IronTiger

I haven't been to Houston since August, but how far does Section E go? Obviously, it connects Katy to Cypress and adds main lanes to 290 (up from Kingsland Blvd., where afterward you would be forced to get on the frontage road or take the ramp to Interstate 10 East). If you were drive north on Grand Parkway, would you be forced to exit onto 290, or would you be able to go to Cumberland as shown in this map?

I know. If I recall correctly, they finally dropped it in the mid-1990s after they absorbed Tom Thumb. Their greatest sin was still selling it to Safeway.

Talk about rhetoric in posts...

One proposal I saw was a cut and cover light rail station in Uptown. That would've been neat.

With the whole Obamacare problems and watching health insurance premiums dramatically increase, no one is going to want to see their taxes increase even higher. Secondly, the residents of Pearland would be wary to give their tax dollars to METRO who is more likely going to squander it instead of delivering a timely light rail system to Pearland (or any system to Pearland, for that matter). A vote to increase property taxes for METRO would likely bomb in the polls. The only way that it could work is one of two things: 1) METRO suddenly gets competent, making it a much more desirable thing to get onto, and actually delivers promises on time and within budget 2) Pearland starts its own transit network/partners with a private company, creating a "METRO-compatible" light rail line (it still follows the same route of the Red Line). Imagine if (I don't know if this would actually work) but let's say Pearland creates a new transit district with other communities called SHRT (South Houston Rapid Transit). At the Pearland station, you buy a SHRT ticket, which takes you to the main Red Line. On the return trip, you get a METRO ticket to take you back to Pearland. METRO still gets half of the profits, while Pearland doesn't have to pour its tax dollars into an incompetent government agency which won't provide service for years to come. See, I think it would be nifty if there was light rail to Pearland, but I don't think it should be forced down their throats to join METRO.

Grand Parkway's cursed, they built it over an ancient Indian burial ground.

UH had that thing, IIRC, about the parking being lost. Besides, if you look on Google Maps, the light rail doesn't go near TSU (about two blocks away). And you're underestimating the stupidity of college students when it comes to cluelessness on roads/rail. I can't really comment on Culberson. As of yet, I saw ONE thing written back in 2009, and mostly griping by people. If the suburbs were taxed in the way that if say, Pearland was getting a line and Cypress wasn't, then Pearland would be taxed higher. I still think running light rail down the 288 median is a pretty neat idea.

* ARE more profitable than other consumables.

Will be widened? Yes, but not in the next 10 years. Remember, the original Katy Freeway didn't widen for decades. Northwest Freeway had its final segments built in the 1980s at the latest, Gulf Freeway remained a crummy pre-Interstate standard highway until the early 1980s, etc.

It looks like it's Hicks Road that would be doing the splitting, as it seems that they own the property across the street near the railroad (Hicks Street doesn't seem to very good demarcations between the property and the road--no sidewalks, ROW, or curbs. Was this the original GSC building before they built that big one that the railroad spur leads to?

Huh. Three things I do have to say on that: 1) It's their loss; beer and wine far more profitable than other consumables 2) It makes room for other types of food. 3) It's not like Randall's was the only choice of food, even when they commanded a much higher market share than today: if my local Walmart no longer stocks guns (which it doesn't), is it because Walmart is trying to force gun control on the general public? It would be another thing if someone pressured Randall's to not carry beer and wine, but they didn't. Yeah, but there's no H-E-B in Galveston anymore.

Would be nice to see light rail down to Pearland, but METRO has been slow getting lines up and running...in 2009 I read that all the new lines should be up and running by this time. Granted, there's been a lot of things going on both METRO's fault and not: • Culberson and METRO need to stop fighting. Culberson, I think, doesn't deserve the hate he's gotten and probably wanted to stop METRO from wasting time and money as it has (he mentioned in a post four years old that he supported rail referendums in the past), but in the end, he's making METRO lose even more time and money. • University of Houston has really held up construction in a line that benefits them. • The underpass in Harrisburg isn't anywhere close to being built. Blame METRO. That being said, if METRO were to get its act together, there are some points to address: Houston's existing LRT system tends to cannibalize roads. Functional avenues become two way roads with limited turns. The best plan for an expansion out to Pearland is to use "sneaker" routes as described by Keep Houston Houston. This of course necessitates more demolition, but it keeps roads free and even probably saves more businesses than it kills. The way METRO has things now is that it may save a business from being razed, but tends to choke it out when it becomes barely accessible. One possibility is extending the Red Line across the two railroads and put in the median of 288. There will still be enough room for HOV lanes under that plan, and those things could run express straight toward Pearland Town Center. But knowing METRO, they likely wouldn't start building that for another decade.

