28 February 2007
Chron reports record ridership for the Danger Train
The Chronicle reports that the Danger Train saw record ridership on Tuesday:
Metro set a weekday record Tuesday with 56,388 passenger boardings on MetroRail.
Many of the passengers were attending opening night of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
Tuesday was the highest, single-day weekday total in MetroRail's history, surpassing last Friday's single-day weekday total of 54,193 passenger boardings, according to Metro.
Tuesday's record was exceeded only by Super Bowl XXXVIII on Sunday, Feb.1, 2004, when MetroRail saw 61,005 passenger boardings.
It will be interesting to see if February year-on-year ticket vending machine revenues for METRO rail show any sort of increase, or continue the declines. It would be nice (it might even be considered a public service!) if the area's newspaper of record printed those figures regularly, since they are an important indicator of the health of METRO's services. Oh well, at least the Chronicle has D.C. and Middle East bureaus!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/28/07 09:10 PM |
Will the downtown Pavilions overshadow the moats of urine?
Some local bloggers have either heavily blockquoted news copy or rewritten press copy on the big groundbreaking of the Houston pavilions, but Jennifer Ringwald (of Houston's finest cover band) has a more unique take on the big project. Here are some fun excerpts:
AND THERE'S STILL NO GROCERY STORE or market or really anywhere to get a jug of milk and a banana (I don't count the stores where you have to cross a moat of urine just to get in the door).
and
I'll check out the shops when they're done, if they are open after work hours, which most downtown places are not, and if I don't have to walk over any sleeping bodies to get inside. I doubt I'll really use any of those stores, but I am kind of excited about the bowling lanes.
Too fun! The entire post is here.
Cory Crow posts a reaction to the groundbreaking here.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/28/07 08:42 PM |
Breaking news you CAN get elsewhere (02-28-2007 edition)
The Chron.com Froot Loop Bureau checked in early this morning with copy written from TWO local TV stations!
Firefighters battled two blazes in the Houston area early this morning, according to televised reports from KTRK (Channel 13) and KHOU (Channel 11).
The first fire broke out at a paint booth at the Goodman Air Conditioning plant at 6800 Overmeyer in northwest Houston. HazMat crews were called to the plant as a precaution.
There was no serious threat to the facility and employees were allowed to return to work.
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the blaze.
A second blaze engulfed a warehouse at the 9000 block of Boone at Alief on the city's southwest side. Firefighters reported to the scene around 4:30 a.m., and witnesses told authorities that they heard several explosions from the area.
The inferno was extinguished, and authorities are still investigating what caused the fire and what was housed in the building. No injures were reported and the building was a total lost.
The other TV stations must feel so left out!
Strangely, the story of the two fires written from TV news reports has now been replaced with the Chronicle's own story about only one fire.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/28/07 07:33 AM |
27 February 2007
KHOU: HPD cracks down on handicapped parking abuse
KHOU-11's Rucks Russell reports that HPD cracked down today on people caught abusing handicapped parking placards:
“They’re trying to save a few dollars by not having to pay for parking,” HPD Sgt. Mike Lundholm said.
And it’s not just pocket change they’re saving. Officials say violators are costing the city close to $2 million a year, not to mention the hardship they cause for the people who really are disabled.
In fact, most of the drivers confronted by police checked out – the numbers on their placards matching their drivers licenses.
But police had a warning for those who choose to ignore the law.
“We’re gonna be out here, looking and watching,” Lundholm said.
Good!
Cracking down on people truly abusing the handicapped parking permits makes a lot more sense than an earlier scheme concocted by parking busybody Lilianna Rambo.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/27/07 10:45 PM |
City of Houston Agenda 2-27-07
Events have conspired to keep me from doing a full post on the agenda for the second week in a row, but I managed the time for a brief post. Thanks to Matt Stiles of the Chronicle for his work in making the agenda backup available online to all citizens! The devil is in the details, and this is where the details are to be found.
In his weekly agenda post, he mentions that the file wasn't complete, and some items were missing from the copy he had. When access was finally opened up today, those items had been added. Since he didn't have a chance to cover them, and I'm short on time, I'm just going to cover those three this week.
Posted by Ubu Roi @ 02/27/07 08:37 PM |
Former talk radio host sentenced to jail
KPRC-2 reports that former local talk radio host Jon Matthews was sentenced to jail today:
A former Houston radio talk show host will spend three years in prison after he violated his probation for an indecency with a child conviction, KPRC Local 2 reported.
