- California-Based REIT Buys West Loop I, II Office Complex in Bellaire for Undisclosed Amount [Houston Chronicle]
- City Still Looking To Expand ‘Urban Development’ Rules Beyond the Loop; Council Committee To Discuss Changes Next Month [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot]
- TxDOT To Explore Extending 249 to Navasota for Houston-to-College Station Highway [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Galveston Could Get $13.5M in Federal Money To Expand Beaches in Front of Seawall [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Former TGI Friday’s on 290 near Pinemont Gutted, Outfitted with More Than 90 Hi-Def TVs for New Twin Peaks [Eater Houston]
- More Than 1 Year After Ordinance, 33 Restaurants Now Have Dog-Friendly Patios [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Modern Home Tour Stops in Houston on January 26 [PRWeb]
Photo of Allen Pkwy.: Candace Garcia via Swamplot Flickr Pool
I think TXDOT should work on fixing the routes we have between actual cities before thinking about a unneeded route to the middle of nowhere.
Houston and College Station?
Who in the world is commuting to College Station from Houston?
College station is not even in the Houston MSA.
Focus people – focus.
Dag and Craig, people travel to A&M. You know they have a university there? Crazy, huh?
Currently, if people traveling to College Station from Houston would take 290 and then 6. While very few people make this commute daily (though I know there are some), the traffic adds to an already congested highway. Therefore, it does affect Houstonians.
If Harris County Commissioner Jack Cagle is looking for easier access to College Station I suggest he retire and move there. He’s obviously already half way there, and a bit confused about who he represents.
Eiloi-
Talking about a connection to College Station and Texas A&M is a ruse. The real issue is extending 249 so that more “master planned” communities can spread out into the countryside. Whenever you see a new road proposal, look for the developer nearby.
“johnnie football expressway”
Doofus nailed it. Houston has been sprawling out to Magnolia. Ten years ago, there was nothing out that way. Now, there are strip malls with Target, Home Depot and all the other trappings of the burbs. The area is full of cheap land ready to turn into more “____ woods” and “_____ lakes” master planned communities. Good highway access is the only thing missing for the area.
In these lean times, an extension of 249 to College Station seems a bit unreasonable. Let’s focus on the work on 290 before biting off another project. The 290 project will help the flow of traffic to/from the far burbs to not just College Station but Austin. Lest we all forget why 249 was originally put in, “The Compaq Highway.”
Jack Cagle, welcome to Houston and you need to learn to better schedule your time when encountering Houston’s highways, being late to a meeting is no excuse to launch a highway project.
Doofus is spot on. A history of development in far NW Harris County shows developers buy cheap land, then lobby their county officials to build a nice new road nearby. With road access, the land is no longer so cheap.
Sounds like a reasonable plan–so long as it’s a interstate grade toll road so users have to pay for it. And make the speed limit 85 like that new SH 130. The triangulation of 290 or 105 make the route too long currently.
The developer conspiracy theory seems convoluted here. Doofus suggests that new development will occur as a result of the road – ostensibly development that would not have otherwise occurred. Old School says that the area has boomed in the last decade with plenty of shopping options for those residents, and that the freeway is the only thing remaining to complete the picture.
In other words, they are arguing the exact opposite. So blinded by imagining and then railing against a development bogeyman, you guys don’t even realize this.
Sometimes areas with excellent freeway access (e.g., 288 South inside the Beltway) or decent freeway access (e.g., NE Houston inside the Beltway – still not many projects even after the new freeway lanes) aren’t developed.
And sometimes areas without good freeway access develop quickly. The western edge of The Woodlands and neighborhoods to the west of that have poor freeway access, with a trip to the nearest freeway usually taking 20-25 minutes every rush hour every day. They will have poor freeway access long into the future as there are no plans to build a freeway any closer than this – ever. Yet people still moved there!
@eiioi: I guess you are right. All I hear all day from everyone in Houston is about how we really need a direct freeway between our City and a tiny college town so people will not have to deal with the half dozen intersections along Hwy 6 between College Station and 290.
You are right that highway projects have nothing to do with development. The only time I have seen a highway project that was pushed by developers to do sprawl was Beltway 8, Hwy 6, 290, 288, Westpark Tollway, I-10 expansion, and the Grand Parkway. Oh wait, you are right. It was just a crazy coincidence.
@Old School
“You are right that highway projects have nothing to do with development.”
Wow! What a bold statement! Infrastructure improvements/additions and development are correlated?!? Who would’ve thought? And as we all know, correlation = causation.
Just because you don’t know anyone who wants such a highway to be built doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’m willing to bet you don’t know anyone who wanted FM 1488 to be widened or a Kuykendahl underpass of FM 1960, but I assure you that there are many such people. And if it makes you feel better, some of them are also poor, and they are not all evil rich people. As for I-10, if you don’t know at least one commuter who wanted, no, was DESPERATE for added capacity on I-10, you must be living in a cocoon or at least not in Houston before 2008.
Thank you for introducing more examples too. It’s now clear to me that you think every freeway in Houston exists because of some scheme by rich people to get even richer. Are you also suggesting that no (or very few) suburbs would exist outside the Loop, were it not for these greedy developers? Do you believe that the poor plebes have no other chance but to live far out and that a bigger house, a yard, better school districts, etc. have nothing to do with it?
“…no chance…” –> “…no choice…”