17 Comment

• Eric March 12, 2015 at 9:56 am

  From the article:

  “Very few ride the rail line from the Texas Medical Center to Reliant Stadium, and during the line’s construction it destroyed retail on Main Street.”

  Maybe this was just poorly written, but the rail line from the Texas Medical Center to Reliant Stadium doesn’t go down Main, it goes down Fannin, Braeswood, and Greenbriar. And I don’t believe there was ever much retail along the line there.
• commonsense March 12, 2015 at 10:01 am

  If even HAR admits a drop in sales then it actually dropped twice as much as they say, it will be revised to 3 times as much later. I believe it’s a good thing, the insanity of the last couple of years needs to stop, prices need to pull back to realistic levels backed up by fundamentals not oveszealous flippers and uninformed buyers with unethical realtors.
• GoogleMaster March 12, 2015 at 10:53 am

  About that unhealthy food in the TMC — every time I’m forced to go to the Med Center (my eye doctor’s only office is there), I end up eating at the Salata build-your-own-salad place that’s at the foot of the John O’Quinn tower on Fannin, across from Methodist. Presumably that’s still within the “1,345-acre campus”. I get a salad with just veggies on it, and oil and vinegar dressing. That can’t be TOO unhealthy. Seems to me there are quite a few places to eat along that stretch of the rail line. Perhaps the Houstonia people didn’t look very hard? Oh, what am I thinking, it’s Houstonia, the Houston Press for people who think they have outgrown the Houston Press.
• Texmex01 March 12, 2015 at 12:00 pm

  @commonsense, then HCAD need needs to lower the taxes on those folks caught in the wake of all of the flippers and scum sucking realtors..(not all realtors, just the bad ones)
• Txcon March 12, 2015 at 12:19 pm

  Far be it from me to disagree with Mattress Mack and the guy from Masraff’s, but maybe they should stick to Mackopedics and foie gras.

  Metro’s redline is #3 among US light rail systems in passengers per mile, and has 3x the passengers/mile of Dallas’ vaunted DART system.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems_by_ridership
• lhd March 12, 2015 at 12:57 pm

  Why do they need bus lanes on Post Oak anyway? It doesn’t appear to me that ordinary bus riders can afford to shop or eat there as it is.
• toasty March 12, 2015 at 12:58 pm

  re: dedicated bus lane.
  .
  Since I don’t go to the galleria area except for maybe once a year though, ultimately, I agree with Jimbo Mac that money should be spent elsewhere, and let the galleria area choke on their own miserable traffic situation, don’t waste my money putting something in that they don’t want, no matter how stupid their arguments are.
• HeyHeyHouston March 12, 2015 at 2:53 pm

  @toasty
  Rail takes 10 years to play and 5 years to build (they’ll say 3 but it’s really 5). This is the way it is dealing with ANY metro organization. Please don’t slow down progress, everyone talking about the long terms benefits of BRT in the galleria are just holding back grins thinking about the future rail network.
• GoogleMaster March 12, 2015 at 3:40 pm

  Why do people who complain about bus routes through tony areas always forget about the *employees*? The Afton Oaks maids, the cashier at the fast food joint in the Galleria food court, the guy that sweeps up all the trash the Galleria shoppers leave behind… I ride the #25 Richmond occasionally and I see these regular folks getting off the bus to go to work at Ragin’ Cajun and other places along the route. Sometimes they’ve got a bike on the front of the bus, so either they’re biking the rest of the way to work, or they had to bike from home to get on the bus in the first place.
• Superdave March 12, 2015 at 5:07 pm

  I keep thinking that Republicans have some kind of weird train-phobia. I just got the definition of “phobia” from Wikipedia, and it all makes sense now:

  “In clinical psychology, a phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object [trains] or situation [installation of trains] in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational [blocking all trains everywhere, always]. In the event the phobia cannot be avoided entirely, the sufferer will endure the situation or object with marked distress and significant interference in social or occupational activities.”
• roadchick March 12, 2015 at 5:20 pm

