The Overhead Wire: Heeey!!! Houston Gets a FONSI

The Overhead Wire: Heeey!!! Houston Gets a FONSI

"Houston gets into the final design phase for two of its five light rail lines and gets development codes changed to promote pedestrian access to the stations. Not bad for the Texas home of oil industry giants."

Welcome To The Woooorld of Tomooorrrow

METRO APPROVES HISTORIC CONTRACT TO BUILD MORE LIGHT RAIL/CONSTRUCTION BRINGS JOBS TO HOUSTON :

Date: March 4, 2009

METRO's Board of Directors adopted an historic contract today with Parsons Transportation Group to build four more light-rail lines for Houston.

The contract, worth $1.4645 billion, will create 60,000 jobs before the approximately 20 additional miles of light rail are completed.

"These light rail lines, along with the highly successful Main Street line, will serve as the backbone for a regional system that will serve commuters across the entire Metropolitan area, and across county lines, for generations to come," said METRO Board Chairman David S. Wolff. "We are building not just a better transportation system; we are building a better future for all our citizens"

Apprentice to Darth Holden : "Please, please tell me these rail lines are being built over the dead body of Tom DeLay."


By definition. These projects could never had gone forward if he had anything to say about it. I've long been convinced that he got a cut of the highway money.

Hope Is Not A Plan

Atrios:

Nobody Could Have Predicted...That this would be a flawed business model.

Wachovia has been among the banks hardest hit by the ongoing crisis in the mortgage market. Its current problems stem largely from its acquisition of mortgage lender Golden West Financial Corp. in 2006 for roughly $25 billion at the height of the nation's housing boom. With that purchase, Wachovia inherited a deteriorating $122 billion portfolio of Pick-A-Payment loans, Golden West's specialty, which let borrowers skip some payments...

Just like nobody could have predicted that decades of refusing to upgrade and harden Houston's power grid infrastructure would lead to disasterous power failures during hurricane season.

Or allowing every-damn-body to connect to the grid without a recovery plan.

I'm talking to you, Centerpoint.
~

Burning Butt Plugs

racymind brings us a fun story of yet another attempt by Houston Vice to save us from ourselves and out prediliction for latex sex toys.

Naturally corruption, and felony theft is involved.

Increasing Service, Part 2

More on this...

Chronicle Article yesterday.

Atrios notices today.

It's important to realize that it took the better part of 30 years to get the first rail line, only seven miles long, built. It was put on the ballot more times than I can count and the people voted for it every single time, but DeLay, et al, managed to stall it every single time.

It took DeLay getting wacked politically on the state and federal levels to get the project moving forward. Since Mayor White, who is a hugely popular Clintonista, BTW, has been pushing mobility, we've seen a lot of progress. He's also fond of sidewalks, apparently, and changed the city's rules so that new street repairs INCLUDE new sidewalks!

Increasing Service

Houston METRO announced last week that due to increased ridership, they are increasing frequency on the most traveled routes.

They also expect to have FIVE light rail lines in operation by 2012.

Color me impressed at their rapid adaptation to our changing situation.

"...Of the poor and the very poor alike..."

Professor Wagstaff : "Didn't Lisa Simpson describe the city bus as "the transportation choice of the poor and the very poor alike"?

I had a conversation with one of my bus drivers the other day (three each way), and I suggested they look into increasing frequency on the last leg - just talking, of course, drivers have no say.

His opinion was, "there's no increase without an increase in ridership"; my argument, "increase frequency and you'll increase ridership".

I mention all of this because Houston is an interesting case of a love-hate relationship with public transit. I don't know if we have MORE concrete here than anyplace else, but they are increasing I-10 to 18 freaking lanes. At the same time, they've hired George Foreman as a spokesperson to increase ridership.



A situation worth watching.