IronTiger

Here's how the Houston Center would've fit in with the rest of the skyline. Obviously, while the actual things would have similar color to the rest of the downtown area, it still looks a bit jarring. I'll release the 10 page document (not all of it has renderings, sorry) soon if there's sufficient demand on HAIF.

Gee, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose?

If Houston Center had been built as planned? I sure don't know.

I'm a bit surprised that of all the defunct Houston grocery stores that are discussed (Albertsons, Safeway, AppleTree, Food Lion), I've never seen Winn-Dixie on that list. Maybe it was because it was a reliably "southern" store and never entered Houston's market because it was too crowded (it entered Dallas-Fort Worth, Bryan-College Station, and Waco, and some of those stores lasted until 2002). Perhaps it entered the suburbs, but I've never seen anything in Chron articles to indicate so... Anyone know whether they did or didn't, and if not, why not?

Distance, distance, distance. As discussed before, because Dallas is geographically much smaller than Houston, the suburbs are much, much closer than you'd think they would be. There is a commuter rail link to Fort Worth (Trinity Rail, I think) From Plano to Dallas CBD, it's about 20 miles. From Fort Worth to Dallas, it's 30 miles. If you wanted to go from a SW Fort Worth suburb to a northeast Dallas suburb, that's almost 60 miles.

I glanced over, I didn't "cherry pick the ones I [didn't] like". They basically took an interview with Peter Brown and his views on the subject, added some other quotes and facts, glossed over some inconvenient facts that they didn't like addressing (Culberson and rail), and repackaged that as an attempt of serious journalism on a larger issue.

A few more related to the above if people are interested: As the Wikipedia article alludes to, the original Houston Center concept was massive and razed 32 blocks of downtown in preparation to build, which would include Discovery Green and most of the convention center (or at least, that's what they would be eventually).

And now we're back to the original focus of the thread--even from Wheeler to the Galleria will be a significant drain on time with all those stops (never mind that you'd have to make a transfer, which slows even more), and unless you had no other options, you'd want to just take 59.

Well, besides trying for an alliteration attempt, it really was just mostly Peter Brown yammering about Houston traffic, and if I wanted to hear that, I'd watch a YouTube video. To be fair, they also talk about how METRO has been corrupt in the past (which is why it's not very good) but they also go with the whole "Culberson is anti-rail" line which isn't a total fabrication but tends to gloss over some details (just like HAIF). Such amateurish fact-checking is why I don't take the Press seriously as real journalism, which I guess should be par anyway for some.

"Press" puts puff piece promoting "Pedestrian Pete".

Rail just isn't for everyone, and trying to make it for everyone would be horrendously expensive and get diminishing returns (and you thought that building more miles out was diminishing returns). I don't know, I'm suspicious of the whole oft-repeated "Well, once this line is built, ridership will TAKE OFF!" The ridership on the system total increases, but probably not to the astronomical projections that people make. It's a bit like the latest version of Windows--it may or may not fix the previous one's problems, but also has a bunch of problems on its own. Houston roads are pretty abysmal and when repairs are done, they take a while to be done. Better take off the tinfoil hat. Well, considering that the Gold Line and Red Line run parallel to each other and the Red Line comes at far more frequent times, you just made a mistake (understandable) but that's not a reason to condemn the entire system.

Ridership per mile is a bad statistic since the longer the route is, the worse the numbers seem. For example, overseas flights would be a total failure if you went by those numbers. HSR, Amtrak, Greyhound, everything would look terrible.

As mentioned before, unless you didn't want to build stations on the Interstate 10 route between Northwest Transit Center and Katy Mills, adding stations would be a huge engineering feat to build stations that get people safely over the freeway and the two tracks to in between. I could see a Gessner station that would require not a lot of work to retrofit (and there's empty space for parking too) but "not a lot of work" is a relative term. I feel that in the case of rail and Interstate 10 is that TxDOT really didn't have rail in mind for the freeway but METRO insisted that it could have the potential and coughed up some money to make the bridges stronger for potential rail.

I think it could be a gas station (in that camp)--there are two cars milling around it, and it seems to be slightly set back from the street.

