Archive for August, 2008
In other news…
Looks like the next hurrication might be starting soon. TranStar is showing the freeways warming up outbound, a combination of Friday, long weekend, and impending doom is sure to empty the town pretty noticably this weekend. Drive safe everyone, be sure to fill up your tank before you sit in the abyss all afternoon!
Houston’s infrastructure and a rare good idea in California
California is slowly moving along with a bill intended to link land use and transportation statewide. The plan basically gives significant incentives to developers for building in planned areas where infrastructure is planned to go, rather than out in the fringe wherever they can find the cheapest land. The package cuts down the regulatory process [...]
A better parking solution
What could be better than a big stack of Ferraris? How about being able to park loads of them in a tiny urban space? Roller coaster extraordinary Stan Checketts is now building automated parking and self-storage systems targeted at urban developers who are ever so crunched to find space for their cars. His company, Boomerang [...]
Grand Parkway Bonanza
First off, new homes being built in the path of the proposed Grand Parkway… (Wrap up from Kuffner) Basically, builders and developers are out there doing their thing right in the way of the proposed Grand Parkway alignment. This begs the question: What the hell is Harris County or the City of Houston doing issuing [...]
Falling behind
Great column on energy efficiency in other parts of the world today, courtesy Thomas Friedman. Here is the key quote: Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way [...]
Markets rally, people wait in line
Yesterday was a good day for the markets, according to the New York Times. Oil dipped below $120 a barrel, which is starting to seem like the ‘panic price’. The Dow was up 331 points at the end of the day. This wavering roller coaster of oil and economy makes me even more interested in [...]
TxDOT structure under review
An interesting article came out a couple weeks ago in the Dallas Morning News, covering the executive structure of TxDOT and whether it should be maintained. Here are the highlights: Behind all the fiery rhetoric aimed at the Texas Department of Transportation at a hearing today, the question hovering over the future of the 14,000-employee [...]