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zaphod

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Everything posted by zaphod

  1. zaphod
    In order for prices to rise out of control don't you also need rich people who will pay them? Supply and demand issues may be the root cause but the high incomes of tech and finance people must also play a role? Houston's only forseeable driver of that kind of income tsunami is the oil and gas industry. The O&G industry in Houston is definitely cooling down, and every prediction I see is more and more pessimistic. With the concerns about climate change it will probably never boom again the way it did a decade ago, or in the early 1980s. Houston is probably peaking right now, and will never grow its economy quite as fast as it did this last decade. I think we will mature and grow less in every decade from now on, eventually settling down into a slow growth state similar to other major cities. The future of the US is demographic aging, collapsing birth rates, and harsher restrictions on immigration. So the country as a whole will not grow as much. I just don't see what would sustain the 2010's rate of expansion then. So yeah, TLDR, I don't worry about us getting too expensive. Established attractive areas will continue to go up in price and there will be more and more infill and high rise development and the western half of the regional urban core establishes itself. But areas further out will eventually just become settled and not change as much, IMO. I'm not an expert on this subject so my opinion may be worthless...
  2. zaphod
    Looking back at some of the ancient posts in this thread, like the one above from 2013 when Samagon talks about the decline in quality of schools in Alief... Just as things change for the worse they can also change for the better. What's Alief like now in 2020 versus 2013, or 2003? I get the feeling it is poised to be a good location in the future. Same with the Chinatown part of Sharpstown. Remember that Spring Branch was not an especially desirable area 25 years ago but has become more attractive as time passed. As for areas that will decline in the future, my money's on east montgomery county going downhill. Kingwood is proper is bourgeious and always will be, but beyond it towards Valley Ranch is either disappointing low-quality subdivisions, or endless trailer parks and rur-ban developments. Colony Ridge when built out is going to introduce a lot of low socioeconomic students to local schools and that's going to really conflict with the old school country white folk who live there. The county is waayy too conservative to put any money into infrastructure or services. It's going to be really ugly. As if it already wasn't, from an amenity point of view there are essentially zero parks, very little shopping or dining(can't keep a Sam's Club in business). I don't know why anyone would live out that way except that they really want a new build house for cheap and drive till you quality, instead of buying a house in an existing area. The growth on Northeast side is going to shift away from 69 towards the Generation Park/Summerwood area, that's my crystal ball prediction.
  3. zaphod
    That quad heliport on the roof looks really cool in aerial pictures...
  4. zaphod
    That illustration makes me concerned they would cut through the Willow Waterhole greenspace to build this. That's unfortunate. I would think there is enough room to build an elevated viaduct with support pylons down the center of Post Oak as it exists now.
  5. zaphod
    I think most of Austin is too low density and has too low ridership potential to support that. A LRT could be a subway from Downtown to North Lamar transit center with subway stations at the drag(UT), triangle, crestview, koenig, etc. There's some huge TOD potential there if the DPS and Department of Health and Human Services packed up and moved. But then past that it really makes more sense to run as at grade system, because that opens the potential for lines going way out to Round Rock, etc. There should also be a line going to the Domain.
  6. zaphod
    Is there any news about Town Centre II or whatever they are calling it(second big tower on southern edge of this development?)
  7. zaphod
    I think the problem with existing freight corridors is that the major railroads do not want to sell them because they do a brisk business hauling freight for the time being. And they tend to have narrow, constrained ROW's and sharp curves and grades. Not really HSR friendly, anything using them would be a slow heavy rail line like what Amtrak already operates. Texas Central seeing the potential in high voltage power line corridors is a really interesting idea that I hope catches on. There's potential there to build super straight routes between major cities.
  8. zaphod
    I understand why the current emphasis is on areas which are in the central part of the city. Suburban bus routes have a hard time attracting ridership. Still, I've been playing around in google maps and discovered there are some underrated transit friendly corridors that are ignored. North of I-10 in the Energy Corridor is a Park Row, which is really the western extension of Dairy Ashford. It's solid apartment complexes and office buildings all the way out to Katy. Goes past Addicks P&R. Another area like that is Northborough and Ella in Spring.
  9. zaphod
    I think it's only a matter of time before discover that area as being as close and as interesting as the southgate and college hills area, and you get some Bellaire/West U style teardowns for McMansion development.
