18 June 2009
New HPD property room a step in the right direction
This promising headline appears on the KTRK-13 site tonight:
They must be using Chronicle headline writers, because the story doesn't quite match:
It could be up to a year before the new property room is fully functional. It could take that long to transfer the some 500,000 pieces of evidence that are currently stored in the old property room. Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt calls it an investment and a giant step forward for law enforcement.
It is a brand new $13 million state of the art property room with all of the bells and whistles, and a stark contrast to the outdated, dilapidated old building the Houston Police Department has been using to store evidence since the late 1970s.
Here's hoping the transition goes quickly and smoothly. The community needs to be able to count on HPD to handle evidence reliably.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/18/09 09:58 PM |
17 June 2009
Audacity: Lee Brown claims he fought hard to fix HPD crime lab!
Yesterday, KPRC-950 talker Chris Baker called our attention to the latest installment of Houston's Crime Lab Follies, a wrongful conviction lawsuit seeking millions from the City of Houston (as reported by the Chronicle's Mary Flood):
George Rodriguez’s lawyer asked a federal jury Monday to make the city pay “tens of millions of dollars” for the disgraced Houston Police Department’s crime lab’s pivotal role in the wrongful conviction that put his client behind bars for 17 years.
“What was taken away from him was his youth,” said attorney Barry Scheck, whose Innocence Project works on behalf of convicts in similar circumstances. Rodriguez went to prison wrongly at age 26 and walked out at 43 to find his three daughters grown and his father dead, the lawyer said.
In opening statements Tuesday afternoon, Scheck told jurors about the loneliness, fear and depression his client suffered in prison after being wrongly convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl.
This happened, he said, because policy makers at the city of Houston were deliberately indifferent to rampant under funding, under staffing and a lack of supervision at the crime lab that created a high risk an innocent person could be convicted or the guilty one could go free.
Former mayor and HPD chief Lee Brown today was forced to say more than we have ever heard from him on the topic of his mismanagement of the crime lab. Here are some choice excerpts from Mary Flood's reporting for the Chronicle:
Lee P. Brown testified Wednesday that crime lab mistakes made during his tenure as Houston police chief weren’t his fault and that he worked hard to get the lab the resources it needed.
[snip]
“There was a consistent desire of people in the lab to get more people and consistently I tried to get more people for them,” Brown said. But, he said, in the mid-1980s the city had a hiring freeze, the police academy was closed and he couldn’t get all the required positions or even overtime approved.[snip]
Showing Brown several police department memos about the crime lab, Rodriguez’s attorney questioned Brown about being told the lab was understaffed and that people lacked training and supervision. A 1986 memo said the lab was “cutting additional corners” and had “diluted quality assurance” and that it could be “embarrassed” because of lab deficiencies.
Brown testified he considered staffing problems to be the root cause of all those references to unreliable lab results and failure to meet professional standards.
“It was tough for the city,” Brown said. “I fought hard to get them what they needed.”
“It turned out it was tough for some criminal defendants who were not guilty, too,” shot back Rodriguez’s attorney Mark Wawro.
Cory Crow elaborates on Lee Brown's hard fighting.
We've noted the Lee Brown/Clarence Bradford reign of error previously with regard to the crime lab, and the fact that neither man has ever given much of a public accounting of his role in the fiasco (Bradford despite running for Harris County DA, and now for City Council). Whatever the outcome of this case, at least Lee Brown has finally been forced to discuss his part in perpetuating the crime-lab fiasco. His testimony doesn't seem to have convinced many Chron.com commenters.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/17/09 10:26 PM |
Chron.com "as good an example of what not to do with a newspaper site as any"
Banjo Jones notes some recent ratings of newspaper websites by Douglas McIntyre of Wall Street 24/7.
