Archive for the 'infrastructure' Category
The brilliance of freeway tunnels (part 2 of 2)
Closed Published by Tory Gattis December 13th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesPart 1 here. Reading the paper sparked a couple of my own variant ideas. All of the conceptual cross-sections show two tunnels, but some tunnel concepts contain as many as 8-9 lanes in each one (stacked 2-3 levels high inside the tunnel cross-section…
The brilliance of freeway tunnels (part 1 of 2)
Closed Published by Tory Gattis December 10th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesA few weeks back, Gonzalo Camacho sent me an intimidating 30-page white paper on the tunnel option for expanding the I-45N corridor using some of the newest tunnel-boring technologies from Europe and elsewhere. It took me a while to get around to read…
The last-mile problem with high-speed rail
Closed Published by Tory Gattis December 3rd, 2007 on Houston StrategiesIn a Sunday Chronicle op-ed, Paul Mangelsdorf of Texas Rail Advocates laid out the case for high-speed rail in the Texas Triangle. I have to admit it sounds pretty cool, being whisked between cities at a comfortable 200-mph without most of the hassles…
Digging into the newest congestion numbers
Closed Published by Tory Gattis September 24th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesSo the Texas Transportation Institute at TAMU came out with their 2007 Urban Mobility Report last week. In case you missed the story in the Chronicle, it’s steadily getting worse in Houston, now up to 56 hours of average delay per traveler per year, w…
Kotkin on infrastructure investments
Closed Published by Tory Gattis August 30th, 2007 on Houston StrategiesThe Wall Street Journal opinion page has been featuring Joel Kotkin more frequently lately, the most recent one being on infrastructure underinvestment in American cities, as politicians overfocus on “sexier” investments like stadiums and convention ce…
More on the Houston ULI panel
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesContinuing from my last post on the CHF-ULI panel on Houston’s future, I’d like to cover some more details from the presentation. I’m going to avoid repeating a lot of the detail in their Powerpoint presentation, such as how the visioning process shou…
OK, I’ve finally got some time to pass along some of my notes and thoughts on the Tuesday night land-use forum. I already covered my introduction speech in the previous post. Unfortunately, the Powerpoint presentations do not seem to be posted yet, b…
Canada fights carpools, TX economy and housing holds up, smart grid, and more
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesSome smaller misc items:This is the kind of government regulation run amok that drives me nuts, as Canada beats up on a web site that helps people carpool! I’ve always liked Canada as a country and enjoyed vacations there, although I’ve heard they’re …
Six Federal stimulus infrastructure projects for Houston
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesIn case you missed it as the lead op-ed in Sunday’s Outlook section, and since Chronicle links are notorious for rapid expiration, I posted a complete copy below. It came out of a brainstorming lunch Carroll organized with the three of us and Robin Ho…
State and local transportation issues, part 1
Closed Published by Tory Gattis January 1st, 1970 on Houston StrategiesI spent all day Wednesday at a a statewide conference on “Transportation Infrastructure: Establishing Public Policy Priorities” put on by Texas Lyceum at Reliant Center, with the objective of getting something substantive done at the upcoming legislati…