Jon Matthews pleaded guilty in August 2004 to indecency with a child by exposure after he exposed himself to a neighbor's 11-year-old daughter. He received a seven-year probated sentence.The Fort Bend County district attorney's office said Matthews violated his probation in several ways -- excessive drinking, not completing a counseling program, using the Internet in a manner inconsistent with conditions of his probation and getting within 1,000 feet of a school.
Matthews did not dispute the claims in court.
The man obviously needs help, and here's hoping he finds it. But at a minimum, he needed to be off the streets.
RELATED COVERAGE: Chronicle.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/27/07 12:39 PM |
26 February 2007
METRO still hopes to collect from Siemens for stray current expenses
The Chronicle's Rad Sallee today reports METRO's response to a letter from Siemens (noted in this post from last week) rejecting METRO's insistence that the contractor reimburse METRO work related to the ongoing stray-current problem:
Despite receiving a refusal letter, Metro says it still intends to collect from the prime contractor on its MetroRail Red Line for the cost of efforts to prevent electrical current from leaking into the ground from the tracks.
In August, the Metropolitan Transit Authority billed Siemens Transportation Systems Inc. $917,400 for monitoring by Metro staff, pay to consultants and various tests related to the stray current problem from May 2005 to June 2006.
[snip]
As for who pays, Siemens spokeswoman Xanthi Pinkerton said, "Basically we are still in negotiations with Metro," and Metro spokeswoman Raequel Roberts said the talks "aren't even close to being final."
"To say they are not paying based on one letter is like calling a baseball game in the middle of the fifth inning," Roberts said.
Perhaps, but that letter from Siemens suggests that METRO is about as likely to receive full payment of $900,000 from the "bill" it sent Siemens as Wayne Graham's Rice Owls giving up a nine-run lead in the ninth inning to Sam Houston State! It's probably not going to happen (but if it does, we'll admit we were wrong).
Still, it's nice that the transit organization's PR pro could respond so rapidly to press/blog questions about that letter. It would be great if they could respond to public information requests so enthusiastically!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/26/07 10:24 PM |
Someone set up Councilmember Johnson a Google Calendar reminder
Apparently, Councilmember Jarvis Johnson likes to use Chronicle reporter Matt Stiles as his own reminder service.
As the reporter notes on the Newswatch: City Hall blog, he's twice reported that Johnson has been late filing his campaign spending reports (doing so only after inquiries from the Chronicle). The councilmember has also declined to discuss the matter with reporters.
As Stiles notes, it's even stranger behavior since Councilmember Johnson has spent a trivial amount of money compared to his colleagues. But it's apparently something Johnson doesn't want to discuss.
Oh well -- at least Stiles serves up the councilmember regular reminders of the legal requirement to file the campaign finance reports.
UPDATE (02-27-2007): Matt Stiles' report appears in the Chronicle today.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/26/07 09:19 PM |
Breaking news you CAN get elsewhere (02-26-2007 edition)
The Chron.com Froot Loop Bureau checks in with this rewrite of a report from KTRK-13 this morning:
A man was stabbed after getting into a fight with another man overnight in east Houston, according to a report by KTRK (Channel 13).
Authorities gave a reporter this account: Police say the two men began arguing nightclub on Maxey near Fleming when one of them pulled out a knife and stabbed the other in the stomach.
The victim was rushed to the hospital in serious condition.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/26/07 07:51 AM |
25 February 2007
Short yellow light times stop Lubbock's red light cameras
The Newspaper.com points to a news story about Lubbock postponing installation of red light cameras after a local news outlet discovered yellow light times at intersections scheduled to receive cameras were a tad on the short side.
Back when cameras were up for debate (I use that term loosely) in Houston, concern about yellow light times was brought up by a couple of city councilmembers. Mayor White made soothing noises about looking into the issue, but then said he wasn't too eager to lengthen yellow light times because it would reduce mobility.
Perhaps one of our fine local TV news investigative teams could check out yellow light times at Houston intersections with red light cameras.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/25/07 04:44 PM |
Houston's water meters continue to malfunction
The ongoing saga of the city's unreliable water meters continues as KHOU-11 reported last week:
“When you open up the bill and it’s nearly $3,000, it’s quite a shock,” Dwight Cook said.
Cook’s January bill was, in fact, $3,000. The month before it was $34.
Naturally, he called the city. They said he had been underpaying since 2005, and this was his backpayment.
“They essentially told me they had not taken a meter reading in the past two and a half years,” Cook said.
The city had been averaging his bills.
[snip]
In fact, 11 News learned this is all part of a much bigger problem – public works tells us it has impacted nearly one in every four water meters.
