mfastx

That looks amazing. 

Almost reminds me of like a poor man's Quincy Market type thing in Boston. 

So they literally say that the "last mile" would generate more ridership but at the same time they rate the downtown Houston location lower than the 290 station.  However, they rate the downtown Dallas station the highest possible rating for ridership, which is strange.  They say the ridership studies are "ongoing" which basically means they're not done yet, so I'd like to see how they arrived at that conclusion.  

But really this doesn't matter, going downtown is too expensive and I don't think they ever seriously considered it.  This is just a formality. 

That's a very old proposal.. Pretty sure all "tunnel" options were thrown out in favor of trench/cut and cover

Yea.. sorry I wasn't reading enough in this thread.  If the choice is to create a park out of it or just simply demolish it then I'd say demo it. 

With a cut and cover, you can really only put a park or some sort of public space on the surface though, which would be fine too. 

So there will be a tunnel under pierce?

I was under the impression that one of the proposals was tearing down the Pierce and tunneling 45 along the same alignment.  

Huh??

Who said anything about building buildings on top of the pierce elevated? I'm talkin bout tearing it down to reveal the remainder of the surface lots that have been hidden under there forever and using them as real estate again.

If we straight up tear it down fine, I was assuming that it would be tunneled roughly where it is now.  It would be very difficult to construct buildings over a tunneled freeway. 

If we just tear it down and don't construct an underground highway in it's place, then yea I guess, although they would likely remain surface for the next 25-50 years at least. 

I dont get why everyone here says it should be turned into a park or greenspace.

Why?

Why not tear down the elevated and turn the real estate into what it was originally......REAL ESTATE.

I thought the whole point was to break down the "barrier" that divides downtown and midtown. If you keep the elevated and make it a green space, the barrier still stands.

Turn them back into city blocks and let more skyscrapers, condos, apartments etc be built on top of them just like the old days, we increase our block count, our building count, our density and most importantly the barrier comes down and Downtown/midtown become seamless....

Well you can't have buildings on top of it unless it is super deep and built to support structures. 

In Boston the park isn't a barrier at all, it depends on how it's done. 

Can't believe it's gonna beat Astoria, lol. 

To play devil's advocate, while downtown is not directly under the "normal" pattern for HOU, I do recall being on a flight that came in really late and flew literally right over downtown.  And the buildings were quite close to my recollection. 

That being said, I agree that there shouldn't be a height limit/restrictions at all downtown, it is hardly necessary to go over downtown to get to HOU. 

Those shots look like they could easily be in St. Louis or Philly or something.  If you replaced the concrete street with asphalt that is. 

You know when I joined this forum? 2007. During that time, there were proposals coming left and right. Titan... River Oaks District was massive with several highrises... Blvd place had several highrises...Turnberry Tower and there was a flood of other projects. Guess what happened? The financial crisis the next year. Projects either got cancelled or were indefinitely on hold. Just several years later and all of these projects materialized in some shape or form. Hell, even more projects beyond imagination appeared come late 2012 and 2013 and early 2014. I tend to post negative articles for the past year now about the Houston real estate market... but I'm a firm believer that we'll have another boom several years from now where we can be excited and see new proposals coming at us every week at the rate we saw during the last boom. This boom has brought us one step closer to becoming a truly urban place... I feel like it's improved the fundamentals of this city... actually seeing growth in downtown and the immediate area... parks completely revitalizing areas... Once overlooked areas becoming hot spots for activity.

 

 

 

Patience.... that's the biggest thing we'll need for right now.

Haha, yeah, those were the days.  Remember that Deyaar(sp?) Post Oak proposal?  Like an 80 story tower right on Richmond/Post Oak?  

Man if only that thing went up, lol. 

It will happen, just not for another 100 years or so. 

THIS would be a game changer for this area.  Whoa. 

Good idea, I'd rather have the main TCR thread about project updates and discussion on the project as a whole. 

Advantage to downtown site: 

-Connection with METRORail (and thus access to downtown, museum district, UH, TMC and Reliant quickly without a car)

-More centrally located, closer to Downtown, TMC, Greenway, major universities, both airports, museum area, etc. 

-Closer/better access to more freeways and also the potential for a development that would incorporate Amtrak and Greyhound terminals (unlikely but nice to have the option in the future)

Advantage to 290 location: 

-Closer to uptown, energy corridor, western suburbs

-POTENTIAL connection to BRT system up Post Oak (not sure if it will go all the way to NW Mall)

-SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper, which is really why TCR is considering this site in the first place

That's not going to happen either, as there's no good way to get light rail out there. There aren't many streets wide enough for light rail between Downtown and Northwest Mall. So, buses it is.

I agree that that isn't going to happen, but you can get light rail wherever you want it, it is not restricted to being at-grade in the middle of a street. 

Honestly I think it's an improvement, I like the more modern look.  

Although saying "it's an improvement" isn't saying a lot. 

When did they say that? I don't remember seeing anything specific about the downtowns.

On TCR's website in the "Learn the Facts" section there is question saying "where will the stations be" and it says that the stations will be "convenient" to downtown Dallas and Houston.  I guess depending on how you word that you could say that they are saying "downtown Dallas" and "Houston" by itself. 

BUT, they do make a point to mention that it will be convenient to Houston's METRO system, which the NW Mall site certainly will not accomplish. 

It's pretty clear a downtown site is superior to the NW mall site by every metric outside of cost.  

The only reason we are even discussing this is because TCR proposed NW Mall because it'd be a lot cheaper.  Downtown is a lot more central and more accessible. 

Part of the advantage of HSR is that it gets you to the center, closer to your destination.  A station near 290 accomplishes this decently, but downtown is much closer to the center of the population in Houston.  

If the station is on 290, many people will still opt for flying to Hobby as the drive from there to downtown is comparable. A downtown station would also be closer to Greenway and TMC.  610 West is one of our most congested freeways.  While a 290 station would be closest to Uptown, it would require the majority of people to take 610/I10 to their final destination, further congesting an already congested area. 

A station connecting to the light rail system allows a traveler to not need a car if their destination is on a rail line, a huge benefit. 

That's my dream! For our downtown to really grow into something that competes with the big boys it needs to grow outward, with more skyscrapers north of Chase tower and south of the Pierce elevated.

Once the Pierce is torn down, we could effectively DOUBLE the size of our downtown if you start building skyward in midtown. It's all the same street grid pattern!!

I'd like to see the east side get filled in first but yea pretty much agree with this. 

Plenty of business travelers use transit when it is available and widespread.  The idea to connect it to the transit system comes from thinking about the future.  As the transit system expands over the next few decades people would look back and say what a mistake it was to not put the HSR station near transit. 

Awesome pic.  Love the light rail going through that garage.  The apartments look great. 

There's no place downtown for a station, and no reasonable way to get there if there were a station location.

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. 

I recall during a TRC meeting they expected a good bulk of their ridership to have destinations in the Galleria and Energy Corridor. A terminus at NW Mall would provide more flexibility to transfer riders to any of the 3 most likely destinations.

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. 

Northwest Mall is looking good as a terminus...

If you wanna go cheap, yeah. 

If they have the money they will go downtown, might as well connect to another employment center. 

I'm actually going to test the the new network whenever possible. I'm even going the extreme route and parking my car at a park n ride and taking the bus all the way to work into town! If I need to get anywhere in town? Using the bus. Should be an interesting experiment!

Good luck!  Keep us updated.