  @GoogleMaster, LOL! I got a one-year subscription to Houstonia, and it makes me sad every time I read it. It’s well-written and visually appealing, but they’re trying to portray a Houston that doesn’t exist, except in their heads or some chamber of commerce wet dream. It’s OK as a guide for new Houstonians, but as a longtime resident, it just makes me wistful for the “real” Houston with all of its imperfections, not some NYC wannabe. Needless to say, I won’t be renewing. ;)
• ZAW March 12, 2015 at 7:24 pm

  Re: Squatters near Sienna Plantation: If I were a neighbor, I’d give up on the Sherriff, and call TDSHS about it.
  .
  If it’s listed as a Group Home, and there are more than 3 people living there, State law says it has to be registered with the Texas Department of State Health Services. And if conditions are as bad as they say – with residents essentially living like squatters, then they should be able to get it officially shut down, even without the owner making a complaint. Worth a try.
• Fernando March 12, 2015 at 7:41 pm

  SuperDave, who says it’s just Republicans who are anti-train? Sure, we all know Culberson is, but there are plenty of Republicans who want mass transit. Open your eyes…
• Htownproud March 12, 2015 at 11:13 pm

  Every time I hear someone talk about the red line being one of the busiest rails in the nation I laugh. As someone that actually rides it to downtown, this statistic is wildly misleading. Yes, from the med center parking lot to the med center is Japan packed. People have to wait for multiple trains. But from the med center to downtown is a differnt story. Getting better, but still not that many business people.
• TheNiche March 13, 2015 at 2:17 am

  The justification for dedicated bus lanes on Post Oak has never been that they’ll be used by upper-crusty types. And it probably won’t be good for retail during construction or immediately thereafter. The thing that justifies it are the office-dwellers who, by and large, don’t have very good P&R service anywhere other than to downtown. In downtown, the P&R system has been incredibly successful in removing cars both from the highway and also from parking garages. This means that office tenants can save money because they do not have to contract for employees’ parking spaces; and that enables the downtown submarket to become relatively more desirable for office tenants than it would be otherwise. Uptown wants in on the action and the dedicated bus lanes are intended to allow them to plug in to to the P&R system. Its a good thing for the region and the office submarket. Shopping center owners will benefit directly and indirectly from a larger office population over the long term — but in the short term, its not surprising to hear their tenants complaining.

  @ Superdave: Autistic people tend to obsess about trains, blah, blah, blah, those people, blah, blah, blah, suck. A reminder that snark can cut both ways, and be insulting to people that genuinely suffer from phobias or autism, and also a reminder that political banter is mostly a distraction from substantive dialogue.

  @ commonsense: I have to agree with you, it’s a cold day in hell when HAR admits to bad news.
• Local Planner March 13, 2015 at 9:47 am

  Thank you Niche, this point about the Uptown BRT seems to always get lost or ignored. The point to give Uptown the same or similar commuter transit service for suburban-living office workers that Downtown has. Sure there’s some other transit users who could benefit, but the primary target is office employees commuting at rush hour, who would be able to take advantage of METRO’s existing Park & Ride / HOT-HOV lane service that bypasses long congested freeway commutes. And in so doing, provide a long term market benefit to the office building owners as you describe.

  If this project were to widen the medians to plant more beautiful landscaping, would there be the same outcry? I doubt it. Never mind that the traffic impacts on Post Oak Boulevard would be exactly the same – minimal or none, other than during construction. But people hear “buses” or “trains” and automatically think that somehow traffic will turn to hell; this project has been designed to avoid exactly that outcome.
• Cody March 16, 2015 at 11:31 am

  Superdave: I’d consider myself “Republican” (though I worry that label has been corrupted by the people in office with that same label). I’m all for increased public transportation and other creative ways to move people around.
  .
  In fact, I’d bet many on the right that view the governments role as one that should be small and focused, feel that public transportation and other projects like that are one of the few things the government should be doing.
  .
  It would be nice if it could be paid for via the government getting out of other projects that it has no business being in. But that’s just a pipe dream…