In 1999, the city began adding radio encoders to all meters so they could be read remotely and quickly. They should last eight years, but starting failing after just two years.
The city contracted Itron, the vendor, which replaced 20-25,000 of the encoders at no charge.
And since so many transmitter are failing so early, the city had to call back its old meter readers.
The story goes on to note that many of the city's water meters need to be replaced but that will take another 18 months. Of course, since that's a government estimate, we know it's probably wildly optimistic, just like the entire automated water meter system has turned out to be.
Here's an excerpt of Ubu Roi's fine post from January where he took an in-depth look at how bad the malfunctioning water meter problem really is:
It doesn't help that the transmitters' failure rate is often "enhanced" accidentally or otherwise, by severed wires, metal objects on top of the meter box, or being run over by vehicles. Of course, this isn't a problem for the city, as it authorizes itself to estimate the meter readings indefinitely--without telling the customer.
As they say, read the whole thing, if you haven't already.
(Ubu notes: I've added more information below the fold, for those who want to dig a bit deeper, but I warn you, there's math involved!)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/25/07 03:33 PM |
24 February 2007
Who's been misleading whom?
Last week Rep. John Culberson held a town hall-type meeting on Metro's proposed Richmond Rail line. Also in attendance was the pro-rail group RichmondRail.org (headed by an architect with a firm that hopes to capitalize on light rail development), and by the Chronicle's account, things got wild:
RichmondRail.org, a group of civic associations, neighborhood groups and business owners, which supports light rail on Richmond, met in the same auditorium just prior to Culberson's meeting.
Culberson repeatedly had to ask the crowd to settle down and speak politely.
"One at a time!" Culberson cautioned. "I am not going to recognize anyone who does not speak politely."
Culberson was red-faced when the crowd gave a standing ovation to Robin Holzer, chairwoman of the Citizens' Transportation Coalition, who told Culberson that he was "misleading" the audience.
"I feel pandered to, I feel marketed to, I feel misled," Holzer said. "You never told us you oppose rail. And, I'm a bit suspicious about hearing you say local government makes the best decisions, then you come here and tell them how to do it."
Culberson responded, "I'm sorry you don't recognize reality."
Ahhh, Robin Holzer.
How can she possibly say that Rep. Culberson has misled or pandered to anyone? Hasn't he been consistently skeptical of light rail? And, if I recall correctly, he "supported" Mayor White's new and improved Metro Solutions only IF Metro could convince the feds of the project's worthiness. He was not involved with Metro's redesigned Solutions plan, and only promised to make sure that "Metro competes with other cities on a level playing field," when it came to federal funding. But, he added, "In the end, it is entirely up to Metro to prove to the FTA that this new transit plan meets federal guidelines that require sufficient ridership to justify the costs of design, construction and operation of these transit lines."
The misleading and pandering are wholly on the part of Metro, as it put Westpark on the ballot, then decided Richmond was the preferred route; and as it promised the minority and poorer parts of town that they would see a 50% increase in bus service, along with new light rail lines, then slashed bus routes more than 20% and changed some light rail lines to bus rapid transit.
And Rep. Culberson is a locally-elected congressman representing his district on a federal funding issue. It makes a nice soundbite for Holzer to complain about Rep. Culberson getting involved, but this is an instance where he should be involved!
Metro has not completed environmental studies for the line nor finalized its route, but it says that one along Richmond, Cummins and Westpark would attract the most riders at the least cost and be most likely to win federal funding approval.
Culberson says he prefers a route along Montrose, the Southwest Freeway and Westpark, which Metro says would cost more and attract fewer riders.
Again, why did Metro put Westpark on the ballot? Probably because officials knew Richmond would be voted down, as it had before. The reality is that Metro still has the deal with the fact that it created the 2003 ballot's language, and it now wants to pretend the ballot said something different.
It's hard to top what Kevin Whited wrote last year on this topic:
In the end, it remains unclear why the preferences of Christof Spieler, Robin Holzer, architects who hope to benefit from Richmond rail development, Galleria/Greenway realtors, and bloggers from the Heights should trump the preferences of 2003 voters and Richmond homeowners and businessowners who oppose METRO's Westpark/Richmond bait and switch.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/24/07 06:17 PM |
Pappas Restaurants needs to pay for immune globulin shots
KTRH-740 reports that Harris County is footing the bill to provide immune globulin shots for customers who may have been exposed to Hepatitis A at the Pappasitos restaurant on North I-45:
Right now, Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services says the cost of giving out immune globulin shots is at least $88,500.
The county says Pappas Restaurants has made no offer to help pay the costs.
