IronTiger

Wasn't livincinco talking about how mass transit isn't a big time saver or a congestion reliever? Well, this list supports that.

A bit misleading. The city of College Station alone recently surpassed 100k with Bryan coming in at 75k, with the additional small-town satellites (even going as far north as Franklin or as far west as Somerville to account for more. Conversely, Beaumont's also pulls in Orange, which is about 14 miles away from Port Arthur or 20 from Beaumont. A gap even exists between Beaumont and Nederland. The metropolitan areas really just try to cluster areas...the Temple-Killeen area clocks in at around 400,000k, but it's just a collection of disconnected cities. The College Station-Bryan cluster actually functions as one city.

I could've sworn I saw a rendering that had 4-5 basements, guess not--this has a plan of the basement level--seems that all the deliveries were made through the garage, and then transported through overhead conveyor belts to the budget store in the basement, and to the main departments above. (Note the "pedestrian passage" connecting the garage to the store) The garage and the connection then, still exist, albeit sealed up. Do you suppose that this new tower will keep the garage and connection for its own use?

I haven't checked in to most of the construction projects. Century Square looks like they've just mostly demolished the old University Apartments, Legacy Point hasn't done too much work since they tore down the old Albertsons and adjacent stores, although I'd like to see how Northpoint Crossing is turning out. I drive by it sometimes, it looks good!

Already a topic on this: Here. Mods, could you lock/merge this?

The prosecution rests, Your Honor. ---------- Anyway, commuter rail! One thing I think if there was commuter rail in Houston, it should not only go for the suburbs that are just outside of Houston (Sugar Land, for instance), it should go across the entire greater area Houston sprawl. It should terminate at Conroe, Texas to the north, for instance (not The Woodlands), Beaumont (in regards to that versus College Station, the College Station-Bryan metro area is a lot larger than Beaumont's, and the miles of rail from downtown are about the same as well), and Galveston. The "terminal points" wouldn't have daily service, but they are connected in with the network.

Oh look, you're back to posting random articles to prove your point again instead of actually trying to input your own words. (In regards to your "research", I would find a "study" from one who writes on a rail advocacy group to range from biased at best to a complete fabrication at worse) When you've repeatedly stated with a straight face that the Pierce Elevated should be demolished, I don't think you can claim "arguing on reality" yet.

Bypassing Snook? While it is probably a speed trap, it offers so much more than one horse towns of its pedigree. Sausages and kolaches, chicken fried bacon, and a huge annual music festival...

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It's worth noting that if we are talking about LA and their transit solutions (or at least, transit answers), some of their BRT is on old railroad ROWs. I think we should convert the Columbia Tap Rail Trail to BRT (with leaving some extra ROW for bikes, like LA does). This line would give buses a connection to TSU and 5th Ward and link 288 and 45 together. Plus, it leaves that space on 288 free for other uses (including the inevitable widening). While I understand that BRT and buses are different things, METRO should upgrade the bus stock (they look they haven't been updated in a while) to be "BRT-compatible". The BRT lane would have stoplights/gates to keep people off of the track just like trains would. Or we could dispense the bike trail entirely since so much trouble has happened there.

There's not much in the way of Bryan-College Station forums, as even MyBCS (the only one out there) has decayed and a lot of people have left. Anyone up for a forum revival?

And the "downsizing", as it turns out, was the result of Cooper Cameron slowly dismantling it. The industrial solvents used are slowly decomposing in the soil. Bet it produced a lot of air pollution back in the day, huh?

There's two MattressFirms at adjacent strip centers in Cypress...

Says in Swamplot that they're demolishing North Forest High School. I thought it was retained by HISD when it merged, guess not!

Well there's your answer about downtown retail. And sadly, it all makes sense: the mall at Houston Center has a Jos A Banks but little else in the way of "true" retail, and it should be known that Foley's was losing steam even before the Macy's takeover. Or even why Houston Pavilions was underwhelming in the retail department.

It looks wood is propping up the sides of the old foundation. However, didn't the old Foley's go several levels below ground than that? I seem to recall reading somewhere that it had a fairly extensive underground labyrinth of tunnels, with things like a car center and "Foley's Academy" in the basement, as well as a restaurant.

Like I said, we need to see if the tunnels could be opened on weekends. I'm not saying by any means that the tunnels need to be remerchandised like a "regular" mall, but it could be great as a test to see if additional retail could be supported.

Fairfield the master planned community on 290, not Fairfield, Texas.

No one said Houston's downtown is empty. (Note: this is the Dallas sub-forum, if that's what you're worried about)

As I recall correctly, most of your arguments involve "Traffic is getting to critical mass, prices of ROW are going up, we need to build NOW". Sounds like fear mongering to me!

Just because livincinco doesn't want to build lots of rail ASAP doesn't mean he's anti-rail.

Mostly to prevent flooding and also allow some water to go back into natural waterways (eventually) with less pollution. I believe CoCS requires it on most developments.

Well sure, there's downtown, but not everyone works downtown. Overall, I think the only viable commuter rail is on the 290 corridor, with an Austin commuter rail like "toy train" stopping at downtown, Northwest Mall or a spur to the Northwest Transit Center, Jersey Village, Cypress, Fairfield with occasional service even to College Station perhaps. Other than that, it becomes far more troublesome. Building a line from Sugar Land to downtown, starting from 90-A and US-59 is at least 24 miles versus 18 miles, with additions depending on how many stations you want to add. Rough truth for everyone is that it needs more highway lines--and in hurricane evacuations, the more highway lanes you have, the better.

I read that the vacancy rate in downtown Dallas is 30% vacant. I don't know if that's office space, tunnel space (their tunnels aren't quite so healthy), or what, but that's definitely troublesome. Comparatively, Houston has full occupancy. What's going on? Did they overbuild, or is there a bigger problem under the hood?

I would think that a start would be seeing if a partial opening of the tunnels during weekends is at all feasible economically.