Houston19514

Has the Gaylord Texan hurt the Dallas Convention Center?

Well, aren't you something? To be able to cobble together a bunch of slanderous crap off the top of your head and then plead lack of energy when challenged to provide support for your statements. Are you through now? Do you even have any support for your proposition that a rail line running on Richmond through Afton Oaks will lower the property value you are so proud of? I presume you don't have the energy to gather those fact either. Do you have the energy to explain what exactly your ranting about suburban road ragers have to do with light rail? This is, in fact, generally a friendly board where people exchange ideas and facts and are, for the most part prepared to back up their statements. Try to come up with some facts to support your opinions and statements; we'll look forward to seeing them.

ROFL Not to mention the 3000 foot wide swath of property Metro will take by eminent domain around each of their stations. ;-)

Wow. Talk about stepping all over your argument... ;-) Isn't that just the sort of traffic study you have been complaining about not being provided? Thanks for confirming that they have in fact been provided. And is there really a better way to determine demand or need for a tollway than by how much toll revenue it will generate? But anyway, thanks for confirming that the Northern Alignment Study in fact shows that the Northern Alignment is in fact not feasible. I know you are so clouded by your passion that nothing the Grand Parkway people or their consultants say or do can be accepted as anything less than evil, but there really is nothing at all wrong with routing a toll road based in part on whether the tolls will pay for the road. If you want the Grand Parkway people or the Texas DOT people to take you seriously, you need to get serious.

Thanks RedScare. I was thinking the exact same thing. I look forward to Ag's list of businesses ruined by Metro Rail construction, and sold on the court house steps to Metro cronies. I want names! I'm sure Ag has a long list of names or he/she surely would not have posted such slanderous statements.

Again with the misunderstanding / misreading . . . or is it just misrepresenting? Go back and read what I wrote. "It is not JUST saying that it's a project in the region." Let me try to explain it for you. That means that it is more than JUST a project IN the region. It is indeed in the regions, but it also serves some broader "REGIONAL" transportation needs or goals. As I've said before and as you would see if you looked at The Northern Alignment Study, southern Montgomery County may well need a new east-west highway in that area, but such a highway would serve local transportation needs only, and not the regional needs being addressed by the Grand Parkway. You have clearly made up your mind, the facts and studies be damned. And those evil Grand Parkway people, refusing to hand-deliver traffic studies to you, Pineda, of all people. Have you bothered to look at the Northern Alignment study? (Again, it's on the Grand Parkway website; if they are trying to keep it secret, well, let's just say I'm glad they aren't in charge of national security secrets.) There are traffic counts and projections all over the place, as I believe they are in the DEIS as well. For that matter, have you even looked at the routing for the Northern alignment? It's ridiculous. Come around the northwest edge of the city and when you get close to Pineda's house, take a hard left, go north 10 miles or so past The Woodlands, take a hard right, go east until you're well-clear of Pineda's neighborhood and then another hard right south for ten miles to rejoin the loop around the city. That's more ridiculous than the idea of jogging the University rail line off of Richmond over to Westpark just to avoid Afton Oaks and the few businesses etc along Richmond objecting to the rail line (in a similar way, both Richmond and Westpark alignments would be in the "region." But one cannot say that both options serve regional transportation needs equally well. As a wise member of this board said in another thread: "Scare tactics are cheap and common and often win out over logic and common sence in this city." I hope your 1200 foot r-o-w, no connection to I-45, sound barrier walls are ineffective, etc etc. scare tactics fail. It is my experience that one is likely to have more influence on the results and the final design if one avoids hysterical scare tactics. But you of course will do as you wish.

Now you're really being incoherent. Heck, why not build segment F-2 in Chambers County?... that's part of the region too. It should go without saying that when one says "regional transportation needs" one is not just saying that it's a project in the region. But to answer your question... they aren't going to build F-2 in Montgomery County because the northern alignment does not serve the regional needs that are intended to be addressed by the Grand Parkway project (just as I said earlier and just as the study concluded).... (BTW, that was very clear in my earlier post; this is why I am little skeptical about so much of what you have "heard" from the Grand Parkway representatives. You seem to have a habit of mis-reading or misunderstanding.)

No doubt Pineda is passionate. But "up on their facts?" Is it a fact that the Grand Parkway is planned or seriously likely to have 800-1200-1500 foot R-O-W's, as Pineda has told us on several occasions? Is it a fact that there will be no connection between the end of Segment F-2 and I-45 ("No exits, no ramps, no nothing" in Pineda's words). Is it a fact that the Grand Parkway project east of US 59 is "dead", as Pineda once told us? I could go on, but those examples should make the point. Pineda's presentations of "facts" have been about as reliable as are those of the opponents of rail on Richmond. His (and your) confusion about the purpose of Grand Parkway is mystifying. It could not be more obvious that the primary purpose of the Grand Parkway (and therefore of every segment of the Grand Parkway) is to serve regional transportation needs. Each segment will obviously also serve local transportation needs within that context. They need to locate the segments to adequately and appropriately serve both. Why is that so difficult to understand? I would imagine the evil Grand Parkway people may have said at various times something along the lines of "we are planning/designing segment F-2 to serve local transportation needs." Well, yeah. I would hope they would. Does that mean it is not also (and primarily) planned/designed to serve regional transportation needs? No. The Northern Alignment Feasibility Study concluded very clearly that another new road may be needed in the southern Montgomery County area to serve local transportation needs, but that running Grand Parkway Segment F-2 in that alignment would not serve the regional transportation needs intended to be served by the Grand Parkway project, nor the local transportation needs of the currently-planned alignment. No, I was not at the meeting, so I cannot say for certain how they reported the results of the Northern Alignment Feasibility Study, but I have looked over the study and those are the facts.

