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Playing by the Rules
A short thought for today. I read an article on the Chronicle that I found interesting, titled “Blending Elegance and Fast Food.” Here are the most relevant excerpts: Fast-food restaurants in upscale planned communities such as First Colony, Cinco Ranch and The Woodlands shatter some basic assumptions about retailing. Fast-food chains are used to having [...]
The Future of Land Access
Now we have a better understanding of the dearth of federal public lands in Texas, the historical reasons for this dearth and why, in the future this could be a problem. We can now better explore some of potential policies that could provide the public with greater access to public lands. Acquisition of Property The [...]
Access to Nature
Texas is often seen as quintessentially “Western.” The big open spaces and the images of cowboys, cattle and horses abound. Certainly many residents of Texas think of the state in that manner; even when they reside in one of the state’s enormous cities. One needs only to look at the recent Houston Live Stock and [...]
Free-Market Parking
Today I want to take a look at the free-enterprise approach to parking in more detail. Let’s look at why the free-enterprise system makes sense in the first place, then we’ll try to understand why free-market parking solutions would work in Houston. The common-sense argument against parking regulations First, remember that the traffic patterns flowing to [...]
The Pseudo-Science of Parking Ratios
Continuing in our series on the problems with parking ordinances, today I want to look at fundamental problem with parking ratio requirements. Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a local example of the consequences of these poor policies. Because he explains these things better than I ever could hope to, I’m going to quote heavily from [...]
The Economics of Parking
A few days ago, Wendy Siegle asked me a question about the current situation with Houston’s parking ordinance. The gist of her questions was this: What is the real issue with parking in Houston? She observed that the perceived problems seem to be confined to Central Houston, and that different people want different things to [...]
Parking Ordinance Meeting No. 1
This post will be the beginning of a series regarding parking ordinances in general, and the review of its existing ordinances that the City of Houston is currently conducting. I’ll try to provide some reporting and feedback on the meetings I’m able to attend, as well as some background and commentary on the way these [...]
Holes in the Long Tailpipe
Every time I hear someone argue that electrical vehicles (EVs) have no benefit because they only shift the point of pollution from the vehicle to the powerplant, I want to mock that person using the same voice that Eddie Murphy used in Beverly Hills Cop to say, “I’m not falling for the banana in the [...]
Cable-Propelled Challenge
I got some very insightful feedback on my CPT post from Steven Dale, who runs the Gondola Project – the site that was the source of the flurry of conversations about Gondolas that has been echoing through the Houston blogosphere. But more on that in a minute… Steven also proposed an interesting idea – a [...]