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mfastx

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Everything posted by mfastx

  1. mfastx
    Burnett Plaza would be a decent location, direct connection to METRORail downtown is a plus, and you have some space for redevelopment and building parking facilities and such. Since downtown is the largest employment center in the urban area, it's a good idea to make it as accessible as possible for intercity infrastructure. Ideally you'd have two stops: 1 in/near downtown and 1 in/near uptown. Works really well, see Boston's setup with Union Station and Back Bay. The 290 area spot would be a lot better if there was a high capacity transit connection, but that probably won't happen anytime soon. The line would get more ridership if there were good connections at it's destinations to get people where they want to go easily. Otherwise, why not just fly? The advantages of HSR are downtown to downtown service with easy connections to public transit.
  2. mfastx
    If you wanna go cheap, yeah. If they have the money they will go downtown, might as well connect to another employment center.
  3. mfastx
    So what you're saying is that it's not in a great location...
  4. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    I agree with this, downtown has the best infrastructure in the inner loop for sure. I was mostly talking about the Montrose, Midtown and other inner loop areas. Also I thought that most of those downtown streets were redone in the late 90s/early 00s as opposed to early 90s. And what you described as "poorly built streets" is a pretty accurate description of many streets in the inner loop. And I agree that in the 80s Houston wasn't ready for transit. One could even argue that even now it is not as required as it is in other cities. But it's a shame that the proposal in the 80s didn't go through for a number of reasons: 1) the amount of federal dollars available for transit construction was much higher than it is now or will probably be at any point in the future, cities like Atlanta, Miami, DC and SF all took advantage of the availability of these monies - unfortunately we did not and 2) heavy rail was proposed which carries many more people than light rail and is generally more cost effective in terms of operating cost per rider than light rail and buses.
  5. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    I was talking about from a public transit perspective. We would have been more advanced and had more ridership by this point if the late 80's light rail plan had been built. But that pales in comparison to the early 80s heavy rail plan which would have been better than anything proposed since. EDIT: Oh yea and Houston has the worst roads of any city I've ever been to, they just put that money towards cheaply patching roads, the did a shitty job. So roads are not any better at this point.
  6. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    Lanier probably set Houston back a couple decades, but most people went along with it and were none the wiser. People generally don't start seeing the importance of public transit until it's too late and traffic is utter shit around the entire city (an example is LA, they were already at 14,000,000 people in the area by the time their first rail line opened). It takes a hell of a campaign and cooperation to get rail going before it's required (Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas). Houston is trying but still too many politicians not on the same page and not enough of a majority to do something about it with voting.
  7. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    I mean seriously you can't expect random METRO cops to really know why we didn't build underground. It'd be insanely expensive to build underground here, but it's possible. In the 80s the heavy rail plan included a subway in downtown and parts of Uptown. Politics got in the way though and we had to build the original line with local funds, didn't have enough money to build underground.
  8. mfastx
    They used it for testing IIRC when they built the original line. I'd imagine it's been little used since.
  9. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    Yea these lines will probably get decent ridership, it took years for the original Red Line to get the ridership it does now. Give it five or ten years then look back.
  10. mfastx
    Gosh that tower would have been the perfect downtown centerpiece... get a little sad everytime I see that old rendering lol.
  11. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    I'd honestly prefer the tracks to not be embedded in concrete, but rather just standard ballast and ties. That way, no one would drive on the tracks. (Obviously in downtown it'd still have to be embedded in concrete.)
  12. mfastx
    Trust me, this is just the beginning lol. Unfortunately there will always be plenty of powerful folk against projects like this. Good luck to the developers, they'll need it.
  13. mfastx
    I'd like to see direct sunlight on the glass before I pass final judgement. Looks like a gloomy day with lots of shade around.
  14. mfastx
    Haha, hilarious going from that NYC pic of a massive metropolis and an unbelievable cluster of buildings to the next page with the sea of parking lots that was (still is, although less so) Houston. We've made great progress, but still have a long way to go.
  15. mfastx
    Idk how you expect METRO to deal with the general mobility payments thing. Those are absolutely essential dollars and no other major city in this country has anything like general mobility payments. METRO has proposed numerous comprehensive transit plans over the decades, METRO was extremely well run back in the 1980s with Alan Kiepper at the helm. Of course when he tried to complete the system with a state of the art heavy rail system classic Houston politics/uninformed voters got in the way. When many powerful politicians are against you and you are starved of funding, it's very difficult to be successful.
  16. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    "A landmark to the city...." Idk about that but alright lol.
  17. mfastx
    On second looks, not a huge fan of how far setback the building is and how suburban it looks. I guess you can't expect much when it's adjacent to a frontage road.
  18. mfastx
    Interesting. I like the top. Not the typical Houston flat roof.
  19. mfastx
    Haha, that's great Luminare. Still boggles my mind that there's an existing freight ROW and the NIMBYs are worrying about much quieter less disruptive trains.
  20. mfastx
    I just feel like it makes the most sense to place the station downtown, it is the largest employment center, a good portion of these travelers will be business.
  21. mfastx
    Great post Luminare. I think most people with knowledge of transportation planning would agree that the optimal location for a HSR station without taking into account cost would be downtown, and a station near Uptown (the proposed 290 area station would do fine) would be even better to go along with the downtown location. A perfect example of this type of layout is Boston, with the downtown South Station location in addition to the "Back Bay" station down the road. Anytime you can hit multiple large employment centers you do it. Remember, the only reason they are looking at this location is because of cost, it's central enough to get enough people to ride it, and it's in an area where land is cheaper and they can build a station more easily. They are trying to make money with this project and going all the way to downtown would be a huge capital expense initially. Hopefully they can make it work. Hitting both downtown and uptown is perfect, especially if they ever get that light rail/BRT thing going from the 290 area to Uptown, that'd be a perfect high capacity transit mode that can take people from the HSR station to points Uptown, and of course you have the light rail which can do the same downtown. There is already an existing freight rail line going from this location to downtown, so I'm not really seeing the neighborhood concerns argument. The proposed route doesn't even go through that highly populated of an area.
  22. mfastx
    It's a shame the politics are the way they are down here. Building this on a condition that it will never be upgraded to rail is like building a two lane highway with the condition that there will never be any more lanes added ever. Just asinine and short-sighted. Not surprising at all though and Houston has a long history of dirty politics getting in the way of large scale public transportation projects, especially rail. And it will continue to happen like this, Culberson will remain in office until he decides to step down, and someone will take his place with similar ideology. The only way Houston can improve it's transportation infrastructure is if METRO and the City of Houston get on the same page and we have a mayor who makes it a priority. That is how LA did it, and it's the only way Houston will do it. Hopefully it happens within my lifetime.
  23. mfastx
    Honestly it's not bad looking at all, just compared to the prior render it sucks. Just a standard Houston highrise.
  24. mfastx
    Great news if true.
  25. mfastx
    I'm not talking about total buildings, we just have a different style in Houston, it's not bad particularly, but it's a shame that this development was going to go against that style and now is just conforming to the norm.
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