A Pappas employee at the Interstate 45 and Airtex location who tested positive for Hep A may have exposed as many as 4,000 people.
Pappa's has not returned calls for comment.
A visit to the Pappas website reveals the company's philosophy:
The Pappas philosophy hasn’t changed much over the years.
Throughout Texas and as we expand to other markets, our restaurants are known for outstanding food, service and atmosphere where people go to be treated like guests, to be entertained, and to enjoy great food with the Pappas trademark of quality.
And when an employee exposes patrons to a disease, let taxpayers clean up the mess. Or something like that.
Pappas officials ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/24/07 01:58 PM |
Pavilions groundbreaking scheduled
The downtown Pavilions project will finally break ground next week, and with the announcement comes news that the development will no longer include condominiums (via the Houston Business Journal):
Two new anchor tenants for the Houston Pavilions will be announced on Feb. 27, the day the project officially breaks ground.
The mixed-use project from developers William Denton and Geoffrey Jones will finally begin construction almost a year behind schedule.
The development also has changed in scope from the original vision, with 140 planned condominiums no longer part of the mix, a change that reduced the total value of Houston Pavilions to $170 million from $200 million.
You'll recall that the developers lobbied hard for some financial help from the city and county, at least $14 million worth of help.
Which reminds me: Have we heard anything recently about Metro's big mixed-use transit center development?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/24/07 01:28 PM |
Hug-a-Bear drive helps children in crisis situations
This is the sixth year local Christian radio station KSBJ-89.3 has collected stuffed animals for a very worthwhile cause. The Hug-a-Bear drive provides cuddly stuffed animals for HPD officers to give to children faced with a frightening situation, whether it be a car accident, domestic violence, whatever.
Several HPD officers have been on-air to explain how invaluable a stuffed animal can be to comfort a child. It's a small gesture, but one that can make a big difference in a child's life in a moment of crisis.
Donations of huggable stuffed animals can be made at any Greater Houston-area YMCA through March 3rd.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/24/07 11:44 AM |
Is Chron's DC bureau the "most useless" one ever?
Last night Kevin alluded to yesterday's lame Julie Mason column about how the Washington DC press corps doesn't care for White House spokesman Tony Snow -- a topic of dubious news-value.
The lameness started right off the bat:
White House spokesman Tony Snow made a startling claim earlier this month, one that shed some light on changing perceptions about the job he's doing.
During a briefing, Snow responded to a question about climate change by noting that, "We're talking about nuclear development, which is now championed by, among others, Greenpeace."
Beg your pardon?
"I think there's some Greenpeace people who are certainly advocates of nuclear power," Snow said.
As whoppers go, that was a good one. Certainly, it was news to Greenpeace.
"Golly, you know, I can't believe the White House would get that wrong," said Jim Riccio, Greenpeace nuclear policy analyst. "Greenpeace was founded as an anti-nuclear organization, and we have been fighting nuclear weapons and their evil offspring, nuclear power, ever since."
White House reporters don't expect much from Snow, which goes part of the way toward explaining why his claim about Greenpeace went largely unremarked.
Perhaps it went largely unremarked because many folks knew immediately what Snow was referencing, albeit rather inarticulately if Mason's quote is accurate -- the pro-nuclear energy stance of Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore who is no longer a member of the activist group:
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.
It seemed incredibly strange that an inside-the-beltway journalist like Mason was clueless about what Snow meant, but a quick jog over to Mason's Chron.com blog shows that apparently she wasn't so clueless after all:
The White House column in the paper today looked at changing attitudes -- mostly among the press corps -- about Tony Snow. People ask all the time, "What do you guys think of him?" The column was a status report.
The piece described a recent claim by Snow that Greenpeace supports nuclear power. It was a sloppy mistake on Snow's part -- he was probably thinking of Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace leader who left in 1986 and now works for the nuclear power industry, among others.
Aha. So in her blog she gets it, but in her column she plays completely dumb. Why?
Then at the end of her blog post she wants us to know that reporters don't write headlines, which means she must have gotten some grief for her column's headline, "Is White House spokesman the 'most useless' one ever?" She may not have written the headline, but her column provided the fodder for it:
At a forum this week at the National Press Club featuring Snow and a group of White House correspondents, a New York Times reporter half-jokingly called Snow "the most useless press secretary ever."
We've long made our own case that the Chron's DC bureau is the "most useless" DC bureau ever. We haven't changed our minds.
