Houston19514

Yes, the ramblings of long-ago office-holders, who earned 20% of the vote in their last attempt at elective office, are always meaningful.

There is probably a reason Kathy Whitmire got 20% and finished in third place when she ran for reelection in 1991. ;-) $5.2 BILLION for a 20-mile line. Broke ground in February 2011. First segment scheduled to open in 2015. The full 20-mile line is not scheduled to be completed until 2019. It remains to be seen whether this project will in any sense be a better rail system than Houston's.

Great post. Agree with almost everything in it. BUT, if light rail doesn't take cars off the road in any significant amount, how will it ever be able to reduce the demand for parking garages/lots in downtown or TMC in any significant amount?

I went to the public hearing last night. I left after about 1/2 hour because it was just a stream of United employees parotting the lies and nonsense pumped out by their management. Felt sorry for the city council members who had to continue to sit through that nonsense for another 1 1/2 hours. There was one slightly amusing moment. The first speaker was a 20-year United pilot. When they cut him off at the end of his 2 minute allotted time, he stood there and glared at them as if to demand they allow him to finish his pointless rant. They didn't. Pilots aren't used to being told no. ;-)

Perhaps they can also just have one fire marshall for the whole lot full of food trucks.

There are renderings earlier in this thread.

Technically, we are at 25. The Fortune 500 is a snapshot of a moment in time. Of course there will be changes between now and next year. Those will be reflected in the 2013 report. FWIW, ConocoPhillips and Phillips66 will certainly both be Fortune 500 companies next year. Continental is not on the 2012 list. They were already gone.

Oh yeah. That sounds right, now that you say that. Going back and looking at construction pics, it looks like it is relatively little. Maybe 10 feet?

I don't recall the playing surface being sunk. Is it?

Continuing the thought I started above. I was surprised and impressed that Houston has 14 Fortune 500 headquarters downtown. This made me curious about how we compared to other cities. Other than the obvious Manhattan, nobody else is even close. Fortune 500 Headquarters Downtown: Manhattan 41 downtown 7 midtown 34 Houston 14 San Fran 7 Chicago 6 Minneapolis 5 Atlanta 3 Seattle 3 Dallas 3 LA 2 Boston 2 St. Louis 2 Denver 1

Yes. and the same for Shell

2012 Fortune 500 list is out: Houston Metro area moved up from 23 HQs in 2011 to 25 HQs in 2012. Houston city moved up from 22 to 23. Downtown Houston moved up from 13 to 14. (That is surely the 2nd largest concentration of HQs, after Manhattan.) No doubt we are still the No. 2 city, after NYC, FWIW. More important, Chicago metro stayed at 28 HQs, so we are still the no. 3 metro for Fortune 500 companies, after NYC and Chicago.

Of course Citykid thinks it will. Reality, of course, is another matter. ;-) And, when TOD means suburban-style apartment complexes (in the suburbs), that are TOD only because they are within a block of a rail stop (and may include some park & ride parking) ... who really cares?

Glad to see some kind of progress.

I know it's off-topic, but we were discussing the Fortune 500 list here, so I thought I would post the 2012 results that are out today. Houston Metro area moved up from 23 in 2011 to 25 in 2012. Houston city moved up from 22 to 23. Downtown Houston moved up from 13 to 14. Chicago metro stayed at 28, so we are still the no. 3 metro for Fortune 500 companies.

It's a baren expanse of colored concrete. There is nothing inviting about it. Nothing there to encourage people to linger.

Cool new James Turrell art installation at Rice University, named "Skyspace"

There are a lot of cool shots of Houston in the movie "Tree of Life"

Actually, those tunnels are pretty clearly marked. The routes of the tunnels are marked by dashed lines and they are also marked with Nos. 18 and 19. (inbound and Outbound tunnels, respectively.) As to whether the tunnels will ever actually happen: Designs such as these are and should be aspirational. IF the plan is put into action, reality will of course have to be taken into account. Maybe the tunnels can happen... maybe not. Maybe throwing the I-10 traffic onto Travis/Milam along with I-45 traffic is a practical solution, maybe not. This is great conceptual plan. I hope someone will take it and try to make as much of it as possible come to reality.

The postal serviceut that building on the market several years ago. Whether it is still officially listed as "for sale" or not, I am sure they are open to offers.

Good to see this. I've walked by there a couple times just recently and thought about what a design failure the recent remake was.

I really like their plan. I think the right team won. It would be awesome if Hines was working to make this happen!

After a quick 5 minutes of perusing the document, a couple of initial thoughts. 1. With regard to connecting traffic (such as traffic between Baltimore and Mexico City they discuss in an example on P. 15. United needs to realize, they will have that competition with Southwest no matter what happens with the HOU decision. Therefore, it is essentially irrelevant to the decision. Face it, United, Southwest is going to service these Latin American markets. If they don't service them from HOU, they will service them from ATL, AUS, Orlando, who knows? But passengers from Baltimore and everywhere else on Southwest's system will be able to fly Southwest to the new Latin American destinations. It will not matter to them whether the connection is through ATL or HOU. That competition will have almost exactly the same effect on United's connecting traffic development through IAH whether the Southwest flights are connecting in HOU or in ATL or in AUS. Hey, United! We deregulated airlines in 1978! Time to get used to it. 2. On page 1 they proudly proclaim that "Since the 2010 merger with Continental, United has added 12 new nonstop routes from IAH, more than it has added from any other hub and the same number it has added at Newark Liberty (EWR), Denver International Airport (DEN) and Chicago O’Hare (ORD) combined. Then on page 10 (Exhibit 6) they have a chart that shows that, yes, they added 12 new non-stop routes at IAH. And it shows they added 8 new nonstop routes at EWR, 5 at DEN, and 3 at ORD. Hmmm... where I learned math, that adds up to 16. So . . . at the new United, 12 = 16! Kinda makes their snearing attitude towards the HAS study statistics a little hard to take. The vast bulk of their study is about how they cannot afford to have to compete with Southwest on these flights to Latin America. It has nothing to do with opening up HOU for international service. Their arguments regarding the degradation of their network would apply just as strongly if Southwest was proposing to move their entire operation to IAH and start international service from there. (I know it is not possible. But I would LOVE to see Southwest call United's bluff and announce a wholesale move to IAH and ask for a new FIS at Terminal A to accommodate international arrivals. Just imagine the high comedy of watching United come up with new arguments!) And fwiw, I am not even a fan of Southwest. I prefer to avoid them. I have been a Platinum OnePass card holder with Continental for years and am now whatever United calls the comparable level. I just prefer to let markets, and not governments, choose winners and losers.

If so, they still misrepresented it. If it is just a randomly selected handful of cities, it should not be labeled "top ten"

Back here on planet earth, in the year 2012, the 2012 Fortune 500 list should be coming out any day now. Should be interesting as always.