Urban Socrates adds to Third-Ward rail debate
Houston's expert on everything (including bicycling) makes an appearance today in Rad Sallee's Chronicle coverage of the debate over the rail alignment in the Third Ward:
All three routes that the Metropolitan Transit Authority is studying for the eastern segment of its planned University line pass through the Third Ward, whose residents have long been wary of gentrification.Rice University professor Bob Stein recalls bicycling through the area and seeing signs saying, "My home is not for sale." In the 2003 transit referendum that authorized MetroRail expansion, 43 percent of Third Ward voters turned out, but just 52 percent approved the measure.
Bicylist Stein had to be quite a sight pushing the pedals through the Third Ward while pondering policy issues, almost a contemporary urban Socrates! The signs to which he refers were widespread in the years after the rail referendum, but one sees far fewer of them today. My notion was always that they were a response to speculative developers who were attemping to buy whole blocks of property for expensive townhouse development, and not rail per se, but I am no urban Socrates.
Our amusement at bicyclist Stein's latest appearance aside, Sallee's piece is a good update on the state of affairs in the Third Ward, and well worth reading. It is interesting that METRO not-so-subtly seems to be suggesting to Third-Ward residents that the Westpark/Richmond imbroglio further west could mean no rail for them. Interestingly, METRO didn't tell voters in 2003 that adhering to the Westpark alignment in the METRO Solutions plan could mean no rail through the Third Ward to UH and Texas Southern.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/11/06 09:04 AM | Print | Comments (3)
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