Streetsblog Texas – Page 96 – Connecting people to information about how to improve walking, biking, and transit

Today’s Headlines

By Caitlin McNeely | Jan 22, 2016 | No Comments

Bayou Greenways 2020 Project Gets $7.1 Million Infusion From Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Funds (CultureMap)
Add Your Name to the Grassroots Petition to Fund Austin’s Bike and Sidewalk Master Plan
Hundreds Hit the Streets to Count San Antonio’s Homeless Population For One Night (Rivard Report)
Dallas’s Homeless Population Has Been Systematically Under-Counted, Until Now (Dallas Observer)
Read the Twitter Conversation About Roundabouts (or Lack Thereof) in North Texas (@WalkableDFW)
Gensler’s Young Designers Share Innovative Ideas for Houston’s Future Urban Landscape (Houston Chronicle)
Texas Trails and Active Transportation Conference in Houston Coming Up in March

Highway Boondoggles: Texas State Highway 45 Southwest

By Jeff Inglis | Jan 21, 2016 | No Comments

The water pollution control plans for SH 45 allow for oil, grease, and other pollutants resulting from construction and use of the highway to enter the area’s surface water and groundwater. Image: TxDOT In a new report, Highway Boondoggles 2 (the original came out in 2014), U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group teamed up to profile the most [...]

Today’s Headlines

By Caitlin McNeely | Jan 21, 2016 | No Comments

Rawlings: Short-Term Fixes Like Patching 37,656 Potholes Can’t Be Called a Success (Morning News)
A Calendar for Civics and Urbanism in Houston (CD Andrews)
San Antonio Makes ULI’s Top 20 Real Estate Markets to Watch as Houston Drops Off (Rivard Report)
Falling Oil Prices Behind the Drop in Prop 1 Road Funding (Texas Tribune)
Highway Congestion to Ramp Up in Houston as US 290 Interchange Closes for 6 Weeks (Chron)
Take Transit Through Downtown Houston This Weekend, I-10 Is Closing (Houston Chronicle)
10 Worst Suburbs in Houston According to RoadSnacks
Less Parking Critical to Houston Becoming a Transit-Oriented City (HBJ)

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Today’s Headlines

By Jay Blazek Crossley | Jan 20, 2016 | No Comments

Houston Auto Sales May Have Peaked in 2015 Just Above 2007 Peak (Houston Chron)
Houston Area Single Family Home Starts May Have Peaked in 2014, at 2/3 of 2006 Peak (Houston Chron)
DFW Will Allocate > $1B in Road Funds Without Reliable Understanding of Traffic (Morning News)
Comptroller Estimates Prop 1 Transfers at $600M in 2016; $740M in 2017. Sold as $900M/yr (Dick Levine)
People Who Live Near Historic San Antonio Missions Don’t Want People to Live There (Rivard)
Tour de Houston Will Be Sunday, March 20, 2016
Video: First Mobility Houston Discussion on Public Affairs Public Access TV
Housing Works Austin: ADU Code Changes Will Mean More Affordable Housing in Austin
El Paso Comprehensive Bike Plan Meetings Start Thursday, January 21

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What Will It Take for Houston to Eliminate Traffic Deaths?

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 20, 2016 | No Comments

Houston’s traffic fatality rate is more than three times higher than NYC’s, and local advocates are calling for change. Photo: Houston Tomorrow In 2014, 227 people were killed in traffic collisions in Houston. Per capita, that means the city’s streets are more than three times as deadly as New York City’s. Despite the toll, there’s a culture of acceptance surrounding [...]

Highway Boondoggles: Widening I-95 Across Connecticut

By Jeff Inglis | Jan 19, 2016 | No Comments

Bucking the state’s longstanding recommendations, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy says widening I-95 will fix congestion. Photo: Doug Kerr/Flickr via U.S. PIRG Last year Congress passed a multi-year transportation bill. Like previous bills, it gives tens of billions of dollars to states every year to spend with almost no strings attached. How much of this federal funding will state DOTs [...]

