IronTiger

Indirect result of what happened to Kingwood?

They did add a few bridges on 99 between Katy and I-69, but AFAIK, that gas station and Burger King in the right of way's path is still there.

It probably does re-transmit. There's a substantially higher tower a few miles away that does Candy 95 and a few other stations.

Maybe so, but two things to consider: 1) It's a lot more practical to add a College Station-Houston stop, as I dare say that there's proportionally more College Station-Houston traffic than Dallas-Houston traffic, at least in terms of commuting. 2) Political pressure. Rick Perry's pals (who are bipartisan technically, making them harder to excise) won't let HSR slip by.

Well, there's a pretty solid tax base in Cypress, room for more expansion (Bridgeland, Fairfield) with more $$$ taxes, they already consider the major commercial districts (Target, Kroger, et. al.) a functional part of Houston as far as commercial taxes go, and they did annex Kingwood. However, as you mentioned, I have a good feeling that the reason they aren't doing it now is just for political reasons.

Since Cypress is, as I mentioned before, unincorporated and cannot annex without Houston's permission, it will probably become part of Houston, therefore, any conflict you have with the "suburbanites" will become petty neighborhood bickering.

Has anyone noticed that the Houston Chronicle has gotten physically much narrower (along with other papers like the College Station paper and the Waco paper)? The College Station shrinking was quite aggravating, since it made columns less readable and distorted the comics even more (I can now cover most of a panel of "Peanuts" with my thumb). What do you think? How long have they been doing this?

When said cousin lived on the Houston-Pearland border in 2009-2010 (single at the time), he often commented how Pearland needed a new highway basically going from 288 to 45 (or something along those lines), since the major roads were crowded commercial surface streets. Of course, since all of the area was relatively new single family homes, it wouldn't happen. 290 IS expanding, sort of, they took out a number of structures (including a few warehouses, old Malibu Grand Prix, most of Northwest Mall's parking lot etc.) to basically build a parallel highway connecting directly with Interstate 10). Hardy Toll Road is also extending as well. No one wants to lose their home or business to highway construction. It sucks. It really does. But it's also hard to demand almost nothing changes as the world changes around them. Neighborhoods rise and decline. As for the burial ground at Grand Parkway, just wait--it could be an architectural treasure years later.

Well, there are a number of sites that China blocks, and just with one Google search, I found this comment on a Chronicle article. In China, the government owns the bandwidth, private companies rent it out.

Mass transit unfortunately won't control sprawl or provide very much traffic relief. The only way to move a lot of people is to add more highways in developed areas...unfortunately NIMBYism will likely make any effort near impossible.

Part of the thing about Houston is it's not downtown that's the only main force. People living in Cypress may actually work in say, the Energy Corridor or Memorial City. I know a couple in Pearland (okay, it's my cousin and his wife) who live in the "suburbs" but don't commute to Houston (their work is mostly on computers). When they do go to Houston, it's usually an excursion to go to shops or restaurants (and their car is a hybrid)

I am absolutely full-color pictures exist somewhere (newspapers offices, likely) that were taken for publicity shots. Just one of the things that can't be found--there's still no good old Greenspoint Mall pictures anywhere, either...

Unfortunately, the area will keep growing as long as things continue the way they are now, barring some sort of economical disaster.

Subsidizing the Internet would give the government more excuses to monitor it (and frankly, that would be a reasonable argument to make) and to create laws like SOPA that would block access to certain sites that the government doesn't like (for whatever reason). Who would want that future?

For my commuter rail, notice that the Uptown/NW Line doesn't go toward downtown, but the commuter rail will, so it's not like if you were traveling from Cypress to get on the train, stop, get on the light rail, get on another light rail to transfer downtown, it's one route on the main rail line. I can also get on board with light rail (see what I did there?) taking over two HOV lanes (one eastbound/one westbound) on Katy Freeway as well, since it was kind of designed for that.

What exactly is "homeless"? Is it one without a permanent address, or one who has no money at all? Do they count couch-surfers with permanent jobs but no permanent living situation?

There is the tunnel system, you know... If/when they finish the Hardy Yards redevelopment, expect to see more traffic.

Katy is stuck in the ETJ of Houston and cannot annex without Houston's permission, so any annexation is rare. Cypress is not incorporated and unless Houston gives the OK for them to do so, they never will. They're smack dab in the ETJ. It's far less likely that Cypress would become an independent city and far more likely that Houston annexes it.

