ScrewedUPClickV2's Texas Highway Videos

[Mudkip Orange]

SUCV2 has video'd a *lot* of Texas highways. This is all familiar to me (and probably qwerty too) but I figure considering how many Euros we got on this board, why not?

 

So here's Houston. Every anglo country tries to do sprawl - but NO ONE does sprawl like Houston does sprawl.

 

Downtown is served by three major freeways that all spoke off at about 60 degree angles to each other: 45, 59, and 10

 

 

 

I-10 is currently the largest freeway in the United States. Alas, Toronto still has the title for North America.

 

[Mudkip Orange]

Here's some of the local roads close-in to downtown. This is my stomping grounds (I don't get out to the 'burbs very often except for the occasional date or professional society meeting).

 

 

Quite a few of the main surface streets in HTX are nearly expressways in their own right.

[Mudkip Orange]

35 in San Antonio is an interesting highway. They had a 50's-era depressed four-lane, with constrained right-of-way, so they just stuck an additional six lanes over the top of it. Moses did this in Queens in the 60's, but if you ask me, San Antonio's version is a little more aesthetically pleasing.

 

 

And here's IH-10 from one end of the San Antonio metro to the other. This is a representative cross-section of *every* Texas city; start with empty prairie, first add subdivisions, then mid-rise office parks, then skyscrapers, downtown, skyscrapers, office parks, subdivisions, prairie.

 

All in six minutes (can you see why I love this guy's videos?)

 

[Mudkip Orange]

Of course I can't leave out Dallas (even if I'd like to).

 

This is what it looks like coming in from Houston; development in Dallas is very lopsided, the southside is EMPTY while the northside is a clusterf*** of skyscrapers and condos. The interchange at about 4:50 in is referred to as the "high five" and was the first interchange built in Texas with specific consideration to aesthetics (what we call "context sensitive design"). Since then all new interchanges in Texas incorporate some sort of geometric or artistic motif into the design of the supports and overpasses.

 

 

And this is the DNT (Dallas North Tollway). Basically the only "east coast" style freeway in Texas; where most every TX highway has wide shoulders and long sightlines, the DNT is squeezed into a narrow trench with short "dips" under cross streets. As such it feels a bit more like something you'd find in DC, Philly or NYC.

 

 

Of course once you cross over 635 (at 2:40) it's just like any other Texas highway.

[qwertyaardvark]

can i hear a w00t w00t for houston's highways!

 

Don't get me wrong; I do love trains and do like and am willing to move into a mass transit lifestyle, but Houston was one of the last 2mil+ cities to get any form of non-bus mass transit. (supposedly the rule of thumb for city planners is that when ur city hits 2mil you should get at least some form of tram/light rail) Being born and raised in Houston for 18 years, I grew up taking pride in my driving skills and the roads I rode upon, with Houston's highway system at the height of this pride. I grin like no other when Outsiders from Chi-town, the NYC, LA, et al come to Texas and see how we do mass private transportation and marvel at features unheard elsewhere, but commonplace in the system: 70+mph & 20-30-story-tall on/off ramps, feeder roads, U-turn lanes on said feeder roads at every street that went under the freeway.

 

Alas, I never knew a better transportation system could even be possible till I went to Japan, and hence my astonishment and interest that a system so far on the other end of the spectrum was equal or better in terms of quality of transport than the epitome of American highways. Only time will tell whether Houston can ever develop a mass transit system to meet the needs of this massively sprawled city. I don't think most Houstonians would ride mass transit on a daily basis (since businesses are spread *all over* the place) so I would gradually pull them off cars with Airport/Convention Center/Stadium people-collecting/distributing express trains that go out to suburb park-and-rides. While certainly expensive and ambitious, it would also have more affect than the rather cute light train system that will never reach beyond "downtown" (aka 610 loop, the inner loop; both airports are near the much more massive outer loop, and suburbs outside said massive loop)

 

I'll stop here. I admit Houston transportation chats stir me up wildly, so i will not be offended by any tl;dr's. ^^;;

[Mudkip Orange]

The way I see it Houston's transport system is sort of the inverse of Japan's.

 

Houston is perhaps the zenith of what a city can achieve with auto-based transport, as you put it the feeder roads and U-turns make our freeway system not just a way to get to work, but also the primary shopping district for much of the city. Without the freeway system Houston would, quite literally, break down.