McIntyre is not a fan of Chron.com, giving the site a D+:
This site is a bit of a mess and is as good an example of what not to do with a newspaper site as any in this survey. The navigation across the homepage includes twenty five tabs some of which are labeled poorly enough so that it is hard for the reader to understand what they are. The front page really does not have a headline per se. The stories at the top of the page are features which don’t appear to be chosen to compel the reader to go further into the website. Some of the stories near the top of the page are from the Associated Press, an indication that the editors don’t feel that they have enough compelling content of their own. The stories do have the basic social network and reader interaction tools including the ability to comment on stories and share them on Twitter or Facebook. The large sections of the paper like “Business” are only a long list of headlines, some of which have brief story summaries. The only illustrations on many of these pages are low resolution headshots of bloggers. The main news page has nearly no illustrations at all. Multimedia features are completely missing, a sign that Chronicle management treats the online paper as an after-thought. Entertainment sections are the only well-designed portions of online newspaper. Most Chron.com sections look like cheap blogs. The site runs a fair amount of local advertising, much of it not very well designed.
The main problem that we -- as serious newsies -- have with Chron.com is that news is so difficult to find amidst the tacky features, user party pics, and other fluff content. It's not at all clear what the people in charge of Chron.com are trying to accomplish with their website (a localized version of MySpace?), but the news seems to be one of many competing priorities.
We must correct McIntyre on at least one bad assumption, however (bolded, above). The folks at 801 Texas Avenue do take the web seriously, in terms of resources and focus. Chron.com is no afterthought. Rather, it is apparently the Houston Chronicle management's vision of a contemporary newspaper website.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/17/09 09:43 PM |
San Francisco passes on Chief Hurtt
The two Hearst Chronicles report that San Francisco will not be hiring HPD Chief Harold Hurtt:
San Francisco has bypassed Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt to fill its top cop spot.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday reached outside the city and selected George Gascón, police chief of Mesa, Ariz., to replace outgoing Chief Heather Fong.
That's disappointing, but Hurtt probably won't be with us much longer in any case. It seems unlikely that any of the current mayoral candidates have any interest in retaining Chief Hurtt, and one of the stronger candidates has been crystal clear that he will not be part of a Parker administration:
City Controller Annise Parker already had called for Hurtt’s dismissal at an event earlier this month.
“I don’t believe he’s really ever integrated himself into the larger Houston community,” Parker said in an interview. “Public safety is so essential to everything we do, and we have to have a chief that has his fingers on the pulse of the city.”
We do need someone willing to commit to Houston, but my preference would still be a CompStat-oriented top cop, even though that likely would mean an outside hire.
BLOGVERSATION: Lone Star Times.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/17/09 08:46 PM |
16 June 2009
METRO adds a new trick to the Danger Train files
From KHOU-11 via the Houston Chronicle Froot Loops bureau comes this report on a train derailment in Houston:
A Metro light rail train derailed around 12:30 a.m. this morning near the intersection of Greenbriar and Braeswood, between the Texas Medical Center and Reliant Park.
[snip]
The derailed train collided with a power pole and another rail car.
The toy train derailed?!
How does that even happen?
We're sure METRO will be entirely forthcoming with the details. *wink*
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/16/09 09:52 AM |
15 June 2009
Chron: MetroRail has 11 million riders every year
As critiques go, this is as tepid as they come, but it's undoubtedly all the Chron editors will allow, and it will be held up as an example of the Chron's tenacious, watchdog reporting:
The Metropolitan Transit Authority touted numbers from a state-mandated audit last month showing that ridership increased 3 percent over the past four years.
The agency also touted increased revenue — partly because of fare hikes — and at least $150 million in light-rail expansion funding that the federal government has indicated it plans to funnel to Metro.
But a closer look at all the good news shows that ridership is slightly below where it was in 2000, despite a 17 percent increase in Harris County’s population. Bus ridership — Metro’s core service — has dropped more than 14 percent.
The new audit has prompted a debate over Metro’s performance. But how critics grade the agency also hinges on what they think its fundamental mission should be. Should you count the number of riders? Number of buses? Cost to the taxpayer? Whether buses are on time? Crowded? Comfortable? Energy efficient?
The critics' concerns (and facts) are flattened by the non-critics' explanations. You'll be so surprised to see where Carolyn Feibel turned for soothing reassurances:
Members of the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition also counsel patience during construction. “A dollar you spend on new facilities is a dollar you don’t spend on operations, and vice-versa,” said CTC board member Christof Spieler. Another difficulty is maximizing ridership while also using tax dollars wisely, he added.
Robin Holzer, the coalition’s chair, pointed out that simply counting riders does not take into account the quality of the trip.
The light rail is quieter, more comfortable, and more reliable than a regular bus. “It’s got level boarding, which is great if you are in a wheelchair or have a baby stroller,” she said.
