Documentary of Houston in the 80's

[kennyc05]

I found this documentary about Houston in the 80's from Kprc 2 it's pretty interesting.

https://youtu.be/o0oW3kBOSSg

[IronTiger]

Honestly, one of the things that's most surprising is it feels so relevant to today. Building and rebuilding (homes AND freeways), suspicion of police, the ultimate costs of sprawl, poverty in the shadow of gleaming skyscrapers, though one thing that it got very wrong was Whitmire's legacy. She would come in third place behind Lanier and Turner, and Lanier ultimately became the more memorable politician.

 

Also, for those interested, it does show the proposed "monorail" route at 26:16, which shows it starting at roughly at the southern terminus of the Hardy Toll Road, paralleling 59 (probably the modern-day Red Line), then splitting off to run on what appears to be the modern-day Westpark railroad right of way (which was an active railroad at the time).

Edited February 20, 2016 by IronTiger

[Purpledevil]

Lol, I wouldn't say the old Kenedy line was very "active", but at least it was used enough to keep the rail rust to a minimum. It was only a matter of time that it went away, after the UP/SP merger, but I always had a soft spot for the Kenedy seeing as how it still possessed the old Griswold manufactured signals in many places, and just seemed stuck in the past, even up to the late 90s when the line was removed. You know, there's a picture of the Kenedy just west of 59, that shows how little SP updated the line. When the transit center was built, the City abandoned a road right in front of it that used to dump out on Westpark. Road was completely removed, and so was the grade crossing, but the two crossbuck signals remained and still worked all the way up to the abandonment of the line...sans the arms and a couple of burned out bulbs.