samagon

9 hours ago, Big E said:

Its not like those options aren't available. You just have to work a little harder to get them.

You can take the bus...but who really wants to ride a bus everywhere? Especially in the wake of COVID where mass transportation was one of the easiest vectors for transmission?

You can live close enough to your job to walk if you are willing to put in the effort to do so (and possibly pay more money to live where you want to)…but once again, why would you want to walk anywhere in freaking Texas? Its hot as fish grease out here!

For most people, biking is a leisure activity to be done in the fall or the early morning for exercise. You could, once again, move close enough to your job to do so, but why would you?

Options may be more limited than a European city, but they aren't nonexistent, its just that nobody would necessarily consider these options better than driving an air conditioned car or worth the extra effort to attain.

the key to my statement was "equitably maintained".

you can give whatever reasons you want beyond that, but if the city/state doesn't put enough effort into providing these methods of moving as solutions, they will never be solutions for exactly the reasons you state.

5 hours ago, talltexan83 said:

I've heard that Bayou Bend/Hogg Sanctuary would like to be a part of the project.  It makes sense as they could see a nice influx of visitors arriving on bike.

So if the path can reach those sites arriving from the east, then the last portion of the path before Memorial Park would have to involve ROCC.  Obviously, there would be some challenges there, but maybe a fixed skyover (just using the banks on the ROCC as anchors could work).  That's my dream at least.  Given the potential here I hope the planners are thinking big.  Being able to avoid Memorial Dr all together would make this one of the coolest rides in the city.

if that's the case, the they don't even need to worry about Brenners, just jog over the bayou to get to the Hogg side, follow that till you get to the pedestrian bridge that's part of the Hogg grounds, jog back over, and follow the bank the rest of the way to Memorial park, or to get into the neighborhood street that gets you into Memorial park...

as an aside, I hope they don't replace the current pedestrian bridge over the bayou to Hogg land, I love bouncing on that thing :)

On 9/14/2023 at 11:44 AM, astrohip said:

When I drive visitors around, they're impressed with how big our freeways are, and how well you can get around town. Other than peak travel times, our freeways are the secret sauce to the Houston area success story.

I just had a friend from Germany here, and she drove herself from IAH to town, all over town for a day or two, then later to our place in Brenham. She was stunned at our freeways, and specifically commented on the size of the Katy Fwy. None of this was said in a sarcastic or insulting way. Rather, it was amazement at how well we can get around.

funny. when I am a visitor to any city in Europe: Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, etc, I love the fact that I can park my rental vehicle at the hotel and not have to get back in it again until I'm moving on to the next place. I can walk to any mass transit location, hop on, hop off at my destination, drink, be merry, do some shopping, drink, be merry, and so long as I can remain alert enough to figure out mass transit in another language, I can get back to my hotel without any issue, and likely make new friends along the way.

but I'm sure, just as with the 'freedom' that comes with some visitor being able to just 'hop in the car and go' all of that would wash away with every day use, same with my experience with using transit as a tourist.

luckily, I have relatives that live in/around various large cities in the Netherlands, one of these is a city planner, so we do end up talking about traffic, transit, and all the fun stuff, how they live with it over there, vs how we live with our reality.

end of the day, nothing is a panacea, but for their system, at least they have the ability to choose between 4 very effective, and equitably maintained methods of transportation:

1. pedestrian
2. bicycle
3. train
4. single occupant vehicle

usually, it's going to be some mix of any of the above. with us, our only real option is 4 because infrastructure for any of the other methods doesn't exist in any real capacity as to make it equitable to driving.

so yeah, we call it freedom to get in the car and go, but the reality is, we are chained to our cars with no real freedom at all, and all of the sudden the cost of living includes the cost of owning a car (and insuring, and whatever other costs come with it) for every adult in the household.