  10. zaphod
    I think having a LRT subway under the central part of Austin makes sense for rather specific reasons. Austin's core is pretty dense and a lot of the important destinations for commuters in that city are all clustered in one small area. UT, Downtown, State Capitol, the new medical district, the tourist attractions etc. At the same time Austin doesn't have any really wide streets in downtown where you could do at-grade BRT or LRT. Any bus lanes would be contentious. A LRT tunnel would only have to be a few miles long and have a few stations to hit up everything worth serving, then lines going further out could be built more cheaply as at grade routes in the median of larger roads.
  11. zaphod
    To be fair, they really only just started. What's visible in the aerial images is the internal streets. So whatever happens there, even if its not like renderings, it will at least be kind of like some new town center area based on the way its laid out.
  12. zaphod
    It's always exciting when they start to go vertical after spending so much type on the foundations. Thanks for the photos,
  13. zaphod
    Any news on this? That old shopping center was kind of cool looking, I think its disappointing they tore it down to be honest. Unless it gets replaced with something better, of course. I'd hope for some density there like the apartments down the street at westheimer/rogerdale.
  14. zaphod
    Another thought too is that the west side is far from either airport. So for those trips to Dallas, going to this station would be closer for a lot of people.
  15. zaphod
    Seeing this makes me ponder the future of the I-10 ROW after they reroute it. There's going to be an overpass over it, and its already excavated to be below grade, so its going to be hard to develop, I think. It could be a park, but we have a lot of parks. I wonder what this area will look like in 25 years.
  16. zaphod
    Is HPE creating new jobs in the Houston area or are they relocating whatever's left of the old Compaq headquarters?
  17. zaphod
    Is this going to be a two story HEB with structured parking? If so I guess that would make 4 in the Houston area - Heights, Washington Ave, Meyerland, and now the UK.
  18. zaphod
    Google Maps/Earth has updated their imagery for this area to December 1st, 2019 and so the new streets and the first phase of apartments being built is now visible.
  19. zaphod
    Seeing this thread gave me a slight panic since I love Micro Center(I'm grateful they ended up moving). I didn't know there used to be one where the Amegy tower is. What used to be in the Micro Center on Rice? Or did they build it new?
  20. zaphod
    In my imagination, Uptown would be at its best if eventually the strip malls on the east side of Post Oak were replaced by a row of good-looking skyscrapers with upscale ground floor retail and little linear parks and plazas branching off of that. Imagine if there was a canyon affect, and how dramatic it would look facing north where the road curves. It would be nice if trends in architecture drifted away from the cold mirror glass back towards brick and stone on the lower floors. Uptown will never be Downtown, though. Downtown is #1, its raw and tough, Uptown is the fancy area. Nothing wrong with that distinction.
  21. zaphod
    To do that across the entire length would be extraordinarily expensive though, compared to every other single corridor proposed thus far. And this corridor isn't being shown as having many stations. And the alignment in the highway makes having transfer stations to other routes tough to say the least. Not saying it's undoable, but I can't imagine Metro deciding on such a radical upgrade on short notice with no fanfare. Especially when its part of a much larger project with a finite budget. I get the feeling, personally, that maybe they are going back to the drawing board and showing a mere representation of a corridor and not a true plan?
  22. zaphod
    Does anyone have any insight into what Metro actually wants to do with the Metro Rapid "West Houston Corridor" BRT? It went from being a BRT on Gessner to something that uses Beltway 8 with limited stops. Are they proposing some kind of HOV lane on the Beltway? Is there funding to tear up the highway and rebuild it? Or is just going to be a bus on the Beltway? Kind of a kooky idea, IMO.
  23. zaphod
    Those elevated bus lanes are on the scale of a heavy rail metro system. Crazy.
  24. zaphod
    What I see the in the rendering is a big stairway that will probably be value engineered out of existence, and a big interior courtyard with all the current trendy stuff like wood siding that will look goofy in 10 years. People ain't going up there with their dogs, not to visit the one super expensive creperie or designer purse store that goes out of business 6 months later. I've visited developments like this in person and they are usually really disappointing. Like Seaholm in Austin. There's nothing interesting there and it seemed like current tenants were struggling, and the whole time I was walking around people were staring at me like I was trespassing. Uptown Dallas has a lot of overbearing weird glassy towers hulking over dead streets with too much car traffic too. Compare the vibrancy of more traditionally urban streetscapes and there is no comparison.
  25. zaphod
    The design of this has grown on me. Is the beige and brown siding brick? I'm hoping it is.
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