samagon

I never had any issues with T-mo in Houston, in fact, if I'm in a situation where I need to connect a laptop to the internet, I'm more likely to tether to my phone via hotspot than connect to any open wifi. not just for security, but 9/10 it's faster than the shared wifi. T-mo, at least in a bigger city like Houston, is great. used to be, get out in the country and it's spotty at best, but with their recent mergers, that's been corrected for the most part too.

yep, it helps make it feel less Houston-like!

the ROW was acquired a long time ago, the neighborhoods have been broken already. so it's kind of in the worst possible place right now, neighborhoods broken, but nothing to show for it. as adding freeways, or taking over ROW to add more capacity goes, this is pretty well non-invasive for where it's at now. the extra pollution being added, both noise and particulate will hopefully be mitigated somewhat with some barriers, but we'll see.

I got a note from ATT fiber that they corrected an outage to my home. it was out for a day. power was out for 5 days though, so I'd have not noticed. meanwhile, I have comcast at the coffee shop and not only was it out for an extended period, it is also out at least once a month for some random reason or another. comcast sucks, if there are other options I will explore those before comcast, they are literally my last option.

I bet this statistic is specific to the lines getting the power from the poles to the house. my current home has wires hanging from the pole that come to my house. my parents home has wires buried from the pole to the house. I make extra sure that there's no limbs that might fall on the line going from the pole to my house. my parents don't have to worry about that. in both cases, there are still power lines and poles running in easements above ground to get power down the line for distribution to homes. CPE doesn't seem to care so much about trimming the trees near power lines. when we lost power in the May storm it was from a tree falling on a line getting power to my street, 30 people affected, 7 days waiting for a repair. when we lost power for this Hurricane, a tree fell onto a pole mounted transformer, 300ish homes affected, 5 days waiting for repair. I mean sure, it'd be great if they did bury lines, but I think it would also help if they spent enough on maintaining their ROW. of course if they don't spend the money on maintaining their ROW, they can pay that money out to investors, or give themselves bonuses for increasing margins. then when there is a natural disaster, they can apply and get disaster relief to fix the issues and not hurt the bottom line. that's just a thought that sits in the back of my mind, certainly no one running this business could be so dastardly, right? and I'm sure the government has protections in place to make sure companies aren't burning the system in a way such as this.

I agree changing the taxes is impossible, however, there are other levers to increase revenue, even with a static tax rate. property values, aka, density. a parking lot, or single family home on 5000sf, or garden apartments have a property value, parking garages, densely packed townhomes, 5 story apartments with GFR have a property value that is higher than the aforementioned options. as a simple example, 3% of a single family $400,000 home is $12,000. 3% of 2 $300,000 townhomes on the same plot of land is $18,000. $6000 more revenue for the city right there. convert an entire neighborhood of 300 homes? 1.8 million just like that. so yeah, the city has options, it can create policy that naturally increases density. make it easier to install GFR on apartment buildings, more dense transit options, reduce/remove parking requirements, give tax incentives to developers willing to build density. did I mention more dense transit? stop walking back LRT, BRT and bus service, expand that as fast and as hard as you can. at the end of the day, you're right, in Houston, people are resistant to density, they are resistant to dense transit, so there is no way to increase revenues to any great extent. all they want is bigger freeways so they can move farther and farther away from the city, but still be "in the city". the problem is that aside from any sales tax for stuff they buy while in the city, there's no revenue from them, and they still need access to police, fire, EMS, and use the streets while in town.

I guess we'll see. he gave them a deadline of July 31, we should all mark our calendars and check back. there's this too: https://abc13.com/post/centerpoint-energy-faces-lawsuit-houston-restaurants-prolonged-power/15062075/

we have an arborist come thin trees every 5 years. for the wind event back in May, all we got were a few limbs down, none larger than thumb sized. for this one, same thing. I did clean up one limb that was about the size of a small wrist though. I'm convinced that this preventative maintenance matters. I know CPE states they clear areas around lines once every 5 years, but I can only recall once that I saw them in the 15 years I lived in my previous home. I've only been in my current home for 3 years and they've not been out yet. first thing I did when I moved in though was call my arborist to get things done. I hope so, and I hope something comes of it. Hurricane Alicia was a Cat3 storm and only took 750,000. granted the amount of time people had to wait back then was a lot longer, I have read a few anecdotes of 3 weeks. I recall during Ike that my home was without power for over 2 weeks, and the internet says that storm took out 2.2 million. either way, I got a generator after the May storm, and it's configured to run on propane, so I'll get a natural gas conversion kit for it and that will be able to run my fridge, charge phones, laptops and probably a window unit too. the outrage makes sense, less than 3 months and probably half of CPE customers had to deal with 2, week long power outages. we just got our freezers stocked back up with frozen shrimp, only to have them thaw and stink the place up again.

I was expecting more centerpoint discussion. I guess everyone that wants CPE to be fixed is still without power.

not an easy thing to solve, but I've said it before, and I'll say it again... METRO needs to be folded into HCTRA. for every dollar spent on toll roads they should be forced to spend some amount on buses and BRT and LRT.

thanks for doing the leg work, I was going to say I seem to recall something from about a decade ago now that made using these easements for specific types of recreational use very easy.

https://www.axios.com/local/houston/2024/06/17/john-whitmire-11th-street-report-heights

public meetings coming up soon for a new project for the Gulf Freeway from downtown to BW8. meetings: 6/11/2024 (tonight) at 9100 Gulf Freeway 77017 6/13/2024 at 5202 Griggs 77021 both are 5p-7p virtual option at link https://www.txdot.gov/projects/hearings-meetings/houston/2024/gulf-freeway-pel-study-i-45-i-69-us-59-beltway-8-south-061124.html

Yale feels dangerous even in my car, I could only imagine how pedestrians feel. the problem with lane reduction on Yale is that it is too busy for fewer lanes. maybe if they added more lanes to Heights Blvd, then people would naturally filter onto Heights Blvd, and the number of travelers on Yale would decrease enough to where it only needed 1 lane in each direction.

all they need is to put in a big "London Eye" or maybe lean into Houston old school and do an Astro Needle.