IronTiger

Well, apart from avoiding the question posed to you, "zero resistance" isn't always a good thing. We would have a freeway running straight through Harrisburg if there was "zero resistance". Of course, that's for a freeway, and we all know how freeways are always bad and light rail is always good. As for the 2003 referendum, do you honestly not know (it's okay if you don't) or are you trying to distort information? Or both?

Well, I read up on this hotel on Arch-ive, and it certainly seemed like a nice place, at least in the beginning. A bit utilitarian, but it was a Holiday Inn, and who didn't like one of those? Did business never go well, or did it start at a specific point? I seem to remember reading that it was just too far away/wrong location to really take advantage of people staying in downtown Houston.

Gosh, after seeing the inside of Hattie Mae (the Brutalist building mentioned earlier, demo'd 2006, so there was no way I possibly saw it) I thought it looked a bit like Langford on the inside too (sorta--that I've actually seen), though not without reminders of Kleberg and Zachry.

The big highway with "too many lanes" west of 610 is the one I'm referring to and the one that's often cited. You're trying to change the goalposts to try to make your point, which isn't working. Point is, "induced demand" just takes two pieces of evidence and attempts to make it truth without taking into other variables. I've also found that the main people who use the "induced demand" argument happen to be fans of mass transit.

Actually it started to wrap up just as the recession started. It's laughable that you'll go out of your way to try to discredit freeways as being worthless.

The "induced demand" theory is hardly groundbreaking, and follows that as new roads are built, development comes to it, and the net result is nothing. Except a few bypasses don't actually get that type of development until years down the road, which would still "prove" the theory. Problem is, the "lurking variable" in all this is population. Houston has a lot of roads. Houston has a lot of traffic. But it also has a lot of people. Are people drawn by the roads? Maybe, maybe not. They're drawn because the city as an economy. The Katy Freeway is a popular example on why the induced demand theory works, but the Katy Freeway is proof that it doesn't work. The Katy Freeway was built in the 1960s on an existing highway. Over the years, as the city of Houston grew along that corridor, traffic worsened, even though it hadn't added any lanes (save for a reversible HOV). Detroit is another example, having given its roads roomy widenings back in better times. Those roads, of course, are not congested, because the population shrank. Nearly every city that has expanded its highway system in the last 30 years has gained population, a very vital thing that these researchers seem to be forgetting. "But why do people drive farther?" you may ask. Typically, cities with good economies draw people from a wide radius. Many people drive 1-2 hours each way just to work in Houston, because it has a good economy. It has jobs. To blame the long driving on highway width is absolutely ridiculous. There are limits to how wide freeways can get, of course, and mass transit gets more efficient with density, and there are freeways that could probably be removed that don't actually affect the traffic flow. But it is wrong to foster a belief that highway width "causes" traffic or that you could hack out any freeway you choose with little consequences, because traffic just doesn't work that way.

And that's the other problem...despite the "anti-rail" people, METRO isn't too good itself, and the general incompetency of the agency gives fuel for those not wanting to put more money into it. There it runs up the same problem of school funding...put too little into it and everyone suffers (METRO without money will be completely worthless), put too much in and it gets eaten up by bureaucrats.

I contend that because the data is inherently flawed, any "suggestions" (like congestion pricing) made are not as important as they characterize them to be (that's not to say that congestion pricing is worthless). The media loves stories like this because they can generalize and get viewers, even if the science was not fatally flawed to begin with. And that's the joy of statistics, that with the right cherry-picked variables you can practically make up whatever you want, and if there's not what you want, you can play around with the amorphous "linked with" to make up your own conclusions. Light rail is linked with higher density. Higher density is linked with higher crime. Therefore, light rail is linked with higher crime! (P.S.: I know there's all sorts of things wrong with "light rail is linked with higher crime", but keep in mind that was for example purposes only and not an invitation to bombard me on how wrong I am)

It's not bribery, it's based on population and density but with some guesswork thrown in to essentially gamble for funds. What is the margin of error for these numbers, anyway?

Me too. It saddens me that supposedly-educated researchers choose to ignore confounding variables to promote a pro-transit agenda.

