Houston Stronger Resiliency Conference Thursday May 31st
I've been working with this organization for a while and am a strong supporter.
This is an absolute no-brainer for Harris County taxpayers: every dollar we approve here has the potential to be matched 9-to-1 by the federal government for desperately needed flood-control infrastructure.
From their press release:
Houston Stronger, a new community advocacy group, will hold a symposium on May 31st at 2:00 p.m. at Houston Community College’s West Houston Institute, 2811 Hayes Road to promote resiliency efforts in the Houston region. Harris County Judge Ed Emmett will kick off the program.
“Many organizations in our region started talking about how our community should respond after Hurricane Harvey,” said John Moody, Chairman of the West Houston Association and one of Houston Stronger’s organizers.
“Houston Stronger formed to bring these different community voices together and ensure that our region is better prepared for the next storm” said Karen Becerra, another Houston Stronger organizer and President of the Houston Chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors.
“Sims Bayou was the only major channel that did not overtop its banks during Hurricane Harvey because of recent improvements. This $390 million investment enabled Sims to handle a 100-year storm event, and the Harris County Flood Control District concluded that the enhancements paid for themselves in Harvey alone,” said Becerra.
A team of engineers volunteering for Houston Stronger estimates the cost to provide 100-year storm protection in all of Harris County’s major watersheds is $35 billion. While the price tag is a large one, investing in infrastructure saves taxpayers’ money in the long run. Two recent studies, including one cited by the Houston Flood Mitigation Consortium, have concluded that government saves over five dollars in services for every dollar it spends on resiliency infrastructure.
Regarding federal funding, Congress has allocated more than $141 billion to help Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and 20 other states address emergency response and resiliency expenses from storms in 2017. In order to be eligible to receive these dollars, local governments are required to provide matching funds.
Harris County has called for and the Governor has approved a special election for August 25 for voter approval on bond funding that would provide the required local match for much-needed flood control projects. The date coincides with the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey.
Houston Stronger estimates that Harris County is likely to need approval for a bond of at least $2.5 billion to receive federal funds to support buyouts, channel improvements, and other resiliency projects to bring 100-year storm protection to the other 21 major watersheds in Harris County. Harris County Budget Officer Bill Jackson estimates that to pay for $2.5 billion in bonds, homeowners could pay as an estimated 5 cents per $100 value in taxes.
For more information about Houston Stronger and to register for the May 31st event go to
houstonstronger.net.
Labels: resilience
The genius of Houston deed restrictions, micro-transit solution to rail fail, tech to end traffic, top rankings and more
My featured item this week is another in
Nolan Gray's excellent series at Market Urbanism on Houston's unique and free market land-use regulation:
The Case for Subsidizing Deed Restrictions, which Houston does with a City legal department enforcing them. Highly recommend reading
the whole thing, but he ends with this great conclusion:
"This is the genius of Houston’s unique system: Let those with strong preferences for tight restrictions have them and the city as a whole can go on operating under a largely liberal land-use regime. There is a valuable lesson here for other cities: when attempting to liberalize land-use regulations, consider strengthening the private (subdivision deed restrictions) and public (stricter local rules subject to local consensus) mechanisms whereby the most powerful opponents of liberalization can simply opt out. Houston figured this out in 1965 and again deployed this strategy to great effect in the 1998 subdivision regulation overhaul. In relationships as in city planning, sometimes you have to give a little to get a little."
Hear hear! Moving on to this week's items:
"In the meantime think about this. What could we have done instead with the $2.2 billion that was spent on light rail? The answer is lots. Like solving most of our flooding problem or resurfacing virtually every street in the street in the City or repairing our dilapidated wastewater system or putting more police officers on the streets or demolishing some of the thousands of dangerous buildings in the City or any one of dozens of other critical priorities facing the City.
The question is not whether light rail is a good thing or not. The question is whether it was the best use of $2.2 billion of taxpayer money. The answer to that question is pretty clearly, “No.”
"According to the American Public Transportation Association, the average speed of rapid rail (a.k.a. heavy rail) is just 20 mph, while the average speed of rapid bus is less than 11 mph.
According to the 2016 National Transit Database, the nation’s fastest heavy-rail line is BART, which averages 35 mph. Atlanta’s is 31 and Washington’s is 27, while New York City subways average just 18 mph. Considering that most transit riders also have to take time getting to and from transit stations, none of these can compete effectively with door-to-door driving, which in San Antonio averages 33 mph."
"For decades, cities have overseen transit monopolies that use heavy infrastructure, fixed routes and set schedules, under the premise that these will spur surrounding growth. And in many cities, they have. But thanks to the rise of the gig economy, workers often find themselves making multiple trips in a given day, and public transit has proven inflexible — unable to get them from point A to point B in a timely manner, or at all. As a result, even densifying cities have seen declining ridership.
Contrast that with private transit, which has grown in success by pursuing “microtransit.” This model stresses malleable routes, on-demand service, smaller vehicles and minimal brick-and-mortar infrastructure. Companies include the bus services Via and Chariot; the ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft; and the bike-share services Zagster and LimeBike. Their flexibility lets them locate where demand exists, rather than counting on populations to come to them.
...
Indeed, these new microtransit companies could increase the flexibility of transit, creating systems that are complicated yet smart, not orderly but dumb."
Finally, building on
last week's post, it turns out that not only does Houston employ more people inside its city limits than larger city Chicago, it even employs more than much larger Los Angeles! Reasons: I'd guess good annexation and multiple major job centers. Again hat tip and graphics credit to George. Click to enlarge.
Labels: autonomous vehicles, commuter rail, congestion pricing, deed restrictions, economy, entrepreneurship, land-use regulation, market urbanism, Metro, mobility strategies, rail, rankings, transit
Solving the Corps' reservoir dirt problem, HTX vs. NYC apts, HTX > Chicago, transit's expensive demise, Houston's hilarious "end of the universe", and more
Before jumping into this week's items, an idea: The Army Corps of Engineers wants to dig out Addicks and Barker reservoirs deeper so they can hold more water, but they're not sure what to do with the dirt. How about using it to elevate the new high-speed rail line to Dallas, which has to be grade-separated anyway? Please pass along if you know anyone with the Corps or Texas Central. Idea credit to Patrick.
Moving on to this week's items:
"Fares paid by riders cover only about a quarter of these costs. That means taxpayers who do not ride transit are spending over $50 billion per year to subsidize those who do. In 2017, trips on transit were less than 1% of the total daily trips taken by Americans. That works out to the 99% of Americans that don't use transit paying about $160 per year for the 1% that do. The value to the 1% who ride transit is about $14,000 per year."
...
But it is clear that we are in the midst of a technological revolution in transportation. The most important thing is that we don't spend a lot of money on inflexible infrastructure. I suspect that in the not too distant future, we are going to look back on our light rail experiment in Houston as the City's worst ever white elephant."
- Houston has more people employed in city limits than Chicago! Hat tip and graphics credit to George. Click to enlarge.
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| Chicago |
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| Houston |
Finally, to end on a little humor: I've actually had this item ready to post for a long time, but
read that Lewis Black was in town last weekend to do some stand-up (
KUHF story link) which reminded me.
Here's his (locally) famous bit about the Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks in River Oaks being the "end of the universe". It's hilarious, and he doesn't even mention the *third* Starbucks next door inside the Barnes and Noble! ;-D
(If the embeded video below fails to play,
go here)
Labels: affordability, autonomous vehicles, economy, high-speed rail, home affordability, infrastructure, market urbanism, mobility strategies, rankings, resilience, smart growth, transit
