IronTiger

See? I was right. Well, you have a good point. I don't live in Houston. And the frequency that I visit isn't very much. However, I at least have visited most of the major neighborhoods and other areas (Hempstead Road corridor, Downtown, Uptown, the Heights, Montrose, Rice Village, Midtown, TMC, Museum District, Port of Houston, 3rd Ward, Sharpstown/Chinatown, and a few others I'm inevitably leaving out) as well as a number of suburbs, so I feel that I have at least a good feeling of what the city is, compared to those who live in the "Inner Loop echo chamber" and almost never leave (i.e. you). And August and livincinco have made greater trips to Houston, far more constantly than me. More importantly, I'm one of the supermajority here that recognizes and loves Houston, flaws, eccentricities, and all, without griping that it "should" be more like New York City or San Francisco.

The lines have gotten held up for a number of reasons, not just your pet hate sink, Culberson. The whole fiasco with the East End underpass started because originally residents didn't want an overpass. Wanna blame them? No? Yeah right. The freeway is up for replacement (it's really old--like from the 1950s), is in disrepair (had to have emergency repairs after a 2001 earthquake--by the way, that's also the main reason the SF freeways were dismantled), is dangerous (earthquake-prone areas, again). This imaginary "blame the auto lobby" is because you can't accept the real reasons. Furthermore, your "it wasn't traffic armageddon as predicted" is nonsense. Who was predicting a "traffic armageddon"? It's the same excuse you gave for your reasons why they should remove the Pierce Elevated. Your dismissal of the construction period was dismissive, and by all real accounts (newspapers, people who actually lived and drove through it), it sucked.

You are evading the question. The question was if all other cities (cities that are not SF, Vancouver, and NYC) have great street life, which you seem to think is unachievable if there are freeways near downtown.

That's not the reason and you know it. In whatever the case, what was voted, and what was discussed, it was clear that a major roadway was needed, not because of the "auto lobby". Don't sound like an idiot unless you are one.

It's not a "horrible spot for a freeway where there shouldn't be one" otherwise, they wouldn't have bothered boring the (extremely expensive) tunnel. Or built in the first place, for that matter. The area with the viaduct has traditionally been a very industrial area, which necessitates moving goods around.

So, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Houston, and scads of others don't count? Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

Several of those would tend to skew the balance toward liberal cities, and before you say something ignorant like "Because liberal cities are better, duh!" keep in mind that most of the publications that do these quality of life things are liberal, too. Notice that the above statistics also ignore things like congestion and cost of living. How is not having freeways making for "excellent street life"? Are you saying that the only places with "excellent street life" are places that have no freeways? Also, Seattle isn't removing their freeway because of petty, vague things like "street life". The primary reason is that the aging freeway is built in the same way as the double-deck highways in California that sandwiched in a 1989 earthquake and are considered unsafe for earthquake-prone areas on the West Coast.

In the case of SF and Vancouver, people often get confused by "beautiful city" versus "average city surrounded by beautiful locations"

You're evading the question. And please don't say "It's more urban" because you and I both know that's not a good answer. (Also, there's no shame in admitting in that you were wrong about something, just throwing that out there)

How so, and what is it "improving" on?

Measuring quality of life I can imagine is pretty hard to do--typically people who don't like the city they live in are usually too poor to move out. That or they take some sort of hard statistic (park acreage, etc.) and extrapolate it. Either way, both SF and Vancouver fall into a category wherein the people there think that not only is the greatest city on earth (which in many ways is a positive attitude to have) but also ignore its flaws and attacks anyone who criticize it (both Vancouver and SF are guilty of this). It's like the worst type of nationalism, but on a much smaller scale.

I would consider that a "massively crowded" transit system would be almost as much of a failure as a success. When that happens, it means that both freeways and transit systems have reached critical mass, commuting is universally miserable, and quality of life suffers.

Of course Main was there for a long time. But US-59 was also rebuilt around that same time, and I'm not saying "we're seeing new redevelopments along US-59 like the redevelopment of Bissonnet Village and Greenbriar Chateau because they finished Southwest Freeway, herp derp". It's the great economy and investment in the Inner Loop as a whole.

Yes, which you pointed out that the rail-side development was "obviously" because of the rail presence, to which I countered that the type of new development seen there is happening all over the Inner Loop.

That is indeed a shame!

I should have figured that it was community opposition, but I really hope that they will settle with something since 290 is one of the few east west corridors in Austin. Oh well...

^^ Also something that you yourself have done on a fairly consistent basis. I read your post just fine and responded to it. I am merely pointing out that the Inner Loop has all sorts of projects going on besides the light rail. Also note that I did not say "rail had nothing to do with it" or anything along those lines.

The entire Inner Loop has been flourishing with projects, renovations, and remodels, with most of them nowhere near the rail line. The Susanne, the new H-E-B Montrose Market, the redevelopment of Archstone Apartments, a few new developments replacing garden apartment complexes (District at Greenbriar, 2530 Bissonnett, etc.), something at Las Palmas and Alabama, Weslayan and Alabama, Andover Richmond redevelopment, and much more. If you think that all this is "due to rail", you're not paying attention.

It takes one to know one, isn't it?

There's nothing actually wrong with wanting Houston to become more like Eastern seaboard cities. It's a valid opinion, and you (et. al.) are entitled to it. What is wrong is disguising this with nonsense statements like "Houston isn't urban enough" and "We need to be doing urbanism the 'correct' way".

Probably the wrong forum to ask, but will the expansion of the Ben White freeway (290) ever extend to Oak Hill? They did a lot of freeway clearance 10 years ago, but nothing was ever built. Is anything in the planning stages, or were all those businesses razed for nothing?

BCS isn't a great comparison to Houston, admittedly (especially in terms of traffic), but the microcosm of where people are and where people want to go still holds merit.

From what I've seen, a lot of facade "improvements" added in the 1950s and 1960s simply covered up the original facade. Are you saying that underwent extensive construction to the extent of basically gutting the building decades earlier?

San Francisco isn't too fond of the "Google bus" but part of the problem with that is they see it as a reason of the loss of affordable housing in San Francisco, but the issue of affordable housing (or rather, lack of it) in San Francisco has resulted from decades of misguided practices to "keep things as they were". I was mostly referring to people who were/are against the Katy Freeway expansion. Now there's a reasonable idea! I hate to say it, but the ideas of linking the employment centers with a sort of "belt" rail system (I think someone said it, or at least that's what I inferred) is a terrible idea. It's a great idea on paper--major employment centers linked together, but it fails otherwise. It's very similar to a plan I saw in which someone on a College Station forum mentioned: a great example of a bad idea. In College Station-Bryan, one of the main arterials is College Avenue, which historically connected downtown Bryan to Texas A&M's campus, a distance of a few miles. The problem is that while Downtown is a popular destination, with bars, specialty shops, and restaurants, and the campus is definitely very popular, the two never interact. You go to Texas A&M, or you go to campus. Likewise, if you work at the TMC and live in Pearland (as I'm sure many do), why would you need to go to the Energy Corridor?

Good point. If Katy Freeway was busy (which it is) people are going to start yapping about how expansion didn't help and "induced demand", yadda yadda. If it wasn't busy, then people will complain about how it took out buildings for useless concrete. If it wasn't done at all, then people will complain about how Houston's highway system is stuck in the 1960s.