Debottlenecking downtown freeways, #2 metro better than #1, commuting trends, rising universities, and more
Lots of smaller items this week:- Aaron Renn over at New Geography has some interesting stats on commuting in America. Some key tidbits:
- NYC dominates with 39% of all the nation's transit commuters.
- Despite many billions of dollars of federally subsidized rail lines, only NYC and DC have had strong transit share growth since 2000. Light rail focused Portland has been completely flat.
- Houston is not in the top 10 for commute times, which is impressive for the 4th largest city in the country.
- Aaron also very kindly reposted my Ultimate Houston Strategy post at his Urbanophile blog, which, unfortunately, brought a few Houston haters out in the comments.
- UH and Rice get top rankings for their entrepreneurship programs.
- Brookings has Houston as the #2 best performing metro in the nation. Strangely, I thought DC would be #1 (your deficit dollars at work), but it turned out to be New Orleans. I guess if you get your economy destroyed by a hurricane, your recovery statistics look pretty good. No thanks, I think we're happy with #2.
- Insightful Douthat op-ed in the NY Times on the economic boom in DC and how that's a bad indicator for the rest of the country.
"...it doesn’t seem like a sign of national health that America’s political capital is suddenly richer than our capitals of manufacturing and technology and finance, or that our leaders are more insulated than ever from the trends buffeting the people they’re supposed to serve."
- Houston gets some nice national press attention.
- The official web site is up on why you should support the Metro referendum on the general mobility program.
- Rice gets another top ranking, this time #4 in the nation. I may be biased here, but Rice is a truly outstanding asset for Houston, and, IMHO, one of the major differentiators between us and DFW.
"Rice is one of only four schools to receive a top-20 ranking in 25 of 26 attributes. Among national universities, Rice is No. 2 for intellectual development, preparation for career success and value for the cost of education, and No. 5 for college experience and overall assessment. In the category “would recommend to a student,” Rice is No. 6. It’s No. 7 for household net worth and No. 8 for overall happiness. It ranks No. 11 for three attributes – friendship development, likelihood the alumni would choose Rice again and the percentage of alumni giving. Rice’s overall rank among 177 universities (national and liberal arts combined) in the guide is No. 4.
...
Last month the Princeton Review’s “The Best 377 Colleges” ranked No.1 for the happiest students in the country for the second year in a row. The 2013 guide also ranked Rice No. 2 for best quality of life, best-run college and students’ love of their school, No. 5 for relations between the city and university and No. 7 for lots of race-class interaction in addition to several other top-20 placements."
- The Chronicle recently ran a story on a study being done to de-bottleneck the freeways around downtown, including the idea of a giant one-way roundabout (!). I discussed a much simpler solution at HAIF: elevate 4 or 6 express I45 lanes over the Pierce elevated. They would have no entrances or exits - they would be express-only lanes through downtown. The existing lanes would act to handle all the exiting/entering traffic. I think they could be plugged in to the very long+wide freeway ramps near Scott Street. I don't think they would necessarily solve all of the problems downtown, but it could be an affordable solution that creates massive improvements. As they say, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good - and I think a perfect solution will be unaffordable in today's TXDoT budget realities.
Labels: economic strategy, economy, education, entrepreneurship, Metro, mobility strategies, NASA, rail, rankings
posted by Tory Gattis @ 6:26 PM
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