RELATED BLOGVERSATION: For Whom The Bell Tolls? It Tolls For Thee, Washington Bureau Chiefs. (Hugh Hewitt)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/24/07 11:26 AM |
23 February 2007
Chronicle's Mack reviews Council candidates
The Chronicle's Kristen Mack runs down the candidates for the May 12 special election to fill the seat once held by Doctor-Councilwoman Shelley Sekula Gibbs.
Clearly, Melissa Noriega is the favorite, as she enjoys the support of the Democratic establishment.
Former HPD officer Tom Nixon could possibly add some spice to the mix.
Ivan Mayers is of interest only because of his description of himself as a "Nelson Rockefeller progressive."
Too bad there is no candidate who describes himself as a Teddy Roosevelt big-game-shootin' populist. THAT might be enough to attract some interest!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/23/07 11:03 PM |
Mayor trumpets SAFEclear program
The Chronicle's Matt Stiles reports that Mayor White is trumpeting his SAFEclear program:
Crashes on Houston freeways have declined almost 20 percent since 2004, according to newly released statistics — an improvement Mayor Bill White attributes to his Safe Clear mandatory towing program.
The figures, released under the Texas Public Information Act, show there were 2,500 fewer crashes on 13 freeway segments in Houston from 2004 to 2006.
White said Thursday that the $3 million towing program, launched in January 2005, has reduced crashes by quickly removing disabled vehicles that can lead to secondary wrecks. He said the figures vindicate the program, which has drawn political heat in the past and is still being attacked in federal court.
It's hard to disagree with the premise that getting stalled cars off of congested freeways would help congestion and reduce accidents. However, people did legitimately criticize Bicyclist Bob Stein's notion that the program should be paid for in part by tow companies confiscating and selling the cars of poor people, the draconian aspects of the program, and the deficiencies of the screening process for SAFEclear drivers.
While it's good that accidents are down, it's not unreasonable for councilmembers, citizens, and even journalists to be interested in both the cost and the performance of wrecker drivers (in terms of response times) involved in the SAFEclear program. It may indeed be money well spent, as the Mayor insists, but it's okay for people to decide for themselves.
ADDITIONAL COVERAGE: NewsWatch: City Hall.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/23/07 10:08 PM |
Shutter the D.C. bureau (cont'd)
The Chronicle posted an unusual story from D.C. columnist Cragg Hines earlier in the week.
Interestingly, Matt Bramanti discovered that Washington Post Moscow reporter Peter Finn wrote a lengthy story on that very topic just a few days earlier. Indeed, a careful read of both stories suggests that Hines took a fair amount of inspiration from Finn's well-crafted story, without acknowledging it.
It's not really plagiarism -- unlike his colleague Rick Casey who once did plagiarize from the Washington Post, Hines didn't actually lift whole phrases. However, it is a lazy effort that never should have made it past a good editor or bureau chief.
If the Chronicle D.C. bureau can't do better than that -- or this score-settling attack piece on Tony Snow -- the newspaper really needs to consider shuttering the operation and redeploying the resources locally.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/23/07 09:42 PM |
Chron reader rep: STAR section "storytelling" not journalism
Some days, we can feel the pain of Chronicle reader representative James Campbell. It's particularly acute when the reader representative seemingly discovers that grownups are in short supply at his newspaper, like today:
For two weeks running, I riffed about Anna Nicole Smith in my Sunday About Chron column politely urging our editors and staff to resist the urge to overplay stories about this famous, but unimportant-in-the-big scheme miscreant.
[snip]
Apparently, no one heeded the RR's words because we invited incredulity with today's story about ANS. Not only was it old news and tawdry, it had no news value. Moreover, Smith's lesbian lover Sandi Powledge divulged the details of their love affair in a December 1999 story published in the Houston Press. It also appeared in other New Times publications.
A simple Google search easily would have unearthed the seven-year-old story, but apparently we did not bother to run Powledge's name through Google or Nexis/Lexis before deciding to devote almost an entire Star section page to old gossip.
So, let's do the accounting: Essentially, we overplayed an old story that is based on the word of one woman -- a self-admitted recovering drug addict who is homeless and jobless. On top of that, we did not credit the Press for breaking the "news" seven years ago.
Publishing this story today, created a new low for sloppy and embarrassing storytelling in our paper. (I purposely did not call it journalism because there is nothing in the story deserving of that characterization.)
That's the Chronicle's STAR section in action.
Interestingly, the reader representative had pledged just over a month ago that he was taking a break from the STAR section:
I'm also declaring a six-month moratorium on commenting about anything in the STAR section or its related associates, like the TMi page.
We had a feeling that was going to be a tough promise to keep for the reader representative.
BLOGVERSATION: Lone Star Times.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/23/07 09:17 PM |
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