Tag: Transportation

Downtown
01/19/12 5:04pm

New North Downtown Bikeway Close to Almost Ready To Open

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New Construction, Transportation, Woodland Heights
11 Comments

It looks like large portions of the 2.8-mile-long Heritage West Bikeway connecting Stude Park to UH-Downtown are close to completion, but the path along portions of the former UP railway won’t open until summer, according to the city. One important still-missing link: a pedestrian bridge over Little White Oak Bayou. Past the University, the 10-ft. wide trail will connect to the Heritage East Bikeway, which continues along White Oak Bayou to Lockwood.

The new western portion will hook up with the MKT hike-and-bike trail both at Stude Park and at Spring St., providing an alternate along-the-bayou path for bicyclists headed downtown from the Heights. One highlight of the journey: a close-up view of the 17.3 acres of swampland Hakeem Olajuwon flipped to Metro back in 2005 for a cool $15 million:

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Comments
01/12/12 10:15pm

Comment of the Day: Freedom, Houston Style

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Quicklink, Transportation
17 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: FREEDOM, HOUSTON STYLE “Cars rule!!! And so does Houston. I’ve traveled the world and have friends and family in major metropolises from coast to coast. Those cities are nice to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Nearly every move outside your front door involves some sort of calculus including: time of day; parking availability; parking cost; potential grid lock; cab fare; cab availability; buses schedules; bus fare; bus routes; train routes, train schedules; train fare; the weather; public safety; shoe comfort vs shoe style; umbrellas; rain coats; etc. Call me crazy, but I place a high value on knowing that I can jump in my car 24/7 and drive wherever I want to go with full confidence that there will be ample and usually free parking in very close proximity to my destination. In Houston I go where I want, when I want. Usually with ease. It’s called freedom. . . .” [Bernard, commenting on Comment of the Day: Parking Lot City]

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Bayport
01/10/12 2:01pm

Nobody Wants To Cruise from Bayport

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Pasadena, Quicklink, Transportation
14 Comments

NOBODY WANTS TO CRUISE FROM BAYPORT How’s that effort to bring some actual cruise business — or really, any kind of business — to the Bayport Cruise Terminal going? Not so well. After contacting more than a dozen cruise operators last October, the port authority got no responses. The last and only departures made from the $81 million Pasadena facility, which opened in 2008: a couple of Carnival Cruise Ships shut out of Galveston for a short time after Hurricane Ike. [Bay Area Citizen] Photo: Commercial Care Services

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Memorial Park
11/23/11 11:25am

Getting A Bigger Charge Out of Memorial Park

by
Parks, Transportation, Utilities
7 Comments

A reader who happened upon an outing of Blink stations at Memorial Park sends in this photo evidence that the commercial electric-vehicle chargers are multiplying. Two Blink stations at the nearby Houston Arboretum had been installed by the September 8th rollout of a city-wide drive-electric program. A total of 200 Blink-brand stations are being installed in the Houston area.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Quicklink
09/07/11 11:12pm

More Jolts from Buffalo Grille Coffee

by
Utilities, West University
15 Comments

MORE JOLTS FROM BUFFALO GRILLE COFFEE Now in the H-E-B Buffalo Market parking lot at Buffalo Speedway and Bissonnet, on the site of what used to be the Buffalo Grille: the first in a network of eVgo electric vehicle charging stations to be planted in parking lots around the city. The plug-in spots are right near what used to be the coffee serving area, notes Chronicle energy reporter Tom Fowler. Opening in the next couple of weeks: stations near NRG’s headquarters at the Shops at Houston Center downtown, and in front of 2 Walgreens: at 19710 Holzwarth St. and 8942 W. Sam Houston Pkwy. North. 25 of the Houston-area stations, featuring both 240-volt and the faster 480-volt chargers, are scheduled to open by the end of the year. [Fuel Fix; previously on Swamplot]

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New Construction
07/22/11 12:51pm

Early Driving Tours of Metro’s Next Light Rail Lines

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Transportation
15 Comments

If you can’t wait just those few more years to hop on the new light-rail line serving the East End, this automotive video approximation might tide you over. HAIF poster ricco67’s tracing of the drivable portions of the route from the new Smith St. station on the western edge of Downtown (shared with the new Southeast Line) to the Magnolia Transit Center provides snapshots of construction progress and a steady diet of orange construction barrels. Also available: these shorter tours showing progress on the Southeast Line and the coming extension to the existing North Line:

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Freeways and Toll Roads
06/13/11 9:46am

Full Speed Ahead on the Grand Parkway, with ExxonMobil at 12 O’Clock

by
Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Spring, Springwoods Village, Transportation
7 Comments

FULL SPEED AHEAD ON THE GRAND PARKWAY, WITH EXXONMOBIL AT 12 O’CLOCK A 12.1-mile segment of Houston’s newest and largest ring road, connecting the new ExxonMobil campus to the Tomball Parkway — and eventually to Katy — should be open by 2015, says the executive director of the Grand Parkway Association. TxDOT should start acquiring rights of way along Segment F-2 between Hwy. 249 and I-45 later this year, and construction will likely begin within 2 years, David Gornet tells Nancy Sarnoff. [Houston Chronicle; more info]

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Downtown
05/13/11 12:06pm

Your Guide to Houston’s Crash Hotspots

by
Hazards, Houston Data, Transportation
16 Comments

Texas Watchdog crunched 2009 car-crash data from TXDOT to find the parts of town where wrecks were concentrated. The heatmap above resulted from plotting location information from almost 100,000 Harris County incidents, most of which included exact coordinates. The winners? Two separate sections of Downtown and the intersection of FM 1960 and Hwy. 59 north, near Deerbrook Mall. (One of those Downtown hotspots, centered on Metro’s Main St. headquarters, includes the Pierce Elevated.) Also noteworthy spots for wreckage buffs: 2 sections of the Southwest Freeway — one at the West Loop and the other at Hillcroft.

