Houston Strategies

• Texas declared the best state to make a living in 2015

"While the average annual income in Texas is $45,330, only slightly above the national average, MoneyRates.com says "workers in Texas get good value from those wages." That's due to our below-average cost of living and no state income tax."

• Cool animation showing how home land values have changed across the U.S. in the last 40 years, with California doing particularly scary things.  Hat tip to Phil.
• Neal Meyer crunches the disturbing numbers on METRO's new rail lines:

"Adding all of this early data up, these three new rail lines are attracting only between 10 – 35 percent of their predicted ridership estimates.
...
All of this for some $2.2 billion in local and federal tax money. If you apply the U.S. FTA formulas for grant consideration to current ridership on these three rail lines (total capital cost $2.2 billion, multiplied by 7 percent ($154 million), then add the annual operating expense of these rail lines at roughly $1 million per direction mile for $25 – 30 million in annual operating costs), it would work out to costing somewhere close to $50 every time a new rider boarded along these new rail lines."

Ugh. If that doesn't make you nauseous as a taxpayer, I'm not sure what will.  Let's really hope the bus network redesign implementation and fall semester start at UH and TSU boost the ridership big time...

• Houston No. 2 in America in Income Growth: The Land of $200,000 Salaries?
• Houston ranked the #1 food city in America by Travel + Leisure, and I believe it!  Was browsing my Yelp bookmarks the other day to recommend a place for some out-of-town visitors, and went through 150+ places I've bookmarked just within a couple of miles of Midtown!  If you're curious why Houston has such an amazing restaurant scene vs. other cities, I lay out the reasons here.