CPT Challenge Results and Editors Choice
Last week we held a quick design challenge, looking for people to showcase their ideas for cable-propelled transit systems in Houston. We were happy to receive five different entries, which I think is about what I’d hoped for given the short time frame and the requirement that entrants create an image of some kind to illustrate the idea. What exceeded my expectations was the quality of the entries! These are all thoughtful submissions, and picking an editor’s choice was harder than I expected. I did say I’d pick a winner, though…
Editor’s Choice: Memorial City Connector, by Danny DiPaolo
Congratulations to Danny DiPaolo, whose idea to link together the Memorial City area was the best of the bunch. Danny’s idea seems to have all the critical elements recommended by the folks at Gondola Project – it’s short, it only needs a couple stations, and the links between stations can be straight. Moreover, I think Danny is identifying one of the more important emerging hubs in Houston. The Memorial City area is booming, and the private sector is already working to turn this into a walkable urban center. With matching public sector investment to tie it all together, Memorial City could become a showcase of quality development, as well as a great place to live and work.
The Entries
Here are all the entries from the contest, starting with Danny’s. Thank you all for participating, this was a lot of fun!
Categories: think
Tags: cable-propelled transit, competition, Danny DiPaolo, design, transit, transportation, winners
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I think his entry for Memorial City should be altered. The Memorial City terminus should be further south. What the map doesn’t show are three office buildings (Memorial City Plaza 1, 2 & 3; 12, 18, and 14 stories respectively) at the SE corner of Barryknoll and Gessner. It has been conceived that they will one day have a covered pedestrian bridge connecting them to the mall, as the hospital has (I don’t know if that bridge is actually open yet–I don’t think so). What would be great would be if the gondola came down right equidistant between the two pedestrian bridges.
The possibly it might make sense to do a fourth leg from that point to somewhere along Gaylord near Bunker Hill. Why? There is a large apartment complex south of Gaylord, a new 14 story condo being built just north of Gaylord, and the new Cemex office building on Gaylord. Additionally, it looks like further development of that block of land west of Bunker Hill and north of Gaylord is being considered–the owner recently tore down an old small shopping center there. (The owner of pretty much all the property between Bunker Hill and Memorial Hermann south of Gessner is MetroNorth–having a single owner to deal with might make siting the gondola a little easier.)
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Congratulations to everyone on this! I thought it was a pretty interesting exercise and was surprised by the number of responses given the time frame. I’m going to post a link to the results on http://www.gondolaproject.com in the next couple of days.
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[...] I’d like to congratulate Andrew Burleson, Dean Hall and David Morris over at neoHOUSTON for their Cable Propelled Challenge. [...]