I didn't think that DART screwed it up at all. At least their Red Line (northeast to Plano) seemed to get pretty good numbers at non-peak hours. It's not crammed--I consider it a major problem if mass transit lines like rail are just as congested as the highway. I don't know of any other lines beyond that, though, so perhaps that line isn't the best indicator. I also don't think as far out as Galveston is really effective as a commuter line unless we went with a full "greater Houston" type rail network as discussed earlier. For what it's worth, here are some rough calculations of distance from the city center (measured in miles). As you can see, Galveston is much farther away than other Houston area destinations. Sugar Land - 20 (existing rails are problematic, that's "as the bird flies") Baytown - 24 (existing rails may be problematic, so it would be much longer) Cypress - 29 (Fairfield area, using existing rails) The Woodlands - 30 Conroe - 40 Hempstead - 50 Galveston - 50 Beaumont - 83 College Station - 90 (despite being far away, it hits a number of other stops, and as time goes on, a connection will be more important) Orange - 105 Conversely, Denton over in Dallas is 35 miles and requires one transfer to commuter rail. Corsicana is about 50 miles away, and no one is discussing commuter rail out that way (however, as recently as 1995, an Amtrak line hit Corsicana as the last stop before Dallas) ADDITION TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT YOUR LAST EDIT First off, as I mentioned previously, ridership predictions could be manipulated so if you get higher ones, it could be a "big success" and open the way for more funding (neat trick, huh?) whereas if you make it too high and it misses, then funding could dry up. Also, there's still enough ROW along Westpark to not need to destroy the Westpark Tollway (which is on pretty narrow ROW as it is)

Yup, METRO does have a problem. The root of it is incompetence on the main level. The suburbs are reluctant to join since their tax contributing to METRO would likely be completely wasted. The other thing is that the reason why Dallas has a large and impressive list of suburbs is the city size. Dallas is about 385 square miles. Houston is about 627, about 50% larger than Dallas and still with room to expand. Dallas cannot: it's hemmed in by suburbs, which are serviced by that area. For Houston to reach out to the suburbs, it would have to be a much more extensive network. Even the railroads are not particularly well-equipped to be good commuter lines, and it's pretty obvious that street running won't work outside the Inner Loop unless you wanted commutes to be longer than taking the highway. Much like how the elevated stations in the Red Line extension explored new boundaries in Houston light rail, extending the University Line all the way to the Outer Loop will "prove" that METRORail really has potential and not a rinky-dink inner city line.

I can't think of any modern LRT system that didn't rebuild the roads in the process. Lanes will be shifted around, construction vehicles damage it, you could argue that it's METRO's duty to repair it.

Repairing Richmond was a condition of the light rail. If we're going to go with rail down Richmond, then the lanes have to be rebuilt. Period. Yes, it adds a lot to the cost, but it's one of the "trade-offs" associated with rail. Yes, but transfers should be minimized. That's the idea of the University Line going all the way to the East End line instead of just jogging up the Main Line. Besides, if you ran the Gold Line down that part of the University Line, it could provide more service. When we talk about "heavy rail", we talk about services like the Washington DC Metro and the like, correct? With heavy rail, you're forced to make entire grade separations--and either way, something would have to be done about the conjunction with the rail just east of Newcastle since it never (at least for its last years of existence) crossed at grade with the other rail, and either way, any new thing by METRO would go over or under. The light rail-as-commuter train I think is the best way to do it in the Sunbelt cities unless the "farther away" city has pre-existing rail, much like there's connections to Denton and Fort Worth via DART. It could also push the limits of the light rail when there's less stops. Part of what I think METRO needs to do is "use what they have". For going out to south Katy, the Westpark line seems fine, but if it were Cypress, a commuter rail may be more useful (side note: I think the Gold/Uptown line should extend to Brookhollow, not terminate at the transit center). The other major problem is that METRO is incompetent and disorganized. If donors plopped the needed money for University Line into their laps, they'd probably squander it.

A funny thing happened when I was in the shower--I actually started liking the University Line more and more. Does it still have too many stops? Yes (cut Kirby or Shepherd). Was it a good idea to avoid Afton Oaks? Very yes. Should the line have the capability to expand out the suburbs? Yup. However, they should make the Uptown Line also link up with the Blue Line toward at least Wheeler, then split north, or something. Is there any movement under way to strike down the Richmond ban on rail via a judge? Are there any pro-University Line donors that could donate money to rail construction, legally circumventing the "no federal funding" statute? See, those are solutions. Going further, what if we could build a light rail vehicle facility here in Houston instead of importing them from overseas? Think of how that would lower the cost to entry.

Katy Freeway and rail wasn't this conspiracy as some HAIFers have stated--the congestion was getting pretty high even in the late 1980s, and when the rail was bought in the early 1990s, it was decided against having a commuter rail and in 1997, the "free rides" on the train ran out (it was used up until that point, causing major traffic delays, and sometimes the train would stop, there's an article in the Chron about the train trapping people in the antique mall's parking lot (blocking both the main way out and the frontage road's crossing). The 50-odd crossings were problematic as well. I'm not sure how or why METRO was conned into donating money to make the middle lane bridges strong enough for light rail--stations would be problematic to build since they would still require major engineering to work properly. It's worth noting that California has a light rail built in Interstate 210 (keep going west on Interstate 10 out of town, Exit 77C) but building stations on Houston's piece of 210 would be a major piece of engineering (either cutting holes in overpasses to allow elevators/stairs up, or adding more structures to go up and over the freeway, since Katy Freeway has no underpasses). The only thing that was really cut out from the plan was not having congestion pricing in the interior toll lanes, which SHOULD be done, but I'm not really sure who changed that around. I don't know if anyone liked my fourth option (shift traffic permanently to one side or the other as a two-way road, and run rail in the remaining right of way as a parallel line), but if you haven't processed that, here's a fifth option: run it as is, just cut out extraneous stops. What say you?

