Rankings, urban corridors, managed lanes, and more

A quick pass-along, for those who might be interested in supporting the challenge. Hi Tory - I’m writing because DonorsChoose.org, the country’s most innovative online charity, is kicking off a huge back-to-school campaign for Texas public school students. It’s the first time we’ve done this, and I hope Houston Strategies readers will be a part of it. It’s a simple concept, but it works brilliantly: teachers post request... more

One of the common planning mantras you’ll hear is getting people to live closer to where they work in order to reduce congestion, commutes, and energy use. It’s called "jobs-housing balance", and this article from Seattle based on recently released Census data talks about why it doesn’t seem to work. Only about 40 percent of the workers who live in Redmond — a city where jobs greatly outnumber residents — also work there, according to the Census Bureau. For Tukwila, a... more

I received this link from one of my readers, and it inspires quite a few mixed feelings: Save The Bungalows in Houston (mainly the Heights). Obviously, I have a soft spot for some historic preservation, as witnessed by my recent petition to save the Alabama Theater Bookstop. And I do find the character of the Heights to be charming. But I also appreciate the huge benefits Houston has from no-zoning and flexibly allowing land to get redeveloped into higher value uses. That includ... more

Part 1 here . Reading the paper sparked a couple of my own variant ideas. All of the conceptual cross-sections show two tunnels, but some tunnel concepts contain as many as 8-9 lanes in each one (stacked 2-3 levels high inside the tunnel cross-section). Might we get away with a single tunnel instead of two, since we’re keeping I-45 on the surface? Would that roughly halve the cost? Another variant: a tunnel allows us to think outside of the 45 corridor itself. Is that real... more