1 hour ago, MrFubbles said:

The city's addiction to lanes is mind blowing

it's not the cities addiction to lanes, it is TXDoT relying on input from sources like HGAC, the members of which represent interests of the surrounding areas of Houston more than Houston. which kind of sucks because Houston has a majority of the population, yet we end up under represented by that committee, which holds a lot of sway.

even still, there are a lot of people who live in Houston that still think more lanes of traffic is the only solution to transit issues.

if the process for doing permits hasn't changed since the covid work from home stuff happened, it's not that they don't have the capacity, it's that for some reason, when the people doing permits aren't in the same office all hell breaks loose. 

from my experience (simply adding a doorway between two commercial spaces) it's not just that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing, it's more along the lines of a full orchestra, each person is intended to read the same music, however, they all seem to have different writings of the same song, and everyone is doing their music study in their own house. and then the conductor (inspector) comes around and tells me when I'm listening to the music, that the music is wrong and I have to go back to each person in the orchestra to get them to use a specific piece of music.

it took fully every bit of an entire year from getting an approved permit, through the process of the inspector not liking what was approved, to having to get director level approval for a completely different solution. and that was using a fixer to help with the process. I wish the best of luck to anyone trying to do permitting without a fixer in today's COH permitting office.

if I were to guess, there's enough people doing work, the problem is the work they are doing, most of their time seems to be spent not approving new permits, but fixing what they screwed up on earlier permits.

maybe I'm not giving METRO, or this city enough credit, but I don't see below grade as something that would happen.

the green line extension will be a bit nightmarish around Milby HS.

there's a rail crossing at Broadway right there, which means grade separation for the LR, and with the HW3 split from Broadway so close to the rail line, the grade separation will include an overpass for that intersection. basically, there's no way to do a LR in front of Milby on Broadway without grade separation in front of the school. 

I don't see that happening without a fight.

not that there isn't really a better way, unless they turn on HW3, take that down to Park Place (which allows for a stop right in front of the Botanical Garden), toss in the railway overpass somewhere along HW3, which only adds .6 miles of track, but will surely avoid a costly political fight.

another nightmare for METRO will be 45/Broadway/Park Place, no matter how they align, it's going to go across there, and suck.

it held a 76 unit, 2 story apartment complex before this, so yeah, it is big.

23 hours ago, BigFootsSocks said:

Ok but that's actually really well-done

not at all believable though, T-Rex skeletons have never been discovered in the Houston area.

On 9/4/2023 at 3:01 PM, hbcu said:

Joe v's would work - alot of H‑E‑B folks have converted over to them 

I wouldn't say converted, Joe V's is a HEB brand, just more of a Costco style experience.

it's not a great opportunity for a full on grocery store, and certainly not a Costco type experience. the parking setup is a primary reason..

if any grocery were to go in I'd suspect something more Trader Joe's like that's intended for picking up provisions for that day, rather than stocking up for an entire week. imagine shopping bascarts being pushed around this, or any other "City Center" style development.

although, I do chuckle at the thought of trendy moms with their kids doing their instagram on a green event space with someone in the background pushing a bascart from the grocery store to the parking garage that is loaded down with a months supply of toilet paper.

I went last weekend. pretty sure they are spending a lot of money on water.

the garden area is fine, there's actually bits you can see are still recovering from the freeze.

a lot of the young trees that they have planted along the path that takes you over Sims Bayou appear to be ok.

incidentally, probably not at all related to new CEO, they had someone at the gate for the first time this summer when I arrived.

youtube.com/watch?v=3w3QCcItxTo

the most interesting thing, when a building is built, they have to replace 100% of the footprint as landscape.

11 hours ago, freundb said:

I don't know where they are gonna fit two extra lanes on each side of the freeway. 

we can rest assured the polo club already is spending plenty of money to keep from losing any land.

and maybe a mod can make a new I-10 expansion thread to move some of these posts. 

I can't remember who I was talking to, or maybe it was farther up this thread. but someone had chatted and they are asking a lot for this space, especially for the location, which might be why it's sitting a bit empty. I wonder if their update might also include a lower PSF cost?

anyway, if I had the ability, this would be an awesome place for a pizza/coffee type thing.

On 8/27/2023 at 4:17 PM, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

like it always has looked, a third world banana republic loyal opposition party who doesn't acknowledge it's base.

so the same as the Democratic party.

you do realize that both parties have the same goals, which is to maintain their power over us the citizens, while they do whatever they can for big business which helps them maintain that power as the individuals who run the parties get richer and richer, and we get poorer and poorer for it.

none of us should be simping for them.

