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Houston19514

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Everything posted by Houston19514

  1. Houston19514
    The site was officially for sale back around 2008'ish. I think they pulled it from the market after the financial crash in late 2008. Presumably, if someone came along with a good offer, it would be for sale... I keep hoping Hines is working a deal behind the scenes.
  2. Houston19514
    A gold star for effort. But, seriously? Only 2 of those links mentioned the proposed cost. One of those was a forum such as this (hardly authoritative) and the other was a cost estimate from 2009. Note that my link provided both mileage and budget information and was from 2012. Yes, the total subway project will be 22 km. But its' being done in 2 phases. The $1.16 Billion (US) budget only covers the 14 km in phase 1. Here's another link that addresses both the length (14 km) and cost ($2.33 Billion Brazil) in the same article.
  3. Houston19514
    No, but 14 km is 8.7 miles. The first phase is 14 km and is budgeted at $1.16 Billion US. Curitiba will have 14 kilometers of subway united with the existing public transit system.
  4. Houston19514
    I've been wondering about that project too.
  5. Houston19514
    Curitiba is building an 8.7 mile subway for on a budget of US$1.16 Billion. My calculator says that is $133.33 Million per mile. (And who knows if they will actually do the project on or near budget...) (Still probably lower than we could do here. It has seemed to me as I travel around the world that we seriously over-engineer a lot of our infrastructure. Maybe it's worth the money to make our systems marginally safer and completely accessible, but it does add a lot of costs. Plus, of course, I believe any project getting federal money has to pay union scale wages. That adds huge costs to our projects.
  6. Houston19514
    Induced demand is such a joke. The increased demand (a) was already there before the project was undertaken (as demonstrated by the monstrous congestion) and ( just might have a little something to do with adding 1.5 million people or so to the metro area since the project was started.
  7. Houston19514
    Answer: At one spot on the freeway (at Wirt), the rebuilt Katy handles roughly 75,000 more vehicles per day than it did pre-rebuild and cuts 10 minutes and 30 seconds off the average commute time. At Wirt, it now carries roughly 275,000 vehicles per day. I don't know if there exists a count of the total number of vehicles trips made on the full length of the Katy Freeway each day. That would be the only way to do a fair comparison to any mass transit ridership numbers (because we count all riders who get on the transit service at any point on the line; we don't just count how many are on the train at a certain intersection.) Clearly, the total number of vehicles using the Katy Freeway each day would far exceed 275,000. Clearly, not all of those vehicles are single-occupancy, so the number of users exceeds even the huge number of vehicles using the freeway. I think we can pretty safely guesstimate that the Katy Freeway serves more than 500,000 riders per day and that easily 150,000 of those daily riders are possible because of the expansion. So, in addition to saving an average of 10 minutes 30 seconds per commuter, we have added 150,000 daily users to our transportation system. Has anyone built a $ 3 Billion rail system that has 150,000 users per day? I'm pretty sure Dallas has spent well in excess of $3 Billion on its light rail system and as of earlier this year it was providing about 93,000 daily rides.
  8. Houston19514
    Yeah, I would not be at all surprised to see Safeway do the same with Randall's. They seemingly have not been paying much attention to the chain. I wonder how Safeway stays in business... It seems they repeatedly go into markets, fail, pull out, wait a few years, buy their way back in, fail, pull out... Doesn't strike me as a prize-winning business model.
  9. Houston19514
    How many more vehicles/people does it handle per day than it previously did?
  10. Houston19514
    Yes. East Downtown definitely needs an inane made-up name. It's high time we started looking for one. ;-)
  11. Houston19514
    More info: The owner is MetLife. Trammel Crow is the project manager. Does anyone know if MetLife owns some neighboring buildings?
  12. Houston19514
    Where can one get a look at the old 1983 heavy rail master plan? I think this is the first I've ever seen or heard of it going all the way out to Katy.
  13. Houston19514
    ^ wasn't just you. I think the article was probably in today's dead-tree edition of the paper, so they locked it out until today.
  14. Houston19514
    Great pics!!
  15. Houston19514
    Correct, and it is not a sister city to Paris. Hence my question of the OP'er
  16. Houston19514
    Why do you say we are considered a sister city to Paris?
  17. Houston19514
    Ee-Gads. It calls for a covered (probably climate controlled) passageway connecting the new parking garage directly to the apartment building. I'll just go ahead and post on behalf of H-Town Man: This is not good urbanism. At some point you have to force people to the sidewalks and ruffle a few feathers. ;-)
  18. Houston19514
    On the contrary. The event center portrayed in the video is exactly what it will be after the renovations. As I said in my prior post, this renovation will make the Astrodome usable AND preserves the structure. IF (and it is one huge if) at some point in the future, some private investor comes along with a viable plan and money, then we will still have the structure available to discuss their plans. There is not much reason to expect that to ever happen. This renovation (the one we are voting on in November) will make the Dome usable as an event center as portrayed in the video.
  19. Houston19514
    ^ Administration Building is being renovated: Installation of fire sprinkler system *Repair/Restoration of exterior concrete façade (Phase I) *Repair/Restoration of exterior concrete façade (Phase II)*5th Floor--Renovation of approximately 10K SqFtRoof replacement *Paint and carpet*Masterplan for Tax Assessor's Office Very interesting about the parking lot in the 400 block of Main. EDIT: It turns out the parking lot work in the 400 block of Main is not at all interesting. Just resurfacing the lot. :-(
  20. Houston19514
    Not sure what you mean by the scope shown in the renderings not being accurate. To clarify regarding the potential future private investment, they have said this all along. This is a fairly bare-bones renovation (on the inside) that makes the Astrodome usable and maintains/preserves the structure so that, should someone come along in the future with both a great plan and financing to put something like a hotel or amusement park or museum etc etc in the Dome structure, it would be possible. If there were private investors with both money and a viable plan, they would be considered now, next year, or any time they show up. They won't have to wait until after preservation job is done to have their plans considered. (I went to a presentation yesterday too, probably the same one you did.)
  21. Houston19514
    I'm sure they'd be happy to. Do you happen to have an idea for a way to pay for it?
  22. Houston19514
    Actually, the new museum building will be in the white area at the far bottom right. (Just a very tiny corner of it is shown on this site plan.) As an aside, I happened by there in the past week. The utility relocation work is underway.
  23. Houston19514
    Not sure. Yes. No. (The grayed out box is the church.)
  24. Houston19514
    Not sure why that should bother anyone. It appears all the parking may be in the south block, so the bridge provides access for the north block apartments to their parking.
  25. Houston19514
    Yes. no problem at all.
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