In this episode: Katy Freeway anthill mover, moon-unit coffee, and that robot on the porch.
What’s this special delivery rushing down I-10?
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Tag: Transportation
The advance rail intelligence unit known as Christof Spieler puts together another map showing Metro’s latest plans for the new 2012 lines. What’s changed since last time?
Texas Southern University now has no stop alongside campus. There is a station called “TSU,†but it’s three blocks from campus, on the opposite side of a public housing project. Rice, UH, St. Thomas, and UH Downtown all get excellent connections to the 2012 system, but TSU is getting left out because METRO couldn’t figure out how to work with a neighborhood to get a Wheeler/Ennis route figured out. That’s an unfortunate situation for a university that’s trying to raise its profile.
THE ASTROLOT: HOUSTON’S NEWEST TRANSIT HUB Another scene from the active afterlife of the former theme park: “The 150 acre lot formerly known as Astroworld has been empty for a while, but is expected to be packed on Friday when it will be available for rodeo parking. . . . Lighting towers will be brought in and parts of the property not suitable for parking, such as areas with holes in the ground, will be marked off. There will be entrances along the 610 feeder between Kirby and Fannin and exits off of Belfort. After the rodeo, all entrances will be used as exits so all traffic will flow out of the lot. There are only about 12,000 parking spaces on the actual rodeo site. Officials welcome the new 5,000 space parking opportunity. . . . The lot is not paved and is bumpy, two factors that do not bother some rodeo patrons. . . . ‘We think it’s great that people will be able to cross the bridge and it will bring back memories of when Astroworld was here,’ [Andi Devera of the Fazeli Group, owners of the leasing rights] said. The Astrolot opens this Friday.” [abc13; previously]
Last year Transit Antenna, a 7-person “mobile living experiment,” camped out at Joe Nelson Icet’s Last Organic Outpost, did a little farming, and painted the giant “FARMART” mural at the top of the adjacent Comet rice mill. The group, which travels the country on a city bus converted to run on waste vegetable oil, documented its visit — which included a stint in the Art Car Parade — in a series of website posts.
And not long after the rambling group left its urban campground, Transit Antenna’s Seth Gadsden posted this half-hour documentary the group put together about goings-on at the Emile St. farm and its Fifth Ward neighborhood. An HD version is also available.
It’s now a whole lot easier to figure out how to get around Houston using public transit: Metro routes have at last been embedded in Google Maps. Which means if you use Google to plan a local trip, figuring out how to get there by bus or rail is now as simple as choosing “By public transit” from a dropdown menu. Schedule info is right there too.
So far, the public transit option shows up whenever you use Google Maps to get directions in Houston — or you can start from a separate Google Transit gateway here. Not yet activated for Houston: Google’s Transit Layer, which in other cities lets you see all the routes at once.
Even more convenient: If you can get Google Maps on your mobile phone, you now have access to bus and train directions and schedules there too. Here’s a video demonstrating how that works:
“The LER performed flawlessly in front of the President,” tweets NASA. And so it did, at the very end of the inaugural parade: dropping off a passenger dressed appropriately for the weather — who then walked off with the flag.
Here’s video of the Johnson Space Center’s new Lunar Electric Rover in action yesterday:
Houston’s entry in this morning’s afternoon’s DC inaugural parade is all set! Twittering live, NASA’s Rob Ambrose reports the new JSC-built Lunar Electric Vehicle is in the parade staging area: “LER Looks good.”
And it does! Remember that moon buggy the late-Apollo astronauts rode on the lunar surface? The new moon SUV is ready for the next generation of moon missions . . . or a few parades and photo ops at least:
One of Swamplot’s best tipsters forwards a link to a website featuring lovely renderings of a family of glassy office buildings and blocky parking garages squatting on the former AstroWorld site — along with a rather direct question: “Is this real???”
Well, the Crosswell Torian website is a real website, where the development company proudly presents its AstroWorld tower roundup under the name SouthPointe: “a hundred+ acre, transit-oriented mixed use development.” But a brand-new 13.5-million-sq.-ft. project doesn’t exactly seem tailor-made for today’s cautious real-estate market.