Downtown also topped Texas Watchdog’s separate breakdowns for accidents involving road rage and collisions involving cellphones. But second- and third-place winners in these categories produced more local champions: Westheimer at Hillcroft, the Galleria area, and 59 at Kirby all ranked highly as sites for road-rage incidents. For cellphone-related accidents, the top areas were Montrose, an area just south of the Galleria and southwest of the 610-59 interchange; and the route from the Johnson Space Center to I-45. The northeastern corner of the 610 Loop at Liberty Rd. won the fatality division outright.

Map showing wreck concentrations: Jennifer Peebles/Texas Watchdog

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Downtown
02/23/11 5:30pm

The Airport Direct Shuttle’s Long Goodbye

by
IAH, Quicklink, Transportation
14 Comments

THE AIRPORT DIRECT SHUTTLE’S LONG GOODBYE After a ride on Metro’s newly discounted but still cold-as-a-meat-locker Downtown-to-IAH shuttle, Texas Watchdog reporter Steve Miller hears from an Airport Direct staffer just how last-ditch an effort last month’s price cut was. The new $4.50 one-way fare has increased revenue only slightly, the staffer reports, “but it will have to do more or the plug will be pulled in June.” In less-direct language, a Metro spokesperson backs up that statement. [Texas Watchdog; previously on Swamplot]

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Downtown
01/24/11 11:15am

$4.50 from Downtown to the Airport

by
Quicklink, Transportation
11 Comments

$4.50 FROM DOWNTOWN TO THE AIRPORT That shuttle service Metro’s been running from Downtown to IAH just got a whole lot cheaper — and added a few stops on the way. The Airport Direct service used to leave from the transit center at 815 Pierce St. with maybe one or 2 passengers a trip and cost $15 one-way ($10 if you could show a valid plane ticket). As of yesterday, the ride now costs $4.50, but stops also at the Main St. Square station and the Four Seasons, Hyatt, and Hilton Americas hotels before heading up the freeway. The transit agency has been losing $1.5 million a year on the every-30-minute service since it was introduced more than 2 years ago. [Houston Chronicle]

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Retail
11/18/10 1:54pm

Wired To Drive: Where Houston’s New Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Will Go

by
Transportation, Utilities
10 Comments

A spokesperson tells Swamplot the map above gives a “pretty good” indication of where you’ll soon be able to find electric-vehicle charging stations in the new eVgo network announced today by NRG Energy. NRG says it will put “convenience” stations in parking lots in front of Best Buy, Spec’s, H-E-B, and 18 Walgreens stores, as well as faster-charging “freedom” stations in various locations along freeways, in shopping and business districts, and in other parking lots around Harris County. The company expects to have 50 Houston stations in place by the middle of next year — 150 by the time the network is complete — but no specific locations have been announced yet. NRG, which owns Reliant Energy, is calling Houston’s eVgo “the nation’s first privately funded, comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem” but the second and third ecosystems shouldn’t be too far behind: The company plans to begin the rollout of similar setups “across Texas” next year. The first Houston stations should be ready to spout electrons in February.

Chargers will come in two flavors:

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Downtown
11/01/10 5:38pm

What Bike Sharing in Houston Might Look Like

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Transportation
57 Comments

Houston sustainability director Laura Spanjian says B-cycle (shown above at Discovery Green earlier today) is just one of the systems the city is considering for its planned bike-sharing project. The city has funding from an EPA “climate showcase” program to install a bike-share kiosk or 2 in yet-to-be-identified locations Downtown — possibly along Buffalo Bayou or near Discovery Green. That first installation would just serve as a demo, says Spanjian. Once it’s in place, the city will look for funding for a more extensive bike-share system. Riders would use a credit card to check out the bikes; rides of half an hour or less would be free.

Photo: Laura Spanjian

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Quicklink
10/27/10 12:26pm

Electric Shuttles Get the Green Light

by
Transportation
2 Comments

ELECTRIC SHUTTLES GET THE GREEN LIGHT A vote by city council today caps the long, strange regulatory journey of Erik Ibarra’s Rev Eco-Shuttle service. Rules passed by the council in August restricted Jitney licenses to vehicles with 9 or more seats, effectively barring Ibarra from licensing any more of his Downtown, Midtown, and Washington Ave electric vehicles. Today’s vote allows the licensing of pedicabs and low-speed vehicles, including any new Rev 6-seaters. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Rev Eco-Shuttle

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Financing
10/21/10 2:58pm

Metro Light Rail Construction Slows to a Crawl

by
Quicklink, Transportation
68 Comments

METRO LIGHT RAIL CONSTRUCTION SLOWS TO A CRAWL More repercussions from Metro’s Spanish-train procurement fiasco and the transit agency’s ensuing budget crisis: This morning CEO George Greanias announced dramatic cutbacks on all new light-rail construction until the future of the project’s federal funding becomes clearer. This year’s expansion budget is being cut by almost 70 percent, but the project is not shutting down completely — because doing so would cost an additional $200 million, Greanias and board chairman Gilbert Garcia said. Left to lope along until the end of the year: Utility work on the North and Southeast Lines, and utility and road work in “select areas” of the East End Line [Hair Balls; previously on Swamplot]

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