Houston Strategies

Congestion solution, TX Megabus, annexation history, top rankings

Some smaller misc items to share this week:

• Finally!  Luxury inter-city bus company MegaBus is coming to the Texas Triangle, with service from Houston to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Galveston, and New Orleans.  They pick up right at Polk and Travis downtown.  I do think they're making one mistake, though. On the Dallas route, they need a pickup-dropoff point on the far north side (maybe The Woodlands mall or Greenspoint mall?), and on the Austin and San Antonio routes, they need one on the far west side (maybe Katy Mills mall or City Centre?).  People living on that side of town don't want to come all the way downtown to just turn around and go the opposite direction, whether picking up or dropping off.
• On the NYT list of 32 innovations that will change your tomorrow, Houston's biggest need is definitely #6, widespread adaptive cruise control.  Simulations indicate that once 25% of cars have it, congestion could be reduced 20-40%!!  That is an incredible improvement, and imagine what it might be once most cars have it?   Heck, there may even be a national cost-benefit case for the feds requiring it just like they do for the CAFE standards (in terms of time and gas saved).  It's possible to imagine that Houston may have far less traffic congestion by the beginning of the next decade even without much in the way of substantial capacity improvements, which, sadly, may very well be the case with TXDoT's budget straight-jacket.
• Texas dominates the Forbes list of best cities for jobs.  Houston is #2 behind Austin.

Instead of government, the big drivers of growth now appear to be three basic sectors: energy, technology and, most welcome all, manufacturing. Energy-rich Texas cities dominate our list — the state has added some 200,000 generally high-paying oil and gas jobs over the past decade — but Texas is also leading in industrial job growth, technology and services. In first place in our ranking of the 65 largest metropolitan areas is Austin, which has logged strong growth in manufacturing,  technology-related employment and business services. Houston places second, Fort Worth fourth, and Dallas-Plano-Irving sixth. Another energy capital, Oklahoma City, ranks 10th, while resurgent New Orleans-Metairie places 13th among the largest metro areas.

• Houston is the no. 3 city in the U.S. with 25 Fortune 500 companies.
• Houston ranks #8 on cities for new grads.
• Thank God Houston doesn't have to deal with this sort of land-use crap... (hat tip to John)

Finally, embedded below is a pretty cool history of Houston annexation video.  I laughed out loud so hard at the 1836 map note "the freeway network is for reference purposes only - it did not exist at the time."  Revised Houston history: "the Allen Brothers discovered the confluence of 3 bayous and a mysterious network of roads created by an ancient civilization (or aliens?), and decided it seemed like a good place to found a city... even though they recognized the long-term inadequacy of the 290 corridor..."

posted by Tory Gattis @ 9:45 PM