Guest Plastic Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 Houston's in great need of more highways. Routes like The Northwest Tollway could help relieve traffic. While we're lucky to get new freeways we could get more capacity easily. Double decking is a style used in other citites. California utilizes it. We could put a double decker down I-10 and easily get 30 lanes.THis could also work when expanding The Westpark Tollway. It would go from 4 to 8 lanes without widening. It would work along 610 where they're trying to figure out where to put The HOT lanes for The West Loop. Infact any highways that's tun of space to grow horizontally could get larger vertically. Highways could be 1 deck out in the suburbs and double decker while they come through the city. We should think of ways to get traffic moving. It's better for emergency vehicles and when the whole town has an emergency(Like Rita). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desirous Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 Double-decking I-45 at downtown would help immensely; have the upper deck be a "through" section with no exits between North Main and Elgin, for example. Let's not talk about the Westpark Tollway - there is 50 feet more ROW right next to it; it's easier to simply secure that and expand. I'm not a big Westpark rail fan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ V Lawrence Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 Two things:One: Think about how long it would take to construct, and how many parts of freeway would be closed down for the building process for the next 10+ years. That would suck. But I think your idea is to lower traffic time, which is why...Two: I think instead, we should increase lanes on bottleneck areas if possible. Like HW-59N at the W.Alabama/ Mainstreet fork towards the MidTown Fiesta. Increase that lane by 2 maybe. Or the bottleneck-cause at the 59N/6-10 towards the Galleria, where there's one or two lanes, but traffic's ALWAYS backed up. Increase that by two as well if possible. Plus, during construction time, lanes don't have to be closed the whole time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desirous Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 Fixing I-45 is in my opinion still the important priority. US 59 northbound is backed up all the way from the I-45 interchange to Kirby in the evenings... now that's ridiculous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
new major on the block Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 The true logical conclusion to moving large amounts of people without traffic tie-downs would be high speed rail similar to what they have in china and other countries. Of coarse it most likely will never happen but I could visualize it in Houston. Imagine a Mag-lev train line that goes from huntsville to houston to galveston with stops say in conroe/woodlands area, near bush, near 610, downtown, near hobby, nasa, league city, texas city, and finally galveston. With other lines from katy to beaumont, cleveland to rosenberg, etc. There you are driving down the freeway at about 65mph when "wooosh", The mag-lev, maybe 5 to 10 train cars long passes you at 250 mph on an elevated track. It would definately cost an arm and a leg to build, and every energy executive, oil executive, and mostly republican politicians to side step around to get accomplished. The odds are that we will make contact with an intelligent alien species from another galaxy, make peace with the middle east, end hunger and AIDS, and Prairie View A&M becoming national champions in football before serious talks and actions about mass transit take place here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Plastic Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 They are supposed to be working on 59 around Main, it's supposed to be all depressed.On The Galleria interchange, I thought they were going to make The Westpark Tollway connect directly to 610. That would have made another way to get on The Loop. I don't thinkt hey will fix it since they alreayd finished The West Loop.What they need to do is make all freeways with tollways in the middle liek they'd planned. Thatwayw e'd have the mainlanes on bottom and The HOTlanes ontop. Since we could fit just as many HOTlanes uptop as there are on bottom we could take away some mainlanes.Then we could use those missing mainlanes for Commuter rail or Hi-speed rail. Like _10 is pretty wide outside BW*. Once it get's inside The HOTlabes could become elevated and The Metrotrain could fit under it as well as a HIspeed train. It could work all the way into Downtown.Don't know if rail riders would mind riding under a freeway but it wouldn't matter cause they can't see upwards anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houstonfella Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 I have always thought: America, the richest country in the world ??? and we don't have high speed trains between cities????? Sumpin' wrong here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Plastic Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 America isn't the most iintelletuall and technologically inclined country in the world.And technically we do, The Acela that runs between DC and New York. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ssullivan Posted October 11, 2006 Share Posted October 11, 2006 Yeah and Acela is nothing compared to the true high speed trains that are common in Europe and Asia. Due to technical limitations with the train sets, tracks, and overhead power catenary, Acela fails to live up to its full speed potential. It also only links four major cities that are relatively close to each other. Just because the US is rich doesn't mean we're smart. In many ways we're very spoiled and have fallen into a condition of being comfortably ignorant of the rest of the world. The average American will probably tell you that we have the best of everything, but has no real experience of life in other countries to back that up. While we do have the best of many things, our transportation infrastructure often is very lacking when compared to the options that are available in other nations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houston19514 Posted October 11, 2006 Share Posted October 11, 2006 Yeah and Acela is nothing compared to the true high speed trains that are common in Europe and Asia. Due to technical limitations with the train sets, tracks, and overhead power catenary, Acela fails to live up to its full speed potential. It also only links four major cities that are relatively close to each other. Just because the US is rich doesn't mean we're smart. In many ways we're very spoiled and have fallen into a condition of being comfortably ignorant of the rest of the world. The average American will probably tell you that we have the best of everything, but has no real experience of life in other countries to back that up. While we do have the best of many things, our transportation infrastructure often is very lacking when compared to the options that are available in other nations.The cities linked by high-speed rail in Europe and elsewhere are also relatively close to each other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Montrose1100 Posted October 12, 2006 Share Posted October 12, 2006 The cities linked by high-speed rail in Europe and elsewhere are also relatively close to each other.true dat.Not to mention some major rebuilding after a certain war or 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Plastic Posted October 12, 2006 Share Posted October 12, 2006 The eastern citites are close to eachother.Everybody knows America is 2nd rate in The 1st world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houston19514 Posted October 12, 2006 Share Posted October 12, 2006 The eastern citites are close to eachother.Everybody knows America is 2nd rate in The 1st world.Yes, and the eastern cities have good rail service and good air connections. What's the problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Plastic Posted October 12, 2006 Share Posted October 12, 2006 Ge was saying that The European Cities were close to each other. I was just pointing out the some american citites are close to eachother too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 I would love to see true high speed rail come to the US. It would do so much for our economy and all but I also see a ton of problems mainly from the railroads themselves. They do not want to give up their strangle hold on the rail lines across America. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNiche Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 I would love to see true high speed rail come to the US. It would do so much for our economy and all but I also see a ton of problems mainly from the railroads themselves. They do not want to give up their strangle hold on the rail lines across America.Amtrack is losing money as it is. They really don't have the financial power to wage some sort of political backlash against the idea. And UP, CSX, and BNSF would for the most part be amenable to the idea of having more track capacity to work with once Amtrack was gone. But a truely effective high-speed rail system would face more of a backlash from airlines than from railroads...and they do have financial power. They'd probably have to be paid off in some form. Either that, or there would have to be some kind of public/private partnership so that they'd keep a stake in the new rail system.Take a glance at my idea and tell me what you think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pumapayam Posted October 16, 2006 Share Posted October 16, 2006 Take a glance at my idea and tell me what you think.I am all for it, especially if you have convieniant times to depart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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