I quiet quit national elections and politics a long time ago, I do apologize for having un-quit, I'll go back to being completely pessimistic of everyone and everything in our government.

probably maintenance costs. 

I agree though, if a point of the city is to make cooler, then you'd think things like this would be a perfect opportunity for green.

I was a MOP at a few very large publicly traded companies.

I learned enough about HR while in this role, if a company of a large enough size does business in multiple states, they default everyone to following the rules for the state that requires the best benefits.

so if the business has an office in NY state (for instance), then even in Houston, they offer the same benefits as are required in NY state. 

there's nothing that says a company has to do this, but at some point they want to protect themselves from lawyering, so they protect themselves like that. so if NY state offers an allowance for people to take public transit, they are going to give the same offer to people in Houston office.

maybe, or maybe not related to that Chicago thing, but yeah, it's one of the potential benefits of working for a huge mega corp, you will get additional benefits that are obscure/not available for a small Houston business.

the trains at IAH are all automated as well, and as you mention for DFW, they are completely tracked and isolated.

they are also in Orlando, and a few other airports, google says they are called automated guideway transit.

important point though, they are automated, but they are also on tracks.

it's the difference of the Test Track at EPCOT vs (the now defunct) Ellen's Energy Adventure. although, I think there are other rides there that have autonomous ride vehicles that aren't on tracks at Disney (Rise of the Resistance), they just use sensors to tell them where to go, and in every instance, they all seem to have their own ROW that doesn't mingle with anything else (except potentially other ride vehicles, and I'd presume they have collision avoidance). Disney does some really awesome stuff with automation (anything automation, not just vehicles), and the industry at large is probably decades farther than they otherwise would have been without Disney.

anyway, it's a fascinating subject (primarily because automation is really cool), I suspect we are years away from mixing completely autonomous automated vehicles in the same ROW as typical traffic that includes random humans doing random human things.

1 hour ago, Big E said:

This hypothetical assumes a few thing. First, it assumes you rent a car for the trip rather than just use your own. In the latter case, you just need the company to reimburse you for gas, which would potentially be cheaper than a train ticket, but if I rent a car, the company would have to reimburse me for the cost of the rental, driving the price up. It also ignores the fact that the train only gets you to your destination. Once you arrive in Houston (or Dallas), you still need to rent a car to get around. Which means your paying for a rental either way. So your probably not saving money either way.

there's nothing hypothetical about this situation. it's real life, and I deal with it any time I take a trip to San Antonio, Austin, or Dallas.

any time you use your personal vehicle for business travel (that isn't your normal office commute), you are expensing the mileage. $0.655 per mile right now. this mileage rate reimbursement factors in gas (so you don't expense that), apps like Concur do the mileage calcs for you, and you can submit the expense for mileage. driving around town to visit customers is a great example of mileage expenses, but when you get into intercity travel, things change.

240 miles from Houston to Dallas, so 480 miles round trip, $314 they are reimbursing if you take your car. if I rent a car for 2 days it will be less than that, my company will tell me to rent a car, and expense the gas.

if there's a train, and it costs less for the train/uber vs rental/gas, you better believe they will make the employee take the train. not to mention that time sitting on a train is now productive time on calls, answering emails, doing normal business that would otherwise be impacted by having to concentrate on the whole driving thing. 

so the only hypothetical in this equation is that my boss may recognize that even if the train ride costs a bit more, they may tell me that I need to take the train anyway, just so I stay productive during that time.

and yeah, if my boss finds out about Vonlane, I might end up taking a bus.

paint create another maintenance area that would end up costing a lot, but reflective markers would work, and probably require less maintenance?