Today’s Headlines

By Jay Blazek Crossley | Jan 19, 2016 | No Comments

Study Proposes Bringing Back AMTRAK Service Connecting Houston to Orlando (Lagniappe Weekly)
Over 65,000 Austinites Sign Petition to Remove Ride-hailing Restrictions (MyStatesman)
Dallas Habitat Building Neighborhoods, Not Just Houses, But With Single-Family Houses (Morning News)
Mueller Neighborhood Association Asks City, Metro to Maximize Density (Austin Chron)
Online Meeting on TXDOT Unified Transportation Plan: Ask Them to Dedicate Prop 7 to Complete Streets
USPIRG “Highway Boondoggles 2” Report Highlights Houston’s I-10 Katy Freeway as Bad Policy
Travis County Trying to Bring Diversity, Non-Real Estate Interest POV to CTRMA Board (Austin Monitor)
Up to 70 Apartment Buildings Halted in Houston From Oil Slump (BizJournals)
…While 3,000 Units Being Added to Downtown (Houston Chron)

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via $Houston Tomorrow$

Vision Zero for Houston Report Released

By jay.crossley@houstontomorrow.org | Jan 15, 2016 | No Comments

In 2014, 667 people died on the streets in the Houston region, 227 of them in the City of Houston. We expect to find that there were more deaths than this in 2015. It’s time for the City of Houston to join its large peer cities in making a Vision…

Today’s Headlines

By Jay Blazek Crossley | Jan 15, 2016 | No Comments

City of Galveston Establishes Downtown Parking Policy to Stop Giving It Away, Adding Meters
$65 Million Bridge to Subsidize Driving, Open Up Several Acres of Developable Land (Morning News)
Not One Word in This Story About the Trinity Toll Road Makes a Bit of Sense (Dallas Observer)
Houston Hotel Tears Down Two Early 1900s Downtown Buildings to Add Parking (Swamplot)
Austinites Evenly Split on Whether They Like or Are Scared of Self Driving Cars (TTI)
Today’s the Last Day to Take the I-35 Aesthetics Survey and Tell Them Safety Looks Great

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via $Street Smart$

Dallas Never Tires of Planning to Plan the City’s Future

By Robert Mundinger | Jan 14, 2016 | No Comments

Your new year’s resolutions are dead. It’s January 14, and you’ve already refashioned your new treadmill as a conveyor belt to get food from your kitchen to your couch without getting up. You failed. But that's fine. It happens to everyone. Except probably Ryan Seacrest, it happens to everyone. It's just human nature, which means it's something we all have to overcome. The enthusiasm of making a plan has been lost to the harsh realities of actually making it happen. We see it in our city all the time as well. This year we're going to destroy blight, alleviate poverty, and end chronic homelessness. We enthusiastically attend meetings with fun "action steps" spelled out at the end. But like our new year’s resolutions, that eagerness doesn't survive, and we finish with a low plan-to-action ratio. That's a problem because we've made a lot of plans for the future of our city:

Today’s Headlines

By Caitlin McNeely | Jan 14, 2016 | No Comments

Estimated Cost Triples for U.S. 183 Toll Project in North Austin (Statesman)
Q&A With Capital Metro Transportation Authority’s Linda S. Watson
U.S. 59 Bridges in Midtown Will See the Light (Chron)
Turner: 96% of Potholes Reported to City Last Week Fixed in 24 Hours (Houston Chronicle)
Multiple Interpretations and Possibilities of the Dallas Trinity Parkway (Morning News)
San Antonio Invests $9 Million in East Side Linear Park (Bexar Witness)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

Social Engineering! Cities That Build More Parking Get More Traffic

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 13, 2016 | No Comments

Cities like Hartford that added a lot of parking over the last few decades saw driving rates increase more than in cities where parking volumes stayed flatter. Graph: McCahill/TRB Build parking spaces and they will come — in cars. New research presented this week at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board finds a direct, causal [...]

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