Houston Strategies: LA's costly transit failure, tech founder picks Houston over Austin, Houston is a food lover's paradise, and more

Monday, March 25, 2019

LA's costly transit failure, tech founder picks Houston over Austin, Houston is a food lover's paradise, and more

This week's items:

Our headline featured news item of the week: LA spends $20 billion on rail transit (along with a supporting 400% sales tax increase!) and gets a 42% ridership *decline* for the cost and trouble (!!). Are you learning this lesson, METRO?...
The Antiplanner analyzes new federal stats on transit's declining importance.
A great quote from a great Chronicle interview with hometown tech entrepreneur Matt Mullenweg of WordPress:

"Q. Houston has made a big push lately - really, yet another push - to become more attractive to start ups and technology businesses. What do you think of that effort?

A. You know I've been all over the world I think Houston is a really special city. It's a great place to live. It's a great place to raise a family. And I think that is important. If you look at the places that people are starting to flock to now - entrepreneurs are fleeing San Francisco and the Bay Area there - they're going to places the great quality of life. And I would put Houston above Austin there.

Houston’s a much more dynamic city. And now I think we have better food, better arts, better music. Austin is great but I think Houston is under-appreciated. And personally, I choose it."

Boston Globe: Houston is a food lover’s paradise:

"For a number of reasons — Houston’s position between Gulf seafood and Texas produce, its long history of overlapping immigrant cultures, and an ever-expanding vastness that has enabled those migrant cultures to settle and thrive — the city has one of the most exciting and undiscovered food cultures in the country. In a state of old traditions, Houston is a city of newcomers. It’s also now the most diverse metropolitan area in the United States.
...
From the looks of Houston — its vast, featureless expanse pockmarked by potholes and parking lots — it’d be easy to mistake it for a whole lot of nothing. But Space City turns out to be a universe unto itself, and the families who have settled here are serving daily lessons in how a city of the future might look — and taste."