You just hate trains. You are the one who used a tragedy to advance your agenda: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/810968.pdf On average there are about 50 pedestrian fatalities a year. Are you afraid of cars? We are lucky to even have the limited light rail. A subway would be significantly more expensive.
We can, it'd just be super expensive. There's tunnels downtown for pedestrians already. Oh I agree. And yeah a subway, while optimal, isn't realistic given the political climate here, unfortunately.
white guilt? So Asians are on bigtexxx's list of approved minorities. Got it. Come to think of it, he might have actually gone to Rice after all- this is the most convincing piece of evidence we've ever seen.
A subway was proposed in the 80s and had voters approved it, it would have been built. Those tunnels were only underwater during Allison, a 100-year flood. There would be a system of pumps to prevent if from flooding under normal rainfall. Like I said, it is certainly possible and was going to happen at one point, but it is just really expensive.
I always thought Houston was a great candidate for elevated rail. Of course, the anti-rail lobby would never approve of the amount of funding that would take, thus we end up with the ground level light rail we have today that isn't nearly as effective or efficient. This is the age old tactic of starving organizations of funding to the point they can no longer function, anti-rail lobby then points and says "I told you so" and "let's get rid of it", thus social progress is once again halted by the self-interested and the short-sighted, ad infinitum.
The reason we don't have elevated rail is that Mayor Kathy Whitmire, a Democrat, was for it; so the the Republicans including the future Mayor Bob had to come out against it and ridicule it as a campaign issue. Then of course, Mayor Bob, with his real estate buddies, cooked up a plan to use federal monies to pump up the value of the land they controlled in Midtown. It would make a good book if some one would write it. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/154199/HOUSTON-TO-COPY-DISNEY-MONORAIL.html?pg=all http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/...of-conflict-houstons-transit-system-advances/ Tom Delay: http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...JVHAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Sn8MAAAAIBAJ&pg=1007,5698641 Two party politics suck. http://blog.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/2008/10/when-monorail-came-to-houston/
I am from New Zealand, so at first glance at this thread I was like.."Oh a crash in Houston, extremely sad but at the end of the day its someone on the other side of the world who probably is extremely distant from me". But guess what, next minute I log into Facebook and all these condolences and dedications are being written about this girl. It turns out she is a friend's friend and she had grown up here in Auckland and went to a nearby school. Crazy. and what a small world it is. never thought some crash victim in Houston would actually be linked to someone in New Zealand. Back to the original topic -- I feel extremely sad for this beautiful girl and her family. She is extremely talented; my friend who was very close to her in high school (they were high school classmates) described her as an amazing girl who is extremely talented, a vivacious personality, academically successful, intellectually brilliant, and was extremely nice and lit up the lives of all those around her. She has so much going for her. Truly a sad loss of an amazing young woman. My prayers are with her and her family.