Apparently, that is the new measure of worthiness to spend billions of taxpayer dollars: level boarding. Never mind that a tiny fraction of the greater Houston-area population will ever use it, or that the train will increase congestion by taking away traffic lanes. Reducing traffic congestion was one of the initial selling features of light rail. Now level boarding is a talking point.
As Metro adds more light rail lines, riders will flock to it, Holzer predicted. Metro officials project 160,000 daily trips by 2030.
Yes, well, the predictions METRO makes for public consumption are often wildly different from actual projections on government documents.
And then there's this:
Since 2006, more than 11 million people have ridden the Main Street “Red” Line every year.
I'm guessing that stat refers to boardings, but METRO has a tendency to run fast and loose with stats and wording, as Rad Sallee explained three years ago:
The measure that Metro watches most closely — the key indicator of how well it is performing its mission — is often referred to as "ridership." But this turns out to be a slippery concept. As with the elephant and the blind men, you need to examine it several ways for a complete picture.
Slippery is the perfect word to describe METRO. But just for fun, let's run with the "11 million riders" data point for a moment. Back in 2006, METRO told the Ottawa Sun that 12 million passengers were riding the light rail line every year. Now it's down to 11 million. Hmmmm. That would seem to be a declining trend.
BLOGVERSATION: TBIFOC.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/15/09 05:06 AM |
14 June 2009
D'oh!
A domed Houston -- what a fabulous idea:
It seems like an idea from science fiction, a comic book, or even The Simpsons movie -- a 21 million-square-foot dome encompassing a city and insulating it from hurricanes, humidity, and heat.
The Discovery Channel program Mega Engineering recently explored the possibility of a dome that would stretch out over downtown.
It would be made out of Ethylene Tetrofluoro-ethylene or ETFE -- a light, durable material that withstand winds up to 180 mph, which is well above the speed for a Category 5 hurricane.
ETFE is most familiar as the bubble-like surface that covers the Water Cube, the 2009 Beijing Olympic aquatic venue.
Air vents would regulate the temperature and massive doors would allow transportation in and out of the structure. But how realistic is it?
Dilip Choudhuri is a structural engineer with the local firm Walter P. Moore that has built huge projects such as the Toyota Center and Minute Maid Park. Choudhuri said now is the time to think about future solutions like a dome.
"I think it's a great thing," said Choudhuri. "You have to push ahead to the future."
Absolutely. Mayor White should immediately push for the creation of a new quasi-governmental agency, à la METRO, to oversee the project. We could call it D'oh! -- Dome over Houston -- with downtown residents and businesses paying a new tax for the privilege of being under the D'oh! The list of advantages is long, and the selling features of the project are numerous. Go for it, Houston!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/14/09 06:28 AM |
12 June 2009
Chief Hurtt still in the running for SFPD top job
Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt is one of three finalists for the top cop job in San Francisco, sources have told the San Francisco Chronicle.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has selected the city’s next police chief, but he said Thursday his pick is thinking twice about accepting the job after a Board of Supervisors committee voted to strip public safety agencies of tens of millions of dollars in funding.
[snip]
The Board of Supervisors budget committee voted Wednesday to rewrite parts of Newsom’s interim budget. Traditionally, the board rubber stamps the interim budget, but the committee voted to strip $82 million out of the police, fire and sheriff’s departments to reverse cuts to the health and social services programs.
I'll bet some camera revenue could generate replacement funds.
And then there's this:
Hurtt could not be reached for comment.
[snip]
Hurtt is out of the office this week, HPD spokeswoman Jodi Silva said.
Phoenix is lovely this time of year.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/12/09 05:03 AM |
11 June 2009
Port of Houston's new security district
The Houston Business Journal reports that Commissioners Court has given its blessing to a new public-private partnership:
The Harris County Commissioners Court has approved the creation of the Houston Ship Channel Security District, a public-private partnership aimed at funding enhancements to security technology, infrastructure and processes along the ship channel.
Leading the program is Pat Bellamy, chairman of the security district’s council and director of the University of Houston’s Southwest Public Safety Technology Center.
UH’s SWTC entered into a three-way agreement with Harris County and the Houston Port Authority to carry out sophisticated planning, development, design, construction and implementation of port security projects.
