Posts Tagged ‘ordinance’
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 [...]
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 [...]
A tiny step in the right direction
I was pretty excited to be quoted in the Chronicle two days ago. With regards to the passage of the Transit Corridor Streets ordinance, Mike Snyder reported the following: The changes drew support from real estate organizations including Houstonians for Responsible Growth, which generally resists new development regulation. But others who have followed Houston’s efforts [...]
Update on Transit Corridors
Alright, I’m back from vacation in Alaska, and I have an update to add to my previous post on the proposed Transit Corridor Streets ordinance. First, if you haven’t read it, Christof wrote a very detailed explanation of what the ordinance does and doesn’t do. If you want to understand the nuts and bolts of this [...]
Transit Corridor Streets
There’s been a lot of chatter about the Urban Corridors effort this week. Mike Snyder started things off by providing us an update on the ordinance, and several other bloggers have chimed in about it. Most notably, Cory Crow wrote a pretty scathing rebuke of the idea, though I think he was reacting more to [...]
The value of transit
Today I wanted to take a few minutes to talk through the effect that transit has on cities, and to illustrate one of the least appreciated aspects of the car-only infrastructure system. When land prices are high, there are only two ways to develop that land profitably: you can either charge extremely high rent/sale price, [...]
Will and Won’t
Stemming from the last Houston Reimagined post: “West Gray Streetcar,” there has been a lot of discussion about walking in Houston. I thought I’d add a few of my thoughts on the subject along with a few photos from a trip that I walked today. Today my wife and I went to the Houston Zoo. [...]