- UH To Open New TDECU Stadium This Friday in Game Against UTSA [CBS Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Newmark Homes To Build in New 22-Acre Shadow Ridge Neighborhood Along FM 518 in Pearland [Prime Property]
- New UH Private Dorm The Vue at MacGregor Delayed; 350 Students Living in Temporary Quarters [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- A Buyer Would Need an Annual Salary of $51,782 To Afford a Median-Priced Home in Houston, Finds McAlister [Prime Property]
- Russo’s New York Pizzeria Plans To Open 12 to 13 New Restaurants in Houston Suburbs [Houston Business Journal]
- Up to 16 Derelict Properties Being Demolished This Week Across La Marque [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- City To Convert Lane of Lamar St. Downtown to 2-Way Cycling Route Connected to Buffalo Bayou Trails by October [Houston Chronicle]
- Energy Corridor Carshare Pilot Program Allows Workers To Check Out Vehicles for Short-Term Rentals [Houston Public Media]
- Don Greene, the Houston Environmental Activist Who Fought To Save Buffalo Bayou, Has Died [Houston Chronicle]
- Grant Gordon, Former Tony’s Chef and a Partner at the Forthcoming Edmont, Found Dead [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot]
- J Sussan Interiors at Kirby and Alabama Holding Going-Out-of-Business Sale Starting Tomorrow [Prime Property]
- Immigrants Reshape Houston, America’s Most Diverse Metropolis [Al Jazeera America]
- TxDOT Shelving Proposal To Allow Taller Billboards in Suburban and Rural Areas as a Result of Public Criticism [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of 1625 Alabama St.: Molly Block via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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I’m happy this new bike lane will connect Disco Green to the bayou trail. And I’m happy they’re connecting the Columbia Tap Trail to Disco Green. But we need a better bike connection from Hermann Park to downtown. Columbia Tap has a ton of street crossings, so it’s slow. Also the 3rd Ward can be a little sketchy, like last summer when that gang was mugging bicyclists and stealing their bikes. Either make the Columbia Tap Trail faster and safer, or add steal of these dedicated bike lanes from one of the streets parallel to Fannin.
So, yeah, it’s a little weird when Al Jazeera pauses a moment from hating America to praise one’s wretched high school.
Russo’s is terrrrible. They really shouldn’t be allowed to use “New York” in their name
Re: Lamar Street Bike Lane
City officials once again demonstrated to have an amazing talent either for a lack of coherent urban planning or poor internal communications …. or is it just outright incompetence?
Didn’t the mayor, along with the Downtown Development District, recently recommend taking at least one traffic lane out of Dallas St. (one block south of Lamar) to make it into an enhanced, pedestrian “street mall’ covering essentially the same path as this bike lane? Why take over lanes from both of these major downtown streets …. make one a REAL MALL with limited delivery traffic allowed during off-hours much like Athens, Greece’s Ermou St. or Vienna, Austria’s Stephansplatz or even Denver’s 16th. Come on now, are we going to let even Denver outdo Houston …. this is Texas, right?
Pedestrian mall is not the same as protected bike lanes. These will be useful for commuters and go a long way toward making bicycle commuting seem safer downtown.
I would love to see Caroline or Caroline/Austin become a serious bicycle thoroughfare all the way from Hermann Park through Downtown to the bayou. I know Midtown is actually implementing that from HCC to I-45, but I’d like to see it continued around HCC and south to the park, as well as north though downtown.
@Texasota: Caroline would be great for bikes if they’d fix the pavement on the section just north of the Mexican Consulate, and blast a hole through HCC.
Glad to hear about the new dedicate bike lane. I do agree with the others that you need to connect Hermann Park via Caroline, though. I’ve taken Columbia Tap a number of times and it’s nice having some dedicate space, but it feels like I’m slowing down every 100′ or so to check for traffic at each intersection. The Caroline/Austin route would provide fewer stops signs since the traffic pattern would be directed in a North to South orientation.
Luciaphile, have you regularly read Al Jazeera? It find its article to be a lot more interesting that CNN, MSN, or Fox.
@Memebag
Austin through HCC’s campus is actually being converted into a pedestrian/cycling mall, so that gives us a connection across the campus.
This is great, but we definitely need more than just one street. I would like to see this all over Houston. I think the lanes besides the light rail should be used for bikes and pedestrians only.
The Lamar St bike lane is a good start. Would also like to see some connection between the Heights/MKT trail and the Buffalo Bayou trails. Currently there’s no good way to get there from the end of the MKT trail at UH Downtown.
great news on the dedicated bike lane, awesome news really. Hopefully this is looked at as a pilot and not just a one time deal.
Related to the dedicated bike lanes:
I am far from a traffic engineer but I am consistently surprised at how concentrated the traffic is on a few big streets downtown, particularly at rush hour. I occasionally stop at Phoenicia on my way home from work and on the drive from Enron across town it occurs to me that we could survive without about 25% of the downtown grid. It would be easy to give up one street in each direction to a pedestrian mall/bike lane.
@Angostura I believe that’s happening as well. What I would like to see is north/south connection between MKT and Buffalo Bayou further west, like, say, along Waugh.
Yes HCC is making Austin a pedestrian bicycle corridor which will mean Austin is a complete route from hermann to downtown! So I say north of HCC that Caroline serve southbound bikes and austin serve northbound bikes and then HCC and south just use Austin and should be painted also! And yes main street from Wheeler station to commerce should be closed to cars and make it a grand pedestrian biking mall and that can provide a valuable link to MKT/Heights!
I’m pro-street repairs and pro-driver/cyclist awareness campaign, to hell with bike lanes. If anything, the bus lanes should also be for bikes and for cars making right turns. Creating bike lanes will provide another excuse for a driver hitting a cyclist, “well he wasn’t in the bike lane, so I wasn’t expecting him to be in my way”.
I love seeing Lee High School get it’s due when it comes to diversity – even if it is in Al Jazeera. I really think the diversity at that place is grossly under appreciated. Poly Sci and journalism students at UH and Rice could go to Lee to get first-person accounts of many of the world’s conflicts. For undergrads that would be huge, but do any of them ever do it? And don’t get me started on how standardized testing and “no child left behind” is rigged against schools like Lee….
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On the bikeway link. Better bike connections are needed all over Houston; not just downtown. There’s a box-culvert easement that could link Brays Bayou and Bayland Park for example, to the benefit of both. But so far I think I’m the only one who ever said anything about doing that.
is it state law or just city law that on all roadways under 12-ft wide that bicyclists should be taking the full lane (and not using a 3-ft gutter/death lane)? understand that that would never work on higher speed streets say over 35mph, but in a downtown corridor where you’re usually just travelling from one stoplight to another a bit down the road, would it really be such an impediment to drivers to respect this law?
How many bicyclists would actually be using the dedicated lane and is that number enough to justify it?