The story notes that private partners will contribute funds to match federal grants and cover operating costs.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/11/09 07:11 PM |
10 June 2009
Cy-Fair ISD decides it can't afford homestead exemption
But a couple of years ago, the district could afford an $807 million bond issue. Go figure.
Cory Crow has been keeping up with the story. You can read his thoughts here and here.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/10/09 06:43 PM |
09 June 2009
Making Houston even more inviting
See if this reminds you of a circular firing squad:
Warning: More tickets, tows, boots on the way for Houston cars
Parking scofflaws who drive under the radar are more likely to be nabbed under a system that received a Houston City Council committee’s blessing Tuesday.
The proposed $1.6 million upgrade to the city’s parking management databases would let enforcement teams view parking citation information on a mobile handset, so officers could immediately “boot” or tow a vehicle if it had too many unpaid citations.
And:
HPD: Many towed cars get lost, misplaced
On Monday, HPD Captain Williams Staney told the Council Committee on Public Safety at Houston City Hall that their system was not working.
He said that 135,000 vehicles are towed from illegal parking spots and because of traffic violations each year in Houston.
Captain Staney says that HPD has one phone number that drivers and tow truck companies both call for information. He said that phone lines get an average of 845 calls each and every day.
HPD admits the bottleneck can lead to confusion, data mistakes and very long wait times for Houstonians wanting to find out if their vehicles were either stolen or towed without their consent.
“The call takers and data entry people get overwhelmed with the whole amount of vehicles being entered but at the same time they have people calling in looking for their vehicles,” said Frankie Rash of Fast Tow Wrecker Service. “It can be very overwhelming,” he said for both his staff and for police.
The solution? A $1.3 million web-based towed vehicle reporting management system, of course!
So, here we have Liliana Rambo wanting to spend $1.6 million on new technology to ticket, boot, and tow more cars (she promises a one million dollar return on the investment for the city), and then we have HPD wanting to spend $1.3 million on new technology because the department admits it cannot keep track of all the towed vehicles for which it's responsible. Got that? Revenue-wise, the city should make out quite well. Residents? Not so much.
The big exception to all this is around HPD headquarters, because there is absolutely no ticketing, booting, or towing going on there.
COMPLETELY UNRELATED: City, vendor negotiate agreement on muni courts computer system fiasco; A red light camera ticket nightmare; Channel 2 fixes another red light camera ticket error
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/09/09 06:52 PM |
Peter Brown for mayor AND school superintendent
Peter Brown showed that he's not just an expert in the architectural arena. No, he's also quite the expert when it comes to local school issues, as the Chron's Bradley Olson recently posted on the Houston Politics blog:
Noting that he [Peter Brown] would soon present details of a plan to "restructure" Houston-area schools, he talked about HISD's closure of Clinton Park Elementary School in 2005, calling the surrounding neighborhood "distressed."
The closure "pulled the rug out from under" city efforts to revitalize the neighborhood, Brown said.
And then he added this:
"Now, by the way, that the neighborhood is turning more Hispanic, HISD has decided, well, maybe we better reopen Clinton Park Elementary School."
Actually, HISD is not even considering reopening Clinton Park, nor has there been any discussion or board agenda items dealing with the matter, according to Norman Uhl, a department spokesman.
And the reason it was closed, he said, was because enrollment had dropped precipitously, down to less than 150 students in its last year of existence.
So there you go. With an absolutely firm grasp of the issues, Peter Brown demonstrates why he should run Houston AND all its schools.
It's worth noting that none of the other candidates for mayor is interested in a mayoral takeover of local schools. Nor is Mayor White in favor of it.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/09/09 05:04 AM |
08 June 2009
Beware mass transit "green" claims
Tom Bazan has long been skeptical of light rail proponents' claims that it is the more eco-friendly transit choice. Along that line, there's a new study out that underscores his point:
Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study.
Its authors point out an array of factors that are often unknown to the public.
These are hidden or displaced emissions that ramp up the simple "tailpipe" tally, which is based on how much carbon is spewed out by the fossil fuels used to make a trip.
Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath at the University of California at Davis say that when these costs are included, a more complex and challenging picture emerges.
In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city -- even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups -- rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.
