Plan to redevelop Buffalo Bayou to be unveiled (Hold Onto Your Wallets Houston!!!)

Houston Chronicle ^ | Sept. 21, 2002, 10:51PM | By MIKE SNYDER

[weegee]

Add to this the $1billion I-10 corridor rail/toll road, $1.3billion in stadiums, a new (obsolete) Olympic shuttle rail line that has disrupted Main Street and shuttered a number of businesses, a new downtown theater for Theater Under The Stars, a concert hall for SFX/Clear Channel...

We've been taken to the cleaners by these crooks (and Ken Lay was one of their ilk who lobbied for the downtown baseball park).

Our roads flood, our schools could be improved. Stop these downtown leeches in their tracks.

[Clemenza]

Houston gets what it deserved for electing Lee Brown to higher office. He was practically RUN OUT OF TOWN here in "liberal" New York when he stepped down as commisioner.

[Ditter]

I agree with all you say, but getting back to this Buffalo Bayou thing, it carries flood water from a huge area. What are they going to do with all that water? They can't build drainage pipes big enough to keep the water level in BB down when we have torrential rains. The idea is insane.

[Lord Basil]

If I remember correctly, the rain water drains from west to east in those bayous (ditches, really). That is, rain water from west of Houston will drain through the city via the bayous. There was significant building west of Houston while I was living there, and I noticed a significant increase in the water flowing through those bayous over the years. I hope they have plans to alleviate that.

I remember one year when Braes Bayou was high, some idiot decided to kayak on it and got stuck under a bridge.

[Ditter]

Didn't Houston have Lee Brown as Chief of Police before you had him as Commissioner? We should have known better. (Actually I did know better, I didn't vote for him).

[Texas_Jarhead]

yea, he was police chief

[Ditter]

I love it when they call him Out of Town Brown, on the radio talk shows.

[Clemenza]

Actually I did know better, I didn't vote for him).

Good for you! Methinks Brown stuffed the ballot box in the welfare wards last election.

What shocked me, however, was how Brown was supported by so many "respectable" Houstonians, particularly in the corporate world, after being disgraced in New York. As far as his term as Police Commissioner is concerned, remember that he was appointed by one-termer David "Men's Room Attendent" Dinkins and that all we heard about him was that he was a "tough military man" who was a great cop in Houston.

[The Duke]

Hey, I say any town that can assign a stylish word such as "bayoo" to the classic phrase "open sewer", and in doing so double and triple the prices of adjacent residential properties, has enough brains to figure out it's own problems!

Seriously, I visit Houston periodically, and must say that the roads around downtown are atrocious. It is a city that very obviously has its priorities screwed up.

[CindyDawg]

taken to the cleaners

Add your Sam Houston toll road. We went to see family in Baytown this weekend. 59 was under construction so we took it. We had to get off shortly after getting on and drive service roads. The traffic was bad and it was light after light. And then we were routed right back on at a pay booth! 5$ and 2 hours to get across. We left the Crosby area about 16 years ago. 59 was still under construction and the ship channel bridge was only supposed to be a toll until paid for. Some things don't seem to have changed. lol

[austinTparty]

ping!

[Diddle E. Squat]

Ah, but you forget that the dowtown-Astroworld ligt-rail line is only the first of many more that are planned, at $40-60 million per mile. At the same time, this bayou plan proposes removing the railroad tracks from the north side of downtown, forever eliminating any chance of implementing commuter rail(faster than the light-rail, and much cheaper at $5-10 million per mile). So in the plans of these geniuses, the taxpayers will pay 4 to 12 times as much to take twice as long to travel to Katy, the airports, Sugarland, Kingwood, Clear Lake, etc. Is anybody really going to ride a light-rail train for 1.5 to 2 hours each way from Katy to their job downtown?

And nowhere have I read any proposed solution to improve the water quality past downtown. Who really wants to stroll along, dine along, or go to a concert surrounded by smelly muddy water with poop and food wrappers floating by? The Riverwalk it ain't.

[weegee]

Hey, I say any town that can assign a stylish word such as "bayoo" to the classic phrase "open sewer",

motto: Houston - the Bayou City.

Sam Houston did not feel honored to have a swamp named after him.

[weegee]

Our toll road is very pricey (and rumor has it that they want to go to EZ tagged cars only).

I abhor the idea of adding 4 toll road lanes to I-10 and a rail line (that will not take people to all of the businesses along I-10, strictly a Katy-Downtown people mover (who must use park and ride facilities to make the thing work, so they still need their cars).

[weegee]

They may be intending to divert the bayou around downtown and leave a cleanwater body downtown.

The Art Guys had a project where they specked out a plan to straighten out the bayou. It consisted of taking a map of the bayou, cutting it apart, and gluing it down so that the bayou was straight.