Yeah, that's one hang up. If METRO got well organized, then we will see better performance across Houston and suburbia. Too bad it's not. He let federal money go to other cities. Oh the horror.

"Handy Dandy" is probably an amalgamation of "Handy Dan" (hardware) and "Handy Andy" (groceries)

Handy Andy If I read correctly was a San Antonio based grocery, never very big, pretty much wiped out by HEB, and they were just very recently bought by Arlans Market. At some point, they did build very large very modern stores, but Randalls ended up buying them. The Randall's Flagship on Voss was a Handy Andy if I recall correctly

Sure it is, and it's a perfect example of which. Light rail isn't supposed to compete against freeways, but I find it a bit hypocritical to have this sharp "people who fight against freeways in neighborhoods = heroes", "people who fight against light rail in neighborhoods = villains" rhetoric. And you said there's no black and white. I don't know if subways are unviable, it depends on the soil conditions. As someone said before, we have finally done elevated stations, but elevated stations tend to be problematic around stations (requiring a LOT of space). I also offered the suggestion of actually creating new ROW along Richmond, but as Cloud said, it is kind of barbaric (a reason, by the way, of why some of the anti-freeway HAIFers are like that--the Katy and Northwest expansions have already seen a lot of businesses get torn down). In fact, there might be a fourth situation--instead of light rail running IN the median, to shift Richmond over to the south (or north) side and have rail running parallel. There would be at-grade crossings for the rail, and yeah, it would kind of screw over access for many businesses, but that was always a given. Ridership numbers are a funny thing. To get money from the feds, you would want it to have a high projected number, but if you have a low projected number, and it ends up getting HIGHER numbers, congratulations! It could be considered a success. The trick is to find the "magic number"--deliberately lowballing it to call it a success but high enough for it to get funding. This could potentially cause some conflicts, where one on paper seems to have much higher numbers than the other. Mostly I was on the fact that you start calling politicians names "evil" based solely on the fact that they nixed a rail line. Stupid, maybe, but a politician would have to do continuously reprehensible things to be called "evil", and there are few politicians that could be called that (surprising, I know). This is compounded by the fact that you seem to be wishing ill on Afton Oaks residents because they didn't like it--an extremely childish thing to do. From a ridership perspective, it does make more sense to have it on the Richmond side, you're right. Westpark corridor (that is, the rail line that used to parallel Westpark) wouldn't have that accessibility from south of 59. However, that's why I wanted it to be underground--everyone's always talking about the Inner Loop traffic going up: why are we taking out the roads that enable it to do that? After all, at the rate that buildings are going up and densifying, light rail isn't going to really stop that. I also hope that when they do build the University Line, the Uptown/Galleria line parallels the University Line to Wheeler, since transferring that early is lame. And sometimes what people vote on doesn't happen or fails for whatever reason. METRO's competence isn't known, and I feel that instead of focusing on the past (Culberson), we need to look for the future, alternatives. I also think that like Dallas, we need to start adding light rail out to make a hybrid LRT/commuter system except in places not viable (for example, while Pearland or Katy could get LRT out there. Yeah, because New York City was always pretty high density, it doesn't have enough parks (Central Park, and that's already crowded, plus a bunch of tiny neighborhood parks). It would be. There's still enough ROW that light rail could be comfortably built out all the way to Katy. Of course, we have to get the University Line built first, and that there's still too many stops along Richmond. Remember that the light rail and highways are by two entirely different agencies. If 290, Grand Parkway, and 288 were owned by METRO, rest assured, they'd NEVER be built or expanded. And I always thought that 288 has enough space for new HOV lanes AND a light rail running down to Pearland, if they were to ever expand the Red Line south, but that's just me. Culberson (and/or his voters) aren't anti-rail, they're NIMBYs. If I didn't want, say, a freeway, or a gas station right behind my house (or in front of my house), that doesn't mean that I hated freeways or gas stations. So that's some of my thoughts, some clarified, on the issue. Sorry if I insulted anybody.

College Station area is at least explained by its a college town. There are very, very few ultra-ritzy neighborhoods and even less super-nice restaurants and stores.