Comments on: Off the Rails http://freepresshouston.com/off-the-rails/ FREE PRESS HOUSTON IS NOT ANOTHER NEWSPAPER about arts and music but rather a newspaper put out by artists and musicians. We do not cover it, we are it. Tue, 25 Mar 2024 17:11:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1 By: Raffi http://freepresshouston.com/off-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-165424 Wed, 19 Feb 2024 20:05:38 +0000 http://freepresshouston.com/?p=24447#comment-165424 A good start. Keep digging on this, please. “Cheap pavement” reinforces peoples’ impression that the roads are free; they are not. Road maintenance is extremely expensive and Houston’s excessively wide roads means that maintenance is extremely costly. There is a lot to talk about re: Metro’s funding scheme and political opposition, but the bottom line is this: more highways subsidize people living in suburbs and hollow out Houston’s tax base. It’s suburban sprawl; not urban sprawl (although hard to tell the difference in Houston where most of the city is suburban). Until density is high enough—and Houston is walkable enough—to make not having a car desirable, any number of trains will remain a curiosity and buses will be exclusively for the poor.

Houston has mandatory minimum street widths and parking requirements: get rid of those and buses and rail transit would be more economical.

]]> By: vinsanity http://freepresshouston.com/off-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-165288 Wed, 19 Feb 2024 04:15:56 +0000 http://freepresshouston.com/?p=24447#comment-165288 So…it’s come to this.

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