From what I'm hearing, it's mainly going to affect properties between Chartres and St. Emmanuel (I think).
In what way? Eminent domain? The rental is two blocks east. Value going up or down or what? City skyline view going away or what?
That's my understanding. Unfortunately I don't have all the details since I'm not very involved in actual site planning or property development.
I am visiting spain currently and I am amazed by the transportation infastructure here. Just some observations: - multiple modes of transportation to get places...from organized bus lines, metro, commuter rail, scooters, taxi -- i took all (except a scooter of course) and they work well - cars are smaller..way smaller. most people are driving stuff the size of corollas, vw golf etc. Houstonians certainly wont fit in them. also how would you take your kids to soccer practice. smh - lack of parking options force people to look for alternate means of getting there - city streets are barely 1-2 lanes at most with dedicated lanes for biking. EVERYWHERE. not saying all this will work in houston but this ever expanding of roads will eventually reach its limits and this swamp land built on oil money will eventually crumble.
This is mostly an American thing. Bigger. Better. We all need bigger vehicles to haul around the crap we don't really need.
Show me a city as populous as Houston: -in as much space -with a highly effective mass transit system -with relatively cheap real estate. Doesn't really exist. Traffic is terrible in Houston because people choose cheap real estate over location. Effective city planning (co-locating all useful stuff in small area) is basically the opposite of cheap real estate and urban sprawl.
TxDOT welcomes all stupid ideas. And to make matters worse, the freeways get shut down forcing everyone onto the feeder which is also under construction when no/little work is actually being done.
The cost of a bus is a fraction of a train. Look at Post Oak Blvd. Very smart to have the busses instead of the rail way more cost effective
And that BRT on Post Oak is going to be a bust because people prefer rail over buses and it doesn't connect to the current rail system (thanks Afton Oaks!). Also, the initial cost of rail is more (and gets more expensive the longer you wait), but in the long-run it evens out. Not to mention rail is faster and has higher capacities.
I love Spain. However Spain is poor. It is a crumbling country. Spain is so poor that Spaniards have actually been leaving for the wonderful economies in South America. Good luck on waiting for the expansion of roads in Houston to not work. You will likely be dead before that happens.
Who cares if someone likes a train better than a bus. The bus is more cost effective for you know the tax payers who won't be using whatever gets put in. Come on the bus system to the suburbs works great. They are nicer than the city busses and effectively get people the the central business districts
Nah the buses to the suburbs are simply for rush hour commuting only. They only go one direction depending on time of day. There are plenty of people that live in-town (say around 610) but commute to the Energy Corridor or IAH/Greenspoint, or even The Woodlands. What bus system can they use besides slow Metro local buses? There is traffic both ways on many Houston freeways during rush hour, especially the Katy and North Freeways. If it was instead rail, we could access it 18-20+ hours a day and that's either way (outbound or inbound). Imagine if there was a proper rail system in place for the Astros parade for example. All those people coming in via their cars could have instead parked at various PnR lots in the suburbs and taken the train in.
Who the he'll is gonna pay for it? Metro has a .01 sales tax and that is barley enough to subsidize it. Also in Houston you do not get punished for driving your car so who on earth would give up their personal vehicle to reverse commute in no traffic. With Uber and Lyft public transportations only purpose is to get the people who can not afford a personal car or can not afford ride sharing to get from point a to point b Expensive rail in an era of declining ridership is reckless. Continue to improve the bus system
I have been to Spain numerous times and the roads in the cities are that way because there is no other way to do it. Barcelona for example, they are the same roads they had hundreds of years ago, which is why all the buildings are flat faced on the corners. It is like that because back in the day, horse carriages couldn't hang a left or a right without swinging way out to do so. So they built the buildings that way for the horses and carriages. Today, they are just intersections with a **** load of scooters all parked in the area.
Metro diverts a full 25% of it's tax revenue towards "general mobility" payments which is used for roads. If Metro got it's full tax then it would have had enough to pay for several heavy rail lines over the last several decades.
I have to agree this is a problem. I live in the Memorial area and commute to Montrose area, not a terribly long drive, but one that I would avoid if I had a rail option (as compared to 4 different connecting buses). Had Metro stayed with that East/West blue line they were proposing, I would have absolutely gotten on at that Hillcroft station and ridden the rail all the way to Montrose. I cant help but think that if Metro's originally proposed rail plan came through, people would be taking it to work, everyday.
The Post Oak BRT is being put in place only because it's a pre cursor to the "Gold" line LRT. Its design is completely convertible to LRT in the future.