If downtown congestion is such a problem, why aren't we doing more to encourage major office workspace outside of the downtown region? Naw, makes too much sense. Leave South Main to fester. Sugarland doesn't need any help. Katy? People only live there. < /sarcasm >

[Diddle E. Squat]

Here are some renderings of the proposals. Some of what is proposed could probably be a good investment for the city, even moreso if the flood control element would actually work. There are some attractive features to the plan, but also IMHO some fatal flaws. And remember, a good artist can even make Hillary look attractive in a rendering. Just remember the water quality and floating trash of Buffalo Bayou when viewing those waterside esplanades. Not exactly the Seine.

West of downtown looking east.

Northwest corner of downtown looking east southeast.

North side of downtown looking south.

Northeast side of downtown looking west.

East of downtown looking west southwest.

Further east looking west soutwest. This is currently an industrial area, I believe the bridge in the foreground is Lockwood! "Hmmm, where would I rather see a concert, Woodlands Pavillion, or the Barrio Superfund Bandshell?"

Even closer to the Ship Channel is a defunct sewage treatment plant, which would be turned into a botanical garden(accessible via Clinton Drive and rough neighborhoods).

Same site looking the other direction.

Downtown details.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Actually no. Depending on how the rail line is set up, it could run trains not only directly to downtown, but also direct to the Galleria, The Summit area, with stops all along the Katy freeway corridor. Preserving the ROW for some sort of future rail corridor is smart, even if now is not the time to build rail. After this expansion the Katy will probably never be expanded outward again. Plus that ROW could be converted to bus lanes if that is more cost effective.

[weegee]

As I understand it, toll road and rail would run down the middle of I-10 (like the HOV lane does now). I have not heard of any plans to load passengers from stations/stairwells under the highway.

The rail plan that I liked was the original Whitmire plan (I didn't support much of Whitmire's administration but I did like the original rail plan that Metro head Bob Lanier shouted down -"Houston doesn't need rail"). That rail system linked Houston's 3 downtown districts together (medical center, "downtown", and the Galleria) and had a line that went out to Intercontinental Airport (now Bush Intercontinental Airport). Take care of the out of town visitors first and then combine to the system lines in from the suburban communities.

People heard "heavy rail"/"light rail" and said, "I don't want heavy, give me light". Some people even wanted a subway ignoring the reality that Houston is at sea level and any subway system would flood. The "light rail" line will operate at ground level (and something that people are not considering is that there will forever be wires criss-crossing over our streets to supply the power since there can be no power source below, the dangerous third rail, on a ground level rail line). An elevated rail would have avoided giving up roadway, it would have avoided any collisions between the railcars and other vehicles or pedestrians (several trolly-bus drivers have hit and killed pedestrians that had the right of way downtown). The current main street rail line will not be able to run in 3 inches of rain (which is quite possible with some of our storms).

A bunch of wrong headed plans.

Another example of the downtown property interests that control all downtown redevelopment:

When Mayorbob started crowing that we suddenly needed a commuter rail line, he said that it had to go to Union Station. When that plan went down in flames and we needed a new baseball park, it had to be at Union Station. The development of the ballpark has now entirely precluded any ability to utilize Union Station as a switching house.

These crooks are lining their pockets as Jones, Hoffienz, and others did in a past era in Houston.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Actually I have a different take Lanier's decision to kill rail. At the time it was a smart move, because for the same amount of money as rail would have required he was able to do a lot of street repair and road expansion, AND implement one of the best express bus systems in the country. Yeah, many people don't want to ride the bus, but many others will and do, coming in from Spring, Kingwood, FM 1960, the far ends of Westheimer, etc. And all that road construction made a huge difference, Houston was one of only a couple of metro areas to reduce their congestion level. While all the liberals were screaming that you can't build your way out of congestion, Houston proved them wrong. One of the few things Lanier did right.

I can assure you any rail plan in the Katy Freeway corridor, no matter what mode is proposed, will have plenty of stations with walkway brides over the freeway to side lots, businesses, and apartments.

Metro will unveil a new proposal for a regionwide rail plan later this year. Its likely to be a boondoggle proposing light-rail all over the city, with vague promises of service to the far suburbs fine-printed as 20-30 years out. For far less money they could provide the same service with much less light-rail and commuter rail instead for most of the corridors. Plus there are existing freight railroad lines in most corridors that could add commuter trains relatively cheaply compared to light-rail, which would require a separate right-of-way and electrical lines. But the latter solution wouldn't make near as much money for Lee Brown's developer cronies, nor waste money for expensive toy trains through vote-fraud rich districts. Why serve more commuters with better service(15-30 minutes faster each way than light-rail) when you can pretend to do so and reap oodles of campaign donations?(among other perks)

But more importantly, it is not conclusive that now is the time to start building any rail projects in Houston. Someday it will provide a needed commute alternative, and greatly expanded commuter rail is where Dallas-Fort Worth is headed in the next 30 YEARS.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Bump.