mfastx

Walked by earlier today, they appear to be moving some dirt around already?

Not sure what you are trying to imply with this post, but how many times have the tunnels actually flooded?

I like the tunnels, but I'd rather have a network of skywalks instead. So there can be room for subway tunnels underneath. Not like that's actually going to happen, but oh well.

IIRC when the building first topped out they had an illuminated 'E' at the top. I wonder what happened to that.

Good news. Glad to hear that there's ground level retail involved with outdoor seating. Hopefully this should add even more pedestrian activity to Post Oak.

Thanks very much for the updates! Nice to see they are starting work on an elevated portion.

White. Haven't seen the blue lights in years.

I haev noticed that the Continental Airlines building lighting is back on this month, which is good.

This would be spectacular. But I would rather focus on building the Intermodal Terminal/light rail lines first.

Wow I absolutely LOVE the lighting. Very classy.

I agree, those two buildings have excellent lighting. It's too bad that many of our buidings downtown just aren't made for classy lighting. I do like the lighting of the windmills of Hess Tower.

So you think all downtown lighting is tacky?

Agreed. It's almost as if our downtown building owners are embarrassed of their building's architecture. And please don't give me that crap about how they can't afford it. Are you kidding me? An owner of a skyscraper in the 4th largest city in America can't afford to light up their own building in a classy manner?

Wow the view from the park is horrible. Hopefully they'll paint a mural or something.

I wonder if they'll actually light up some of those buildings for once.

Seattle has a nice downtown IMO. It's very similar to Houston's but it has more retail and less parking lots.

Agreed. Los Angeles is a great example. They have heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, BRT, and standard bus. They've always had a great bus system, but their investements have paid off, and they now have over 1.5 million daily riders.

No, they have commuter rail. Big difference.

You want proof that heavy rail works? All of the transit agencies in the US that have heavy rail have a higher daily ridership than METRO. See for yourself. In my original post, I stated the following: The pedestrian tunnels result in less sidewalk pedestrian activity, because people that would otherwise be on a street-level sidewalk are now underground.If we had a better transit system, more people would be on the sidewalks in general, not just in downtown.More retail options would attract more people to the sidewalk.Better signage/lighting would make people feel more comfortable on the sidewalk, especially after hours. These are very obvious things that I stated, I really don't see how anyone could disagree with this. What you are doing is taking quotes out of context and putting words in my mouth and completely misundersanding my entire post. If you actually read my original post in this thread, I never suggested that we demolish the tunnels, or that we change anything at all about downtown in general.

Exactly. In a city with lots of pedestrian activity, a good portion of those people are tourists. Hell, some of the people walking in downtown Houston have maps out trying to figure out where they are. For the locals, I still think that to get people to walk around, you have to let them know what's there.

My guess is that they removed the abandoned bridge before they knew they were going to build anything else there.

I think my best bet is to leave the funny hypothesis creating to you. That is all.

Hardee, har, har. OK so I see you have jokes... here's a funny guy!

I did not say that heavy rail alone would change the amount of pedestrian activity, but heavy rail in addition to the other things I suggested would make a difference. Also, I am not suggesting that the current P&R routes be converted to heavy rail, I am suggesting that there be heavy rail between downtown and the TMC, Galleria, and Greenway Plaza, while going through the inner loop residential neighborhoods. The currnet P&R routes are fine, though I would like to see commuter rail to Galveston and maybe up 290. Tens of billions? For a core heavy rail system, it would be tops 10 billion. It's not about "getting the same coverage as buses," it's about ridership. Ridership of heavy rail would be much higher than buses, for reasons that should be obvious. For commuter rail, however, ridership would only be slightly higher, as P&R buses do the job fairly well considering they have their own lane in the middle of the freeway. LA has high pedestrian activity in downtown, due to not having pedestrian tunnels, having retail, and having ads to attract people to the retail. LA also has high pedestrian areas outside of downtown, unlike Houston. LA isn't spending billions trying to get workers downtown, they're spending billions on the city as a whole. LA has about 1.5 million transit riders daily, while Houston has about 270,000. Again, I believe that transit is one part of having high volumes of foot traffic. Well sure there's plenty of foot traffic. But we are talking about why there aren't as many people on the sidewalk as there used to be. And you are strengthing my argument that there is foot traffic "not where I want it to be" (which means not on the sidewalk), because of the tunnels/skybridges. You are getting off into different tangents. Any realistic person would know that creating convenient pedestrian tunnels would take away from sidewalk traffic, and that's exactly what I said in my original post, no more, no less. Sure no one would want to just close the tunnels, but if people are told that there would be a subway built there instead, then maybe they will reconsider. Some people that drive to work every day would rather have a subway, so their commute would be cheaper. I'm sure the trade off of having to walk outside (gasp) would be worth it to them.

Have you ever been to Times Square? The last time I was in Times Square, many of the people there weren't on their way to a broadway show at all, they were just standing there, taking pictures of the giant TV screens, sitting in the lawn chairs that they had out. Hell, there was even a giant staircase-type thing that people were just sitting on. Times Square is alive 24 hours a day. If you argue that broadway shows and hotels are attracting all of those people, then why would there be hoards of people at 4 in the morning, there's no broadway shows at that hour, and most people in the hotels are asleep. Of course, you could make the argument that the urban clutter comes after the people are already there, but the sign ordinance making retailers remove their ads certainly didn't help the situation. Sorry I did not make myself clear. I was not implying that the tunnels 'drove people away from downtown.' What I was saying was that the downtown tunnels are taking away sidewalk pedestrians, those tunnels are crowded, and if they did not exist, those people would be walking on the street. Those tunnels are great, and super convenient, but why build tunnels for pedestrians when you can build them for trains? Woah there! I am not lamenting, I think you are misunderstanding me. I am just stating why I think there are not as many pedestrians downtown as in other cities. I realize that a good percentage of downtown workers commute by transit, but I think that percentage would be higher if we had a more reliable core system. Lots of people that commute by METRO use the P&R system, which is solid IMO. But what about on weekends? Foot traffic in downtowns is also caused by casual shoppers, or people going to an event. On weekends, the transit options that many people take are not available. During weekdays, there's a decent amount of foot traffic, but after work, downtown is dead. If we had a better core transit system, it would be more convenient for people that live inside the loop to quickly get downtown to activities. Do you really think that if we had an extensive heavy rail system, there wouldn't be more pedestrians downtown? The fact that almost 50% of commuters ride METRO means that the majority of downtown workers drive to their parking garage, walk in their tunnel/skybridge, and are never on the sidewalk. Look, it's fine with me if you're 100% satisfied with the current downtown situation, forgive me for suggesting ideas to increase foot traffic. I'm sorry if you disagree, but I would prefer our downtown area to be more vibrant with more pedestrians, that's just my personality, I like walking in an urban environment with lots of people, to me that's more pleasant and interesting than getting in my car to get to work. And since I love Houston and live here, why not suggest ideas to improve the situation from my point of view? Besides, the fact that almost 50% of downtown workers commute via METRO is irrevelant anyway, since we are talking about the after work night scene. The P&R options aren't available at that time. Never in my previous post did I mention the word train. But since you say so, yes, if we had a good rail system, more workers would use METRO, since rail just happens to be more reliable than buses. Sure, you can depend on a P&R bus to get you to work on time, but a local route? Those are often late. A core rail system adds reliability, speed, and capacity, therefore attracting more riders. But don't take it from me, go look at other transit system with core rail systems, and compare/contrast ridership with METRO.