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Posted Jun 18, 2016, 4:53 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 583
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Slyfox
Perhaps METRO Rail will keep expanding and people can forgo 610 and just take the rail to work/home around Post Oak ;-)
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Post Oak is getting a METRO bus line!  (if I read the article correctly.)
Does the demographic fit old, dirty, buses? You would think Post Oak would be getting a Rail line instead. Rails are the new thing. Buses have been around for decades. I just don't see it. Who would want to ride in a METRO bus after shopping at Gucci and Hermes? 
Edit: After reading again, it seems like a new hybrid will be developed. The best of both worlds of the bus and light rail systems. This could be cool!
Uptown project begins with tree work
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/n...rst-phase.html
Quote:
The first time Alex Garvin visited Houston, in 1968, the young professor from Yale dismissed the miles of unimproved farmland he saw west of town.
When he returned in 1974 he was astonished to find the Galleria in that same spot.
Fascinated by Houston's potential, Garvin - now one of the nation's top urban planners - has continued to visit periodically, observing the evolution of Post Oak Boulevard and the development around it. He believes Post Oak Boulevard has the potential to become the grandest boulevard in the U.S. over the next 20 years.
"It's not going to happen in a decade," he cautioned.
The next transformation has already begun, to the dismay of some area residents and businesses. Crews are relocating trees in preparation for two years of construction, starting in July.
The Uptown Dedicated Bus Lanes Project will unfold in three phases, moving from north to south and starting with the West Loop to San Felipe segment. Designed to solve the area's crushing mobility problem, the $121.5 million boulevard project is one part of a three-prong plan to make it easier for 80,000 employees to get to work.
"We've done about all we can with the freeway, but we need to improve how automobiles move through the area. We essentially have no commuter bus service," said Uptown Houston District president John Breeding.
The boulevard will be widened from 120 to just over 136 feet. Buses will be moved to central lanes, with landscaping and sleek shelters, replacing the current esplanades. The project preserves six auto traffic lanes and their signalized left turn lanes.
The Uptown TIRZ is contributing $76.5 million and getting $45 million in federal funds for the boulevard. An additional $25 million in TxDot funds and nearly $70 million in federal funds will be spent to tie the boulevard's buses to the Northwest Transit Center and a new Bellaire/Uptown Transit Center that will tap into the Westpark Tollway and the Southwest Freeway HOV lanes.
"We're going to have the level and quality of service that the light rail system has with all the flexibility that the bus system offers," said Uptown Houston District president John Breeding, whose group is also working with Metro to develop a new bus prototype for the boulevard that will be a hybrid of commuter rail vehicles and current buses. Giving the buses their own roadway will reduce travel time along the boulevard by 40 percent, Breeding said.
But his group also wants to create a more walkable environment for growing numbers of residents and visitors in the area.
The district estimates that Uptown's current population of more than 45,000 people will mushroom to more than 69,000 by 2040.
To that end, the sidewalks are being expanded from four to 12 feet and planted with a shady canopy from two rows of new trees.
"If we can get people to walk to lunch, it really does take cars out of the intersections," Breeding said. "We will not be successful just by adding mobility improvements. We have to make it a better place."
Sleek light towers will also make the sidewalks more inviting at night. The boulevard's trademark steel "ring" signage will remain, and its shiny arches will be re-engineered to accommodate the wider sidewalks.
"We don't want you to walk out of a restaurant or an office building and go, 'That's a really great bus street,'" Breeding said. "We want you to think about how beautiful the environment is."
Concerns
Tracy Vaught, who along with husband Hugo Ortega owns the hip and busy restaurant Caracol in the BBVA Compass building, said she and other business owners along the boulevard oppose the project - and not just because two years of construction is bad for their bottom lines.
"I can't comprehend what in the hell they're doing," Vaught said. "Nobody who goes to the businesses on Post Oak rides buses. Why do they have to build this huge platform that's going to divide the street?"
Mickey Graubert, who has lived for 22 years at Four Leaf Towers, one of Uptown's prime high-rises, already walks 15 or 20 minutes to the Galleria to shop and walks to area restaurants for lunch. She's not happy about the pending construction, either.
"I don't think it's necessary. It's going to disrupt business on that street for a long time," she said. "If they had to do something, it would have been better to make the whole boulevard a walking street like you see in some other cities."
Breeding admits the project has one serious shortfall: No bike lanes are included.
"That's an important, emerging issue," he said, calling access for bikes "a holy grail" that couldn't be accommodated, given "the national mood on the widths of thoroughfares." He said the district is developing a master plan that could encourage bike traffic on other streets in the area.
A sample of the sidewalk design has been installed outside the Astoria high-rise in the boulevard's 1400 block, although it is not as leafy-looking as the project renderings.
Many of the boulevard's 350 trees are being relocated through the Houston Parks Department and the non-profit organization Trees for Houston; some of the largest may be lifted and moved only short distances.
Environmental Design, a specialty nursery devoted to tree relocation and transplanting, is tending more than 800 new 'Cathedral' live oaks in its Tomball fields that are destined for the boulevard.
On a steamy morning recently, sun glistened through the leaves of the ten-year old trees that are growing in 400-gallon crates. Jonathan Judice, Environmental Design senior vice president, had one crate made with a glass side so he could monitor the root growth and soil health. This variety has a balanced shape that can be easily pruned up to allow for the passage of vehicles and people underneath, Judice said.
Garvin, the Yale professor, is bullish on Bayou City because he has watched it evolve steadily over decades, and because it's a "city of opportunity" with a large immigrant population, where it's easy for people to do business.
Ultimately cities thrive because of the people in them, Garvin said -"not just the creative class, everybody."
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These two images are what impresses me the most 
The bus stop
The sidewalks
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