You are correct it was the Reliant building. But then Reliant split itself into two separate companies and moved the part named Reliant into the new tower at 1000 Main. The part left in the former Reliant building is CenterPoint, hence it is now the CenterPoint building, or CenterPoint Plaza, or CenterPoint Tower... I don't know what the official name is.

Just FYI, as I type this, the temperature in Tulsa is 101, "feels like" 106. For comparison purposes, the temp in Houston: 91, "feels like" 98.

That is not the equivalent to NCTCOG. The Greater Houston Partnership is the equivalent of a chamber of commerce. And the numbers on the page you linked are strictly US Census Bureau numbers.

The only thing you've proven is that you haven't read the NCTCOG website very carefully (recall your confusion about the number of counties included in their estimates). Yes, indeed, NCTCOG has a methodology for their estimates. Guess what, so does the US Census Bureau, and you can find it on THEIR website. To state that they have a methodology does not even suggest, let alone "make the case", that their estimates are ipso facto better than another set of estimates based on another methodology. Likewise, just having estimates done locally by local people proves nothing. I'm just guessing here, but I think the Census Bureau probably has more resources and more people assigned to the task of population estimates than does the NCTCOG (as well as a good deal more experience). And they also collect information from many of the same sources as does NCTCOG.

So, if I may summarize, you think the Northern Alignment better serves regional and local transportation needs because it is Not In My [your] Back Yard. Did I get that about right? (And by the way, you just sound silly claiming that the GPA first said the the F-2 Segment was being developed for local traffic needs. The whole of Grand Parkway is being developed tp serve the regional mobility needs of metropolitan Houston area; it has always been thus and has been so stated. Local transportation benefits are a happy side-effect. But then we're used to you sounding silly when it comes to the Grand Parkway, e.g. your claims that it will have an 800-1500 foot R-O-W, that it will have no connection with I-45...)

I wasn't disagreeing with you or being argumentative. I was just curious as to your reasoning (I most often find your opinions to be well-reasoned and based on facts, rather than emotion).

Why do you think the F-2 section has the most profit potential?

By the way, the Northern Alignment Feasibility Study is on the Grand Parkway Association's website: Northern Alignment Feasibility Study After looking it over briefly, I think their comments at the hearing sound perfectly "acceptable." That is basically the conclusion the study came to.

Huh? The NCTCOG study that estimates 6,000,000 + covers 16 counties . Look at the link you posted. (And you have not made your case that the NCTCOG watches "closer then U.S. Census." I suspect they use some different criteria and some of the same, gathered from the very same sources)

In your opinion, how would the Northern Alignment serve the regional or local transportation needs better than the F-2 alignments being discussed?

So, you are agreeing then, that it is clearly not the Grand Parkway organization's plan to take an 800-1200 foot R-O-W. That the only way a R-O-W anywhere near such numbers would come into play would be IF no other funding source can be put together, and IF the HCTRA remains uninterested, and IF CINTRA maintains an interest, and IF the state approves CINTRA's participation and IF..., and IF... Quite a string of contingencies that have to play out before there are any condemnations of 800-1200 foot R-O-W's, let alone the 1500 feet you are alarmed about.

It has little to do with studying the numbers "more closely." The NCTCOG numbers are for a different (and larger) geographical area than are the census numbers. Hence the larger population estimate.

No, I was not there. So, it was "brought up." Very slick answer. By whom was it "brought up?" Was it you or one of the other NIMBY's? It strikes me as highly unlikely that the Grand Parkway would have 800-1200 foot R-O-W's when the massive Katy Freeway is confined to something like 500 foot R-O-W's.

Yes, they are. And no doubt this one will be some day too.

Pineda, where do you get the idea of an 800-1200 foot right of way for the Grand Parkway? That cannot possibly be correct. Part of the purpose of the Grand Parkway is to connect to the radial freeways (e.g., I-45). They may have said the Grand Parkway (or Segment F-2) project includes no "direct connectors". That just means you will have to exit Grand Parkway onto a frontage road and then get on the I-45 frontage road to enter I-45, rather than just take a ramp directly from Grand Parkway to I-45. I hate when they do that, but it happens pretty often in Houston. Beltway 8 @ I-45, Beltway 8 @ Eastex for example.

Interesting! Could the hotel be making a comeback?