If the SouthPointe design isn’t real, though, it’s a brilliant parody — down to the ultra-generic name and its not-so-silent extra vowel. It expertly answers this question: How might a bunch of suburban developers — some of them from, say, Conroe — make a complete mockery of Houston’s highest profile and best connected redevelopment site?
HIGHER POWERS OF THE HOUSTON-GALVESTON REGION Environmental attorney Jim Blackburn gets religion: “At AA, they told me that that I had to admit that I was powerless over alcohol. They also told me that I needed to acknowledge a ‘higher power’ which was described as a power greater than myself that would provide me with spiritual strength sufficient to give me the ability to change. Well – I fought both concepts, particularly that of a higher power. It seemed like capitulation, that I had to return to the religion within which I was raised and from which I had fled. And then at a meeting one day, a young man said that his higher power was a METRO bus. The METRO bus as a higher power made me smile and it allowed me to loosen up and think more creatively. At this time, I was doing work on Galveston Bay and had a good feeling about the bay, so I chose Galveston Bay as my higher power, a truly life-changing event.” [Blackburn & Carter, via OffCite]
Today’s as good a day as any to highlight the work of YouTube user hcp051000, aka Senior Airman Pan, who has compiled an impressive array of videos documenting the performance of some of this city’s finer vertical conveyances.
What’s it like to ride in these Houston elevators, really? Now you can find out — and shop for your favorite — from behind the comfort of your own computer screen.
Here’s S.A. Pan’s ride in the colorful cab of a Dover elevator at the Kemah Boardwalk Inn Hotel:
Sent in by a reader: Another view of construction along the new MKT/SP Hike and Bike trail meant to connect the Heights to Downtown bikeways. The photo, taken from around here, shows the scene along Spring St. in the First Ward, a couple blocks west of Houston Ave.
- MKT Rails to Trails [Houston Bikeway Program]
- MKT/SP Rails to Trails Map [City of Houston]
- Heights Hike and Bike Trail: Actual Construction Spotted [Swamplot]
The attorney for Lakes of Avalon Village developer Robert A. Hudson is now saying that economic conditions make it “unlikely” that Lennar Homes and J. Patrick Homes will build on homesites in the path of a new proposed route for Segment F2 of the Grand Parkway in Spring.
But there’s no need to give up hope entirely: Lennar and J. Patrick apparently encountered few difficulties building and selling 60 homes sitting on the new highway’s earlier proposed route, in a different portion of the same subdivision. The developer’s stated reluctance to repeat the trick means the homebuilding market must be pretty tough now.
The new route would swing around the homes that have already been built and into not-yet-developed areas of Lakes of Avalon Village and neighboring Willow Trace.
Martin Hajovsky notes progress on the long-promised hike-and-bike trail along Nicholson in the Heights. The path: South from W. 27th to W. 7th, then east to Downtown along the former Katy/MKT railway.
- More bike path construction [Home in the Heights]
- Houston Bikeway Program [City of Houston]
Photo of construction on Nicholson St. between 21st and 22nd Sts.: Martin Hajovsky
Let the Great Katy Freeway Lane Rush begin! More than 5 years and $2.8 billion in the making, West Houston’s new 18-car-wide and rail-free Main Street is at last officially complete — and open for more traffic than ever! The tollway on the four inside “managed lanes” won’t be instituted until April. Until then, those lanes are meant for cars with more than one passenger.
- The Katy’s Grand Re-Opening [Off the Kuff]
- New Katy Fwy. HOV lanes open to drivers [11 News]
- Katy Freeway expansion declared done [Houston Chronicle]
- How to navigate the new Katy [Houston Chronicle]
- Interested in riding the Katy Freeway Managed Lanes? Here’s what you need to know. [HCTRA]
- Katy Freeway Finished As Of Tomorrow [Hair Balls]
- Previously in Swamplot: Katy Freeway Construction: End in Sight
Photo of I-10 West and Sam Houston Tollway interchange: Flickr user Rustypicstx
A few fun — and not-so-fun — sights around town: First, Houston visitor Mike Smith’s photo shows some of the few letters left after Ike’s attack.
More hurricane photo souvenirs below!