Grand Parkway has been planning for at least 2 decades, maybe longer. Sure, had it been built a decade ago, it would've likely followed the "frontage roads first" rule, but the fact why this segment was built now also is because how Katy and Cypress have been growing.

Problem with the line I remember seeing that route go north over 59 to get closer to Greenway Plaza. My plan dispenses with that and adds just a pedestrian walkway to it.

On light rail, I'm a bit shaken on all the people who want to add light rail down any major road corridor that has those wide medians in them. (artist's interpretation) Street running has a lot of benefits, but it screws over everybody: cars have dramatically less space to move, traffic patterns are screwed up, businesses start to suffer, and the light rail can't even go very fast because they have to share the road. The first thing I want to do with light rail is take it to Pearland. While we have discussed the logistics of this, this is "ideal circumstances", so I'm going to throw a few of those things to the wind. An extension to the Red Line goes as follows: the light rail goes over the railroad and Holmes and runs in the median of Fannin. It crosses Reed at grade, curls and goes over Almeda, finally getting into the median of 288 and going to Pearland, ending at the Pearland Town Center. There should even be enough space leftover for HOV/HOT lanes, too. This is a bit similar to the other plan that may have been drawn up already. This takes part of the Red line and the "Pearland expansion" (the southern part) except the light rail goes just to the south of the US-59/Spur 527 interchange, with ramps as to avoid mucking with the turn-off from 59 to Main Street. From there, it goes in the thin strip of ROW from what remains of the railroad, crossing Montrose, Graustark, Mandell, Dunlavy, etc. up until the former Magic Island, which becomes a new rail station and parking area. An overpass over Westpark and Edloe, and here is our Greenway Plaza/Edloe station, which has a long pedestrian overpass connecting to Greenway Plaza. After going over the freight railroad, it goes into a tunnel area, under Newcastle, the dog park, and 610. If a tunnel area is completely impractical, it demolishes the "Bark Park", which moves to the southeast corner of Rice Avenue and Westpark Drive. It re-emerges and goes over another long bridge, over 59 and Westpark Tollway, landing on Sage's median just past Rice Blvd., before going back underground (non-negotiable). There's a station at the Galleria, outside of what is currently Macy's at Sage, goes under Westheimer, re-emerges on Post Oak, goes a bit further, knocking down a few apartment buildings, then paralleling the railroad as it goes over Buffalo Bayou. At the current site of the Houston SPCA, a heavy rail (commuter rail to College Station, another thing) and light rail transfer point is built, then it goes to Northwest Transit Center (one track now) and ends.

Astroworld is kind of adjacent to light rail, and besides, Houston has at least half a dozen edge cities...do we need a terminal for Galleria/Uptown/Energy Corridor, downtown, AND The Woodlands, for instance?

What were the trendy neighborhoods in the 1990s?

Not really sure about that. While it's definitely true for main retailers, the grocery market isn't quite so clear. One of the reasons grocery stores seem to be getting smaller is that Houston real estate isn't especially cheap. The Montrose H-E-B isn't one of their largest stores, but it's a reasonable size and certainly larger than the Fiesta it functionally replaced. Walmart opened a 150k square feet store inside the Loop a year or two ago, and in the suburbs, the H-E-B in Fairfield is 100,000 square feet. Remember, two decades ago, Food Lion and H-E-B Pantry came in with tiny stores. H-E-B grew bigger (both in market share and store size) and Food Lion disappeared. Kroger and Randalls lived through it. So did Fiesta. Rice too, though it began to shrink. AppleTree wasn't strong enough to compete in the price war and failed.

What I think I would do in terms of highways, the downtown ones are usually the worst, so here's what I'd do in a way that would satisfy at least some people. US-59 is sunken up until around Leeland Street. What I would do is shift it to the right and build a new sunken US-59 underneath Old Chinatown and have it emerge just after Commerce Street. The remaining highway (save a few lanes from 59 used for access) becomes the northbound Interstate 45. Pierce Elevated is reconfigured so that there's five lanes running southbound, an inner shoulder, an outer shoulder, and a bike lane, from the bayou near Allen Parkway to EaDo. Also, the Columbia Tap Rail Trail becomes BRT from 288 to 45.