 

Now we're building many light rail lines, and there's plans for even more ambitious systems to connect to them, but the fact is as cool as they are the rail system will never come close to matching the coverage/market penetration of the freeway system for the simple fact that the freeway *is* Houston.

 

On the flipside Japan is definitely the zenith of what has ever been accomplished with rail transportation, at least on planet earth. Rail stations in Japan provide the central organizing principle around which many a Japanese town or suburb is based. Without the trains, Japan in its present form simply couldn't exist.

 

Now Japan is building some fairly kickass expressways, but this is a recent development. The first Tokyo expressways went up in 1964, the first regional freeway later that decade. Some cities in Japan are *just now* getting limited-access highways; the central loop/circulator network in Osaka is still under construction, and in Kyoto it hardly exists at all.

 

By this point Japan has put together a respectable national expressway network, if not with full on highways, with "super two" undivided roads with limited exit and entrance points. This is real competition for the rural lines. But in the cities, the expressway network will never come close to matching the coverage of rail system, for the simple fact that the rail system *is* metropolitan Japan.

[qwertyaardvark]

Ah, much better said. The mass private transportation versus mass public transportation was the spectrum I alluded to in my post, and it truly was a weird feeling growing up in Houstonian, refined and efficient system and viewing the Japanese, much differently done, but just as refined and efficient system.

 

I wholly agree the highway system we've invested in will never be trumped by any other form of transportation, but I must say there are ever slight annoyances in the system that do demand some attention. As mentioned before, the airports and downtown center are not connected, not to mention my 1hr (speeding illegally) drive to Bush Intercon and 30 min (law abiding) drive to Hobby Airport is a bit ridiculous. 1hr is the time spent on the Narita Express and Tokyo Station. 1hr/30mins I would prefer spending relaxing watching the scenery go by. I pity the congregation in Brown that has any majority of participants flying in to either airport.

 

Another concern of mine is the ever deteriorating skill of drivers in Houston. The Houstonian high speed efficient highway system is a two part recipe: a good system, and a good participant. As an out of state college student, I get on average 3-month interval snapshots of the driving behaviors when i get back on break and I can assure you the current state is abysmal and getting worse. I remember my HS days when slow/fast drivers rode in the slow/fast lanes, people used blinkers, and drivers were lenient to let you into the line. In the short 7 years till now, the highways are now outright hostile, irritating, and rude. People, or rather outsiders coming in (as usually evidenced by their license plates or bumper stickers), are *oblivious* to their surroundings and drive like they are in a scene of Tokyo Drift.

 

In no time, the system will grind to a halt as drivers become less efficient at utilizing the highways we build. If there ever were an example of this, look at Atlanta, a similarly built freeway system that has spaghetti junctions and the bunch of freeway expansions to accommodate 7-8 lanes on each side, while no match for the I-10 or our stacks, it provides plenty of space. That is unless people drive so bad that you are constantly braking and the consequent braking causes entire freeways to stop for no reason other than some idiot trying to exit only 500 feet before the ramp and moving over 8 lanes in a couple of seconds. This is also from the same city where driver absurdities go so as low as the driver sticking their left foot out the window to ventilate it. Weekday traffic is a nightmare that lasts from 7-1pm and 3-7pm.  Living there I've learned to simply give up the thought of traveling on the interstate at those times. The interstates can turn into parking lots even on weekends.

 

America builds more roads, but the bad driving habits surpass the benefits of an expanded system and we are still stuck in traffic. A centralized form of transit is far easier to control, predict, and adequately expand. Admittedly, Houston probably would crash face-first-into-floor style if the highways were destroyed, but it is in need of some secondary mass-transit support to keeps the roads at least somewhat useful. A Suburb Park and Ride-Downtown-Airports Express would certainly be a start.

[Mudkip Orange]

I remember my HS days when slow/fast drivers rode in the slow/fast lanes, people used blinkers, and drivers were lenient to let you into the line. In the short 7 years till now, the highways are now outright hostile, irritating, and rude. People, or rather outsiders coming in (as usually evidenced by their license plates or bumper stickers), are *oblivious* to their surroundings and drive like they are in a scene of Tokyo Drift.

 

I wouldn't do 75 in the right lane if other people wouldn't do 60 in the left lane.

 

But on a more serious tip, I'd definitely like to see some better driver training. Driver's ed in the U.S. is abysmal, which is one of the reasons why our freeway speed limits are so low. Texas is noteworthy for having 80mph limits out in the middle of nowhere, but on the Continent 130km/h is the *standard*.

