Wondering whatever happened to the competition entries from architects competing for the new Main St. light rail station planned for the block between Capitol and Rusk streets downtown, where the new East End and Southeast Lines cross the existing rail line? After a long silence about the project, Metro board members voted yesterday to scrap the plan for a signature station at that location, and to spend $1.05 million to build a standard canopy there instead.
The winner of the invitation-only competition — which included SHoP Architects, LTL Architects, and Neil Denari from New York as well as Houston’s Interloop—Architecture — was New York and Oslo firm Snøhetta. But who’d have known it?
No Snøhetta for Main St.
You know you’ve thought about Metro. And it just so happens that Metro has been thinking about you: Officials plan to spend the next year and a half imagineering a revamped transit system, almost as though from scratch, and they’ve set up a 15- to 20-minute survey to solicit feedback from folks who actually ride the things. Metro’s Christof Spieler explains to KUHF: “
“I would dispute that the light rail has had any substantive quantitative impact on Houston’s development patterns, except to shuffle around the placement of some developments within a distance of several blocks. (That is to say, for instance, that downtown was destined to pick up a few big highrises over the last decade, but perhaps they were closer to Main rather than Allen Center.)
A lot of people forget that the re-gentrification of the Heights took place over a span of decades — without light rail. The gentrification of 3rd Ward, the East End, and the Near Northside has been ongoing for a shorter period of time, and these neighborhoods simply aren’t as well-located as Rice Military — which also transformed without light rail. I would suggest that these neighborhoods are all destined for gentrification, that it will happen slowly because we’re talking about a huge geographic area — and that it would’ve happened with or without light rail, just as with other neighborhoods.
I might be swayed if it were the case that some meaningful number of people move to Houston because it has light rail, but aside from some extremely narrow subset of people, that strikes me as bullshit. It’s not an effective economic development tool, and certainly not without zoning (which I also oppose).” [
“Light rail has not to date really spurred development around it’s stations because it is not a speedier transit option for people along it’s route. I’m pretty sure you can drive from Main and Bell to Binz just as fast as it would take on LRT, because the trains ride in the street and also stop for cross traffic in some spots. Also, traffic congestion along Main St., or the East End is nowhere near a critical mass that driving becomes something you want to avoid.
Dallas’ DART rail used railway right of ways that took the trains off the street grid, and is able to provide speedy transit down the North Central Expressway corridor. Real estate development followed around the station nodes because people are willing to eat/shop/live close to a station that lets them avoid a terribly congested highway at rush hour.
METRO did own old railroad ROW’s along Westpark and the Katy Freeway, but never had anyone in charge that was willing to develop those ROW’s for rail use. They became concrete highways instead.” [
