Dumping Suburban Water Features; Houston’s Growing Tourism Haul

LAZ Parking on Congress near Austin

Photo of LAZ Parking on Congress near Austin: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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  • Sorry, I think there is a big difference between “tourist” and “visitor”. “Tourist” makes me think of someone on vacation, while “visitor” as someone stopping by on his way to someplace else, or visiting for business and leaving asap. Who on earth would see Houston as a tourist destination?

  • Better kill the bike project, some drivers might be inconvenienced by having to wait at the exit of a parking garage.
    What is this? Soviet Russia?!

  • Seems the only priority in The Woodlands is to build/spend more, and not saving the natural/wooded setting that attracted so many folks to it in the first place.

  • One lane of Lamar can move 800 cars thru in an hour. How many bikes will be using it? What a waste of a lane. They whole reason they opened up that lane at rush hour was to create another lane of traffic, for vehicles. Ridiculous.

  • While I applaud the reduction of water usage, how about we completely do away with the golf courses that dot the landscape? Total wastes of good land and a huge water waster.

  • @CmonMannn: Under Texas law, bicycles are vehicles.

  • @CmonMannn: Under Texas law, bicycles are vehicles.

    Yes, very wasteful inefficient vehicles.

  • @jgriff – You’re saying bicycles are wasteful and inefficient? That’s the opposite of what bicycles are. I think you may be thinking of automobiles.

  • @DynamoChelsea Just because you’re not a golfer doesn’t mean that a course is a “total waste of good land.” I’m not a golfer either but I recognize that often those courses are built on “not good” land that is either flood plain or otherwise unsuitable for development. Moreover, golf course land frequently functions as a tertiary sewage treatment system, being irrigated by treated sewage effluent that is non-potable anyway. So, it’s not really even a waste of water. It’s an example of a developer converting a constraint into an amenity. I can assure you that if it was “good land” that could have been used in another way, most developers would done it.

  • @CmonMann

    Well, it’s probably good that Lamar only averages about 500 cars an hour in total, so removing that lane shouldn’t too negatively influence it.

  • @ DrewJ: 500 vehicles per average hour is actually a pretty respectable number during peak hours. Also, what cross-section of Lamar did you use for your traffic count?

  • @TheNiche
    It’s not DrewJ’s count, its the actual traffic count provided by the city. If you look at the data (link provided in article), then you can see that the average is about 500 for the two busiest sections, Milam to Louisiana and Travis to Milam where all other sections have drastically less cars per hour. At the highest time at the busiest street its 1380 cars per hour. And since there are still going to be 2 lanes (2.5 really since people use the bus lane anyways) the capacity is 1600 per hour. And I disagree that 500 per hour is reasonable. If the light changes every minute, that’s a little more than 8 cars per light, hardly a traffic jam. They picked the least busy street for a reason. Some cars will take other routes but bottom line everyone will get to where they are going. Just now bicyclists will have a little more chance of getting there alive.

  • @ HeyHey: Yeah, I knew that the City maintains multiple traffic counts. That’s why I inquired about which traffic count was used. Sometimes a single block can make all the difference. I wasn’t trying to slam him, necessarily (although I would have if somebody had said that it was a segment in east downtown). It was an inquiry. No need to get testy.

    Also, at 1,380 cars per hour during peak periods, that’s 27 cars per minute. It could be considerably worse, but that’s not light traffic.

  • @TheNiche
    I apologize if I seemed testy. Nothing but sunshine and rainbows in my sky. I agree that there will times of heavy traffic, but think this is the best option for a direct route to DG. And if the city expands dedicated bike lanes, it provides the option of a straight shot at Hermann Park on the ‘East of Main’ and less traveled one-way streets. Or Main itself.