 

You have to figure with a state the size of Texas, but with German-level driver training, we could at least have 85mph as the rural default - if not higher.

[disturbman]

supposedly the rule of thumb for city planners is that when ur city hits 2mil you should get at least some form of tram/light rail.

 

For US planners certainly, everywhere else in the world a 2mil city should at least have several metro lines, tram/light rail lines and suburban lines. I'm not even sure a city like Houston or Dallas could really qualify as a city in the european/asian mindset. They look more like an endless suburb than anything else to me.

 

But well, I was raised in Paris and the urban development paradigm is totally different there. And those car-centric North-American cities just doesn't have the urban feeling I'm use to. For me, they just are a very space consuming and very uneffecient and expensive way of producing "urbanity". Just to compare, Houston has a density of ~1.5k inhabs/km² whereas Paris (and most of its inner suburbs) has a density of ~20k inhabs/km².

[Mudkip Orange]

Yeah, well I'll take the Montrose or the Third Ward over the 4th and 5th arrondissements any day.

 

Interestingly, the densest part of Houston isn't inside the loop. It's the vast blocks of 2- and 3-story garden apartments out by Sharpstown and Bellaire.

[disturbman]

No prob! I prefer the 10th, 11th, 19th and 20th. 

 

Any idea what are the (political, historical, social, economical...) reasons for such a density there?

[Mudkip Orange]

Any idea what are the (political, historical, social, economical...) reasons for such a density there?

 

Short version: Asians. And Mexicans.

 

 

Long version: Developers *vastly* overestimated the demand for apartments during the late 70's/early 80's oil boom, and they constructed mile after mile of mega-complexes covering 40-160 acres each. When oil prices dropped, landlords responded to the huge glut in supply with low prices and lax tenant screening. Entire complexes became controlled by rival gang factions, and Sharpstown soon became the most dangerous area of the city.

 

In 1993 the police swept in and took down all the high-ranking members of the Southwest Cholos, which ended the era of latino gang rule. But by that point, the whites and blacks alike were long gone. Landlords worked with the police to oust tenants with criminal records, leaving mostly new migrants from southeast asia and latin america.

 

The apartments which show up as 20,000 people per square mile, when occupied by first-generation asians or latinos, are of the exact same construction as apartments that show up as ~7,000 people per square mile in other areas, where they're occupied by whites, blacks, and US-born latinos. The difference is that the immigrants crowd whole families into apartments meant for 1 or 2 people.

 

Sharpstown is still pretty ghetto, but Bellaire has remade itself over successive generations to where it's the single largest concentration of asian restaurants, shopping centers, and entertainment anywhere in the south. I've walked into more than one restaurant out there, read the menu, realized there was nothing I could imagine myself eating, and walked back out again. You know it's authentic when it's too ethnic for Mudkip :)

[disturbman]

Thanks for the answer. So at the end, its more a socio-economic phenomenon than anything else.

 

But another question pops to my mind: why on earth did they choose to build so far away of "downtown"? Also, were these complexes reclassified because the "gentry" never wanted to move in? Paris has known a similar phenomenon with a huge urban operation in the 13th. A whole block (or more) saw the construction of mid-rises. It was marketed for medium to high income but those social classes never came and this operation is now housing Paris' first Chinatown (there is three).

[Mudkip Orange]

Also, were these complexes reclassified because the "gentry" never wanted to move in?

 

More like the gentry never existed. During the 70's/early 80's, the oil companies were hiring young professionals by the busload. Those apartments were built in anticipation of demand that would come from continued hiring, demand that never materialized - because when the price of oil dropped, those same companies started laying off, and the net migration of yuppies to Houston ceased entirely for some time.

[Mudkip Orange]

[traindork]

Here's some of the local roads close-in to downtown. This is my stomping grounds (I don't get out to the 'burbs very often except for the occasional date or professional society meeting).

 

 

Quite a few of the main surface streets in HTX are nearly expressways in their own right.

 

Your stomping grounds? I live within a few blocks of the end of this video. This is my drive home.

 

Houston is a very, very, spread out city. You can drive from Galveston to Houston to Conroe, which is about 80 miles, and never feel you're out in the country. Land is relatively cheap and endless, which is why we're so spread out. And yes, we have good freeways. Our 7 1/2 mile light rail "system" is a joke. I keep hearing plans about building commuter rail, but I don't ever see it happening. You'll find me riding mass transit when you can pry the steering wheel of my pickup truck (this IS Texas  ) out of my cold, dead, fingers.