IronTiger

From the Houston Today book, comes another architectural masterpiece that is sadly last to time, as it no longer seems to exist. Anyone have more information on this? It certainly looks pretty cool...

Looking out the windows of the light rail, Midtown still seems to be run-down as ever (was it worse? I believe it). The Sears there is a great analogy for the company: a mainstay for decades, still open, and probably has some potential in theory, but run-down, poorly maintained, unsound condition, and some disastrous changes made to it.

I've found the "real time" maps (airplanes, university bus) to be still pretty unreliable, with always a significant delay: not always BIG, but enough that you could miss it.

Maybe I'm using a different version, but I have Street View on the old Foley's building, and I don't see it. When the first Street View images came out, you could actually still see the F O L E Y ' S name (cast iron letters, IIRC?) on the building. I do see that they updated the aerial imagery as well to this year, but for reasons I'm not entirely sure of myself, I prefer the one they had a few months ago, partially because it was more complete, and maybe the new one looks a bit too washed out.

I'm pretty sure that they were already gone by the early 1990s at the latest. Are you talking about the dirt mound at 59 and Westpark? That used to be, from what I read, a huge number of things, with the last thing being Houston Garden Centers (a waterslide, an amphitheater, a ski slope were among the many uses)

It's not so much wholly against it, some people are commenting on KBTX's shoddy reporting, complaining why when Bryan gets something good, it's "Bryan-College Station" and College Station getting something is "College Station" (which isn't always true, Atlas sits on the border), and people who resist the "Houstonization" of the area. The last part isn't a wholly invalid complaint, some folks like the smaller/mid town atmosphere, but let's face it--as long as Houston keeps growing, it's going to be pulled into Houston's orbit, so to speak--Austin has gained enormous influence over the Interstate 35 corridor, and these trends are going to continue long before sprawl takes over.

Yeah, tell me about it. In 2002, I was still mourning the loss of Pokemasters.com (which, of all the Pokémon fansites from the good old days is still around, though the format and content are long gone--the forums, on a .net server, survived and created a new site years later), and my first forum, circa 2005, involved me as some sort of crazy Nintendo fanboy. This was soon adjoined by a SimCity 4 fan craze...in fact, inspired by the cool names of SC4 building artists of the time, I wanted to create a new identity, starting on this one Houston forum I decided to join (and it would be the name if I became some sort of SC4 master). Needless to say, it didn't work out all that well, and I never used that name again except on that one site...

I'm speaking of MBTA commuter rail-type trains. The Northwest corridor is one of the few (and maybe The Woodlands/I-45) places where we don't need extensive new infrastructure for commuter rails.

No one "made" it ugly. Some of it was a bit undermaintained, but for every "ugly" place in Houston, I can counter with an "ugly" shot of San Francisco or New York City or Vancouver or Portland or Seattle.

A recent publication (a Christian-based news magazine, of all things) hailed Houston as the next global city because of its can-do attitude, partly because it's so diverse (both people-wise and space-wise). And it is. It can fulfill the role of blue-collar shipping town, big-city metropolis, cultural anchor (Houston food is getting more renowned), or quiet subdivisions. You can live near trees and lakes, or you can live a life of urban density. You can afford to live relatively close to downtown (at least were, that may be changing) without living in a slum. Take it or leave it.

A lot of that could be said of ANY light rail line, including Houston's. Though it does argue the question: how long can a hybrid LRT go before it becomes impractical? What about commuter rail?

No, but MidtownCoog did make to v2 of the forum, last posts from 2008, last active in 2011. Another poster that was very prolific but eventually disappeared was RedScare, who was still posting until a few years ago.

See, I don't get why DART gets lambasted for "low ridership" because it partially functions like a commuter rail and why that's a bad thing, then the same types of people turn around and complain why we don't have commuter rail in Houston (often pointing fingers at politicians). This isn't to condemn commuter rail, I'm rather fond of the idea myself. In fact, Denver, which I don't think has been brought up, has built that type of system, a "streetcar" style light rail then going down south following (gasp!) existing railroad corridors. This all builds out to a distance of 13 miles at least to the south, equivalent of reaching Beltway 8.

I found this, but the links are broken. You can see the forums we have today, people are discussing some of the remnants of the past that disappeared in the early 2000s (first Rice Market grocery store, Imperial Sugar pulling out). We had a Huntsville forum, too? Wow. Arche, it seems you were one of the first members here, congrats!

Were the "hiding under the cars" actually a real thing? That sounds more like an urban legend to me (look at your own car and try to crawl under it, and then crawl out of it. If you can do the former, can you get out quickly?)

I hope the answer is "an extensive renovation that adds condos and a new facade" or "implosion soon". The worst case scenario is "ran out of money". Out of curiosity, what's the chance of that?

There are thousands of stoplights in Houston, most of which are of the cheap "hanging lights" variety that tend to crop up near construction zones. Trying to sync them all would be enormously expensive, but I agree that there are major corridors (Westheimer, I imagine) that could use a re-do.

Please don't tell those are ordered favorite to least favorite, because that would make me very sad that you would put Walmart above Fiesta and H-E-B. And if it was reversed, it would also make me sad that you put Foodarama above Fiesta and Kroger.

Perception is a very difficult thing to change, for sure: but seeing that Houston is currently successful, it boils down to two things: do you want a great city or a city that's perceived to be great? Don't pick the latter.

Wow, what's left? A total interior gutting down to the walls? Sure, I could see that. Removal of the bricks that were urine-soaked and not salvageable? A bit disappointing, but I can see that. Taking out the floors? Whoa now. Why not just have the bulldozers tear into the building?

It's better than carpetbagger types that want Houston to be exactly like New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco.

The DART Red Line actually didn't create a new corridor and has one of the best riderships on the system (the northeast line). It didn't create a new transit corridor and instead followed the Central Expressway southwest with about a 3-mile tunnel under the freeway for a cost of $115 million (take note). The METRORail Red Line also worked the same way but had a light rail following predominantly Main Street. As for how long the Green Line takes, from Carrollton to downtown is about 17 miles. Not sure if it's that's what you're counting in the "hour and a half" measurement, but to the end of the line of Houston Red from downtown is about 7 miles, with 17 miles, you'd end up south of Pearland (Bailey and 288), assuming the line started to follow 288. Not bad. If that's the measurement that takes an "hour and a half", then certainly the commuter rail some of you are hawking would end up being something like that (counting transfers and all), and if the answer is "the freeways are quicker", than that's another issue altogether, because we don't know how the long the freeways will last before getting too miserable.

Yup. That's what I've been saying all along, commuter rails won't work because of all of those transfers.

The idea that "light rail lines won't work as commuter lines because there's no way other way to get around the city" is a stupid argument. In New York City, the subways that everyone adores as a "world class transit system" are, at best, about 4-5 blocks from each other, or 9-11 blocks, which means that you'll end up walking or taking a taxi to cover that distance. In fact, taxis are probably missing the link Houston needs. Do they have even have a system?

I think in terms of definitions, it's these: - Commuter rail: passenger rail that goes on standard gauge tracks, usually self-powered, services entire region - Light rail: typically surface (sometimes elevated, less often underground) rail that is powered with power lines - Heavy rail: entirely grade-separated, multi-car system (4+) that runs on an electrified third rail, usually commuter-grade - Subway: typically used in terms of heavy rail systems, but could be used in a light rail system - Elevated rail: elevated heavy rail Chicago, Washington DC, MARTA, NYC, Miami: all of these are heavy rail based systems Minneapolis, DART, Houston METRO, Phoenix LRT: all of these are light rail systems