Tag: Uptown Line

Featured Posts
04/10/14 2:00pm

11 Watercolor Renderings of the 2 Dedicated Bus Lanes and 8 New Stations Planned for Post Oak Blvd.

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Galleria, Proposed Developments, Public Transportation, Streetscapes
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Proposed Dedicated Bus Lanes on Post Oak Blvd., Uptown, Houston

Proposed Dedicated Bus Lanes on Post Oak Blvd., Uptown, Houston

Here are some of the purty watercolor renderings the Uptown District has been presenting of what Post Oak Blvd. will look like after the addition of 2 dedicated bus lanes down its middle. The proposed changes to the thoroughfare won’t take away any of the 6 existing car lanes or 13 existing left-turn-signal lanes. There’ll be a few modifications, though: new protected-left-turn signals will be put in at West Briar Lane and Fairdale, for example, and 3 median openings will be closed. The space for the buses and 8 transit stations along the Boulevard between the West Loop and Richmond Ave will come from acquiring 8 feet of right-of-way from each side of the existing street. The bus lanes and light-rail-style stations will go in the median:

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Uptown Transit
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New Construction
07/02/12 5:07pm

Light Rail Scorecard: 6 Miles Down, 9 To Go, Culberson Blocking Goal

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Proposed Developments, Public Transportation, Quicklink
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LIGHT RAIL SCORECARD: 6 MILES DOWN, 9 TO GO, CULBERSON BLOCKING GOAL Metro says it’s now laid 6 miles of track for the 3 light-rail lines its working on — the new East End and Southeast Lines and the North Line extension. And construction is now under way on 10 of 24 new stations. All is on track for a 2014 opening date, including $200 million of federal funds for 2 of those lines, approved by a vote in the House of Representatives last Friday. Also approved within the same bill, though: Congressman John Culberson’s ban on federal funding for both the Uptown Line and the long-delayed University Line. A House-Senate conference committee will determine if the funding block remains in the bill’s final version. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Metro

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Buying and Selling
02/10/12 3:54pm

Metro Buying Tiny Post Oak Parcel To Use for Uptown Line, Someday

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Galleria, Transportation
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Note: Story corrected below.

Houston’s transit agency is scheduled to close next month on the twice-delayed $550,000 purchase of a 3,589-sq.-ft. strip of land across Post Oak Blvd. from the Waterwall Park — even though the Uptown Line, the light-rail line the land would be used for, isn’t part of its current construction contract, and isn’t even expected to be complete before 2020, according to Metro documents. Negotiated under the real-estate happy regime of Metro’s previous administration, under Metro’s current administration, under an authorization approved by its earlier real-estate-happy board, the contract Metro signed for the property at 3009 Post Oak prohibits the agency from backing out of the purchase — even if its plans or route alignment have changed. But a Metro spokesperson tells Memorial Examiner reporter Michael Reed that the purchase still makes sense, and turns out to be a less expensive option for it than using eminent domain to acquire the parcel later. Going up next door to the site: a 20-story office tower for its owner, the U.S. subsidiary of Swedish development firm Skanska.

Photo: Memorial Examiner

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Financing
03/10/10 9:56pm

Mayor Parker: Maybe We Can’t Build the University or Uptown Light Rail Lines

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Proposed Developments, Public Transportation, Quicklink
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MAYOR PARKER: MAYBE WE CAN’T BUILD THE UNIVERSITY OR UPTOWN LIGHT RAIL LINES Suddenly, 2 of Metro’s 5 planned new light-rail lines are looking a lot less inevitable: “Parker said members of her transition team have ‘drilled down’ into Metro’s finances and she now feels comfortable only with the funding plans of three rail lines: the East End, North and Southeast. Construction on those lines is under way. Parker’s goal is to make sure those three lines are built “very, very rapidly,” she said. The other two, the Uptown and University lines, ‘are lines that I want to see built, but until we can finalize all the numbers, and some of them are still moving, I’m not going to commit to whether that is possible.’” [Houston Chronicle]

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Galleria
03/01/10 10:06am

Post Oak Strip Centers Versus the Uptown Light Rail Plan: The Gathering Storm

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Proposed Developments, Public Transportation, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, Traffic
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At a meeting last week at Kenny & Ziggy’s Deli organized by Jim “Mattress Mack” MacIngvale, owners of businesses located along Post Oak Blvd.’s vast double phalanx of front-loading strip centers — and representatives of a few of their landlords — groused about Metro’s design for the new Uptown Line and prepared for possible battle. The Examiner Newspapers’ Michael Reed first brought attention to a few quirks of the latest design for the Post Oak stretch of the light-rail line late last year: It features 7 stations, 5 gated crossings, and in all close to 2 dozen traffic signals along the 1.7-mile path from Richmond Ave. to the 610 West Loop. It also blocks all instances of that staple of sprawl-style shopping-center development: the non-intersection left turn.

Had Metro been communicating its plans to the property owners? Had the property owners been relaying any information they received from the transit agency to their tenants?

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Eminent Domain
01/20/10 4:13pm

Trimming Uptown Trees and Driveways: Where Metro Is Shopping for Land on Post Oak Blvd.

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Galleria, Proposed Developments, Transportation
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Metro’s most recent street reclassification plan indicates that the transit authority will need a grand total of about 3.2 acres of land on Post Oak Blvd. to squeeze in its new Uptown rail line, reports the River Oaks Examiner‘s Mike Reed.

The most notable target of Metro acquisition efforts will likely be a roughly 14-ft.-wide swath of tree-lined land along the Post Oak edge of the newly minted Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park, pictured above. The Williams Tower immediately to the north is due the same sort of trim, because the Hampton at Post Oak assisted living facility across the street is located much closer to Post Oak.

An even bigger bite would be taken out of the west side of Dillard’s if the current design goes forward: a 29,476-sq.-ft. strip that “would appear to include the ramp leading to the second-story of the garage,” Reed reports. The Galleria itself would lose only 1,019 sq. ft.

There’s a whole lot more in the plan. In all, pieces of 48 separate parcels are on Metro’s Post Oak shopping list so far:

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Galleria
12/11/09 12:03pm

The Lights of Post Oak: Two Dozen Stops Along the Uptown Line

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Proposed Developments, Traffic, Transportation
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Once the new Metro Uptown light-rail line is built, Post Oak Blvd. could feature more than 23 stoplights along its 1.7-mile stretch between Richmond Ave. and the 610 Loop, reports the River Oaks Examiner‘s Mike Reed. A report prepared last October by the group of companies contracted to build the new Uptown Line lists 21 stoplights and 7 stations.

But that information’s got to be out of date, right?

. . . in response to questions, a Metropolitan Transit Authority spokeswoman said Tuesday that since the report was written, the number of potential signals has increased to 23, with an additional traffic light and an additional pedestrian light under consideration.

While the proposals contained in such reports are subject to change, the original document indicates the scope of the project combined with the density and development in the area would make substantial alterations to the plan difficult at best.

Reed also reports a few details on the rebuilding of Post Oak:

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