Well, if we're going by the DART example, which are mostly built on old freight lines (designed for going fast), the extended mileage out from DART isn't bringing in a lot more people, the numbers show that. Getting from Plano to downtown Dallas, for instance, sounds fantastic on paper, but it's not bringing in people. As for your other questions, I think the DART trains and the Houston METRORail trains are different and thus have different top speeds. As for crossings, that's not so much an issue for the train as it for cars.

Oh wow! That's really neat. It looks like at Andrews and Wilson, there used to be a trolley line at one time.

OK, help me out here: in 2005-2006, I read an article in the Houston Chronicle about a controversial road repair, in which a road somewhere in Houston had bricks that were laid by former slaves, and that workers were to remove the bricks (and place them back) to do utility repairs. Which road was that, and was the outcome of it? I've kind of wanted to know as of late.

Which brings us back to the fact that the suburbs don't want to waste their tax dollars on something they'll rarely, if ever, get a chance to use. That's assuming that METRO does even want to pay back Pearland with what they paid for, more than likely, they'll squander it in other parts. Where are you getting this from? Supposing that the same light rail lines that go up and down Main go down to Pearland (for whatever reason, just humor me here), can those cars even get up to 65 mph? Furthermore, wouldn't it make more sense if it was surface-level? With crossing grades separated, the trains would have to climb over every crossing, whereas if it were straight and level, they could go faster. Unless, of course, you're suggesting a full Washington DC-like system, but at that point, it's not light rail.

I think that is a nifty coincidence, but it's not a competition, since they're two different projects run by two different government agencies serving two different parts of the area. ...that being said, I still don't see why Forbidden Gardens had to close for the Grand Parkway extension.

The roads aren't planned because the areas grow at an alarming rate, though it doesn't necessarily preclude mass transit later on. The biggest problem I can see with your proposal is that you're assuming that METRO is far more competent than it actually is.

One of Obama's pals is saying we're doing it wrong. How is this news?

Yeah, I am thinking of commuter rail. No, it wouldn't: and we've talked about this. The reversible HOV lanes don't allow for much for more than one lane, and that would mean that a train would be sent out, come back empty, and take more people, whereas the HOV lane allows more buses to be fed continuously to supply demand. It is worth noting, though, that the 290 expansion does set aside some ROW for a high speed rail system of some sort.

As much as blaming politicians is a popular subject in discussing rail non-starters, I believe I read somewhere on HAIF that the reason why existing heavy rail corridors (particularly along 59 and 290) cannot be used is resistance from the railroad companies.

METRO will never be BART, and trying to "make up" for lost time just results in disasters like DART, which has miles of light rail but declining ridership and not helping congestion much.

I'm presenting to you the version of Weingarten's logo it had under Grand Union, which is pretty rare: It uses a similar typeface and the "red dot" of Grand Union that it used during that time, and was a rather tumultumous time for the company--Grand Union bought the 150 Weingarten stores but sold them after 4 years after closing about 30. This particular logo is from an ad for the College Station store, which lasted 2 months.

So it's an unknown public interest group doing the study. A quick look reveals some of the PIRGs promote public transportation as one of their agendas. Biased much?

Wal-Mart and Kmart had been actually doing at the time (Kmart never got too much of it, since it went bankrupt in 2002), as well as Albertsons, but it wasn't nearly as common as today. Unfortunately, even the Citgo that replaced it survived only until the mid-2000s when it was demolished for a strip center that runs in front of the old store.