My point is, I'm not pro-Culberson but am a bit suspicious of METRO's studies and what it says as truth. A lot of studies commissioned by organizations with a result they want is often geared to tell them what they want to hear (this isn't just METRO, it's many others too), and I'm not even sure of how they get ridership numbers, but I'm sure thee's a lot of guesswork and assumptions. A theory that I offered earlier is that ridership is a numbers game. Lowball it and you won't get funding, go too high and if it fails to make that mark, you'll have a hard time getting funding again, so the trick is to go high but low enough so that if it exceeds that, the line will be a "huge success" and chances of funds are easier next time around.

See, here's what I don't get. One hand, we have this: But on the other hand, we also have the "a Westpark corridor will have abysmal ridership" study. If Metro is telling the truth on the first one, then the second one is probably truth as well, and then building the University Line isn't more than a few years away--the Richmond part of the rail could be built with local funds and everything else takes the rest of federal funding (well, at least some of it). Culberson's efforts will be thwarted and everything still plays out legally. But if METRO is wrong about their "potential" funds, then "potential" ridership is probably also faulty numbers and the Westpark/Richmond corridor ridership numbers are much closer together than one thinks they are. Does anyone else see the problem here?

With the exception of that little strip between US-59 and the homes (east of Hazard, west of downtown), the railroad ROW seems like it WOULD be the cheaper option, and wouldn't require cutting up streets, limiting turns, or whatever. Unless the railroad ROW was super-expensive to acquire. Even then, it would balance out after all the work you to do to Richmond.

I was referring to Slick's accusation that Republicans were racist, not anything you said.

Well, "Washington Heights" I thought was the name of the Walmart center, which is near Heights Blvd. and Washington Avenue. So that one doesn't count.

Man, I don't know if it's because of the shadows or whatever, but it looks genuinely intimidating and rather unloveable. Of course, that's no reason to tear it down (and the "rather unloveable" label can be applied to scads of new townhomes and larger apartments built around Houston in the last 5-10 years)

Looking into the "Colonel Sanders Inn", it seems to be a failed diversification that KFC did back in the 1970s, with at least one other known location (Louisville, their headquarters). I would be disappointed if the hotel restaurant didn't serve up the flagship fried chicken.

Well, Ted Cruz got elected to being a Senator, and he's Latino. Or does that not "count" since he's a Republican? Or what about Bobby Jindal? Or does he not count since it's Louisiana?

I don't think that's Eureka, I think it's Kansas, you can see the telegraph poles in the background from this shot (the 1980s one, wherein the railroad crossing is on the other side). Eureka's crossing appears to be just a spur. What is the crossing seen in the last few seconds of the video linked? If I had to take a guess it'd be Silber Road, but there would have been remains of the steel mill there (unless I just saw that) My fascination with MKT in Houston began back in 2008 when I was playing around with Google Earth looking at the Memorial City Mall (which I had just been to) and realizing that "wow, there was a railroad paralleling Interstate 10!" which led to me looking into it.

It looks like he's just mowing the little strip of ROW between the curb and the road signs, which (presumably) TxDOT holds. However, someone has painted over some graffiti near the entrance.

IIRC, Culberson wanted federal funding for the Richmond corridor to become illegal. That's an effort to stop Richmond from being used as a rail corridor, but if what METRO says is correct, that they could've raised the funds themselves had it not be for the recession (cutting sales tax income of which METRO uses), then they could build it (with local funding) whether Culberson liked it or not.

So was the Houston Ave. crossing something more like this? I can't find the YouTube video you mentioned...the only "Katy in Houston" videos I could find are heading west out of town on Interstate 10 near Park 10 (which looks completely different due to development of the Energy Corridor, not to mention the Katy Freeway redevelopment)

Magic Island's building is probably unusable at this point without major renovations: it was closed in 2008 after Hurricane Ike and any dates for planned reopenings have long since come and gone. One of the things I've wondered about is if Magic Island wasn't doing particularly well before Ike and the owner just took the insurance money and ran (I believe there was a small fire inside as well?) I don't know what hotel you refer to either. Of course, while 2008 holds as the year I really got to know and love Houston, it does get farther and farther away every year now, and Ike starts to become a distant memory. Time marches on.

Did they account for population as well, or is this just one of those "bend statistics the way we want to" kind of things?

Guys. The Swamplot comment of the day was just someone fantasizing about the future of The Galleria. Nothing is actually planned for that.