike trails, gyms, pools, playgrounds and the like.  All of these things feature heavily in the advertisements for said communities.  This is not at all scientific, but many of the people I know who live in the suburbs either go to the gym, work out at home, or at least use the hike and bike trails.  If anything, it's the middle neighborhoods, outside the loop but inside of the ring of master planned communities that are most prone to not have sidewalks or extensive exercise amenities.  Even then, though, it's really a matter of how you want to live as you can get plenty of exercise just maintaining a suburban yard and walking the dog in the evenings..

Sounds like a plan to significantly expand the appeal of Critical Mass rides. 

Rumor has it nuderide is the latest competitor for uber and lyft. 

I'm getting $2 a day. But I see your point. It is being run by HGAC so they are probably looking to see how people commute.

By "getting $2 a day" I assume you mean that you are getting one of the following:

• Juicy in the Sky - $2 off Smoothie, Juice Combo, or Shake
• The John C. Freeman Weather Museum - $2 off Adult Adm or Free Child Adm w/Adult Adm
• Salata - Free Cup of Soup with Salad or Wrap Purchase

Or if you really save up your points you can get these top-of-the-line rewards at 6000 points

• Wake Nation Houston - $60 off Birthday Party Package
• Memorial Athletic Club - Waived Membership Initiation Fee
• Memorial Athletic Club - Free Week of Training for Warriors
• AIM Limo - Free Hour of Luxury SUV Rental When You Buy 3 Hrs
• Omaha Steaks - $96 off The Great Value Assortment

I particularly like how you can get an hour of luxury SUV limo rental when you use public transit.  Is that kinda like 1 step forward, 2 steps back?

Signed up at their website.  Sounds a lot like Recyclebank in that you get coupons and bogo offers, but without any way to verify.  I recorded a daily round trip from Houston to Vancouver via public transit.  Apparently, that'll earn me 200 points a day.  From their help menu...

 

Points are awarded for the first two trips that you record in your NuRide account each day. One-way trips earn 100 points and round trips earn 200 points. Telecommutes and compressed work weeks count as a "round trip" and earn 200 points each.

200 x 365 = 73,000 points a year from my "commute".

My crazy car would be an auction police package crown vic with the supercharged 5.4 out of the cobra. talk about a sleeper, people would look at it and assume it was just a cheap transportation box with a fun light on the a pillar, then zoooooooooooom!!! and eventually crash because the suspension is clapped out, but let's not talk about that part, obviously there's still some kinks to work out. Luckily I have time to work this stuff out cause I haven't reached unlimited funds yet.

You know the fun thing about driving in the city is it's all about the strategy, not the horsepower.  I can smoke a vette with my minivan when there's traffic and lights to counter the horsepower.

How do you tie this in with traffic/transportation?

Tunnel vision is how it ties in.

This is an intriguing idea, but how would we vet those who would be in this 'government' thing?

Why would we start vetting now? 

That makes no sense. Sidewalk funding shouldn't be coming from an agency that needs that money to increase transit.

It makes perfect sense.  The funding has already been set aside for road improvements until at least 2025.  Are you arguing that we should spend all road money on roads and not use any of it on sidewalks?

People in dense cities are thinner and have healthier hearts than people in sprawling subdivisions. New research says the secret is in the patterns of the streets.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/blame-the-city/375888/

Correlation isn't causation.  From the article above...

 

"It's nice to make more of these connections,” Marshall told me, tonally foreshadowing the inevitable correlation-is-not-causation caveat, “but it's hard to say that these kinds of neighborhoods cause good health."

It’s true that people who like to walk and bike might be choosing to live in denser neighborhoods, and that may be all there is to this relationship. But on that note, there a lot of people who don't really have a choice where they live. They can't afford to live in the hearts of big grid cities. “A lot of poor people are getting forced out of the walkable urban scene,” Marshall said.

This is a silly article, I'm depressed (not severely) that I wasn't around from the beginning.

 

The conclusions I drew:

 

1. reduce the speed limit in and around neighborhoods to 20 mph.

2. make crossing the road easier for pedestrians by adding additional crosswalks in highly trafficked areas.

 

This article makes a really great example for why we have freeways though, imagine if the freeways didn't exist, those same hundreds of thousands of cars serviced by freeways would be driving down those neighborhood streets making them even more dangerous to cross, which would likely result in more car/pedestrian fatalities.

Spot on.  Those darn unintended consequences get you every time.  There's a certain mentality out there among some who think that freeways are the one and only cause of higher traffic and that if we'd only tear them up traffic would magically melt away.  I'd be all for funnelling some of Metro's road funding to improve sidewalks around town, starting with the neighborhoods that have the worst.

I've seen them at Oyster Creek Park in Sugarland.

I firmly believe that the fresh ground cheeseburger at Triple A is the most underrated burger in Houston. Or maybe not so much underrated as unheralded - if more people knew about it, they'd be lining up for it. 

Mmmm....burgers are another weakness of mine.  I'll have to check this out.

It apparently horrified Anthony Bourdain enough for him to coin his memorable characterization of it as "warm crap in a bag". Oh well, even Homer nods. 

Maybe he got one in NYC?