I don't see a planet where (at least not in the short term) any vehicle is allowed to be automated without someone to override.

although, some hybrid type situation, where an operator pushes buttons to make the bus move to the next station, and a brake override for mixed ROW situations, but otherwise it would be fully automated, which could allow for precise stopping locations, which means parking closer to the platform to reduce gaps, and gates, that's a world I could see happening with current levels of automation. 

perhaps even the operator becomes a centrally controlled thing with 5 guys sitting in an operation room and they're doing those controls remotely, making the vehicles a mix of autonomous and drone...

remote operation doesn't necessarily make it cheaper to operate, but it would remove the need for having a driver compartment, ultimately increasing the capacity.

20 hours ago, Big E said:

That last sentence is key. I don't think the slower trains will be able to compete because they won't be as fast as driving. The trains will move slowly, making driving potentially faster, and whenever you get to your destination, you will still have to rent a car to move around anywhere in either Dallas or Houston due to the lack of mass transit, so its not necessarily more convenient than just driving in the first place. The main selling point for Texas Central was using Bullet Trains that were specifically much faster than cars, and could even compete with plane travel on time, but lacked the hassle of trying to take a plane (like dealing with the TSA and the sorry state of most American airlines).

there's a calculator on SAP Concur (a very common expense portal used in business) that shows the break points for a trip car vs rental vs flight. and most companies are going to make you take the cheapest option. so if they would reimburse me $280ish to drive my car from Houston to Dallas and back, but a rental is $100 (plus $50 for gas or whatever), they are going to make me rent a car (this depends on how many days I have the rental).

if there's a train, and the ticket is $75 round trip, round trip uber is $50, it's now magically the cheaper travel option, and guess what they're going to make me do? that's right, take the train. every time. there's people in my company who do that trip once a week. this isn't a unique situation.

that's for business travel. from a business perspective, if the price is right, it doesn't matter if the travel time matches, or is faster than a car, it matters that it will be predictable and the least expensive option.

for personal travel, or just for the weekend, or whatever, it really will depend on how long it takes, and each person has to do the calculus from there. do you have a family that needs to stop every hour for a bathroom break? does traffic on a long journey induce a lot of stress? is there a lunch break in there?

neat stuff, I'm curious why it being a landmarked building (assuming this means historic landmark) makes any difference?

I mean, if they want to keep whatever tax breaks come with owning a historic property, and the cost to refit isn't going to exceed their savings over whatever period of time, but it's not like they can't clear the site because it's historic.

I guess the question is, I understood historic landmarks, you get a tax benefit for maintaining exterior facades, but there's nothing stopping you from demo and starting over, so all carrot, no stick?

5 hours ago, trymahjong said:

Hmmmmmmmmmm TxDot ........sigh

it garners a lot of attention I agree

but I started picking on Metro in reaction to the many riders seeming to spend significant time standing at bus stops with no shade when it's a kazillion degrees outside......" good actor " or not, Metro is slow in reacting...and the heat keeps increasing.Metro needs to step up.

I'm sure Metro, preens, when mention of their ridership or type of eco- friendly engines are brought up. However, IMO Metro's biggest  opportunity to gain serious chops in the pro/eco conversation......(and what transit system wouldn't want that) ......start putting up bus stops with " knock your socks off " xeriscape  greenery that comes up first thing when making a Google search on the subject.

this is a larger discussion than something METRO themselves should be responsible for though right?

if you look at Houston, streets are not designed for people, they're designed for cars. METRO buses have to share the streets with cars, so rather than a person waiting 5-10 minutes for a train that runs on a very strict schedule, they have to wait on a bus that has a schedule, but that schedule is subject to the whims of the vehicles it is forced to cohabitate with.

what's worse, it can even be said the whole city is built to serve cars, not people, so by extension, all the departments and organizations of the city, have to follow suit and design themselves to work around the primary need of cars, and then serve people.

I went like 10 years ago when some big steam train was in town. it was cool.

6 hours ago, Montrose1100 said:

If we're fantasying, They should partner with the Post, and make it an Intermodal Transit Center, which would really boost everything about both projects. The Post could develop more commercial space, residential, and hotels. Truly a mixed-use development. 

Could easily build a pedestrian bridge to the UH Downtown Red line station.

 

and while we're in fantasyland, they need to add a London Eye sized ferris wheel on that plaza where Congress street meets Franklin (Google calls it the Barbara Jordan Front Plaza)...