[snip]
Boston has a metro system with high energy efficiency. The trouble is, 82 percent of the energy to drive it comes from dirty fossil fuels.
By comparison, San Francisco's local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston's. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 percent of the electricity is derived from fossils.
The paper points out that the "tailpipe" quotient does not include emissions that come from building transport infrastructure -- railways, airport terminals, roads and so on -- nor the emissions that come from maintaining this infrastructure over its operational lifetime.
These often-unacknowledged factors add substantially to the global-warming burden.
And then there's the ridership factor: Will the train run at full capacity all the time, for maximum efficiency? Right. METRO's not so good with ridership data.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/08/09 06:40 PM |
07 June 2009
HPD Officer disciplined for quick decision
The police always take flak for their actions on the street. Police Departments all have policies designed to limit their liability in a lawsuit. However, the dirty little secret is that no policy manual can foresee every single situation an officer will face on the street. Yet those policies will be used against the officer should he make the wrong decision. In this instance, a chase was heading towards a school zone, and a sergeant made a decision. He decided to use a PIT stop on the vehicle which is not allowed by policy.
While true, the sergeant did violate policy, and on camera for that matter, one has to wonder what the criticism of HPD would be had the chase gone into the school zone and a child was injured or killed. The officers chasing the car would have been criticized for (a) not stopping the chase before the school zone and (b) not terminating the pursuit (in which the criminal would have still sped through the school zone anyway).
Officers face dangers on two fronts. There is the criminal on the street, and the officers' own administration. Any decision an officer had a split second to make will be scrutinized by people who sit behind desks with all the time in the world.
Blogversation: Red Ink Texas
Posted by Jason @ 06/07/09 11:57 PM |
"Too many puppies..."
In 2007 and 2008 alone, Harris County juvenile judges transferred 160 teens’ cases to the adult system — more than nine of the largest urban counties in Texas combined, according to a Chronicle analysis of statewide certifications by county.
Out of probably around two, maybe three thousand cases filed on juveniles in Harris County, 160 is a relatively low number.
The article uses two poster cases to support its argument. The first case is a 15-year old.
One of the [sic] those charged with capital murder at 15, Robert T. Brown, pleaded guilty in May after admitting he had shot a man who hired his 17-year-old sister and him for a so-called sex party. The guilty plea came after Brown, described as mentally challenged and unable to read well, spent more than a year in Harris County jail, where he was badly beaten, family members said.
First of all, only certain circumstances make murder a capital crime in Texas. Click here to read the Texas definition of capital murder. So, what occurred here to make this capital murder, the article doesn't say. Second, the sister is also being charged with capital murder yet the article doesn't say what her role in the crime was. Third, on a side note, neither of these people is eligible for the death penalty, nor would they have been under the old law before the Supreme Court decision. Fourth, who described the 15-year old as mentally challenged? Fifth, the family claims he was beaten in jail. Is there evidence to support this? By whom was the child beaten? By jailers? By other inmates? There are too many holes in the paragraph given by the Chronicle that suggests we are not being given the whole story.
The second case, which seems like the article is trying to downplay is a 16-year old:
A 16-year-old special education student currently faces a potential sentence of life without parole for capital murder, though some witnesses described the crime as an accident. The boy, who had no criminal history, attacked his older brother with a kitchen knife for threatening a stray cat. During the struggle in their crowded apartment, the boys’ 2-year-old nephew received a single, but fatal wound, court records show. The teen was certified as an adult, though psychiatric evaluations said he functions at a third- to fifth-grade level.
In an attempt to tug at heartstrings the article quotes "The result: “virtual destruction” of dozens of juveniles who are dumped and damaged in adult prisons and “could otherwise turn their lives around,” claims nonprofit Texas Appleseed..." Reality is by the time these kids come to the criminal justice system for the more serious crimes they are severely damaged. Ask juvenile probation workers for some of their stories. A common denominator is the family of the kids. Many of these families are criminals themselves and raised their kids to be criminals like them. These kids are taught they don't have to accept responsibility for their actions. They are taught they don't have to earn what others work for and they are entitled to other peoples' things. They are also taught that the juvenile system will be soft on them and when they turn 17, their criminal records are sealed and can only be opened under special circumstances. Basically, at 17 they get a fresh start.
Another sad reality is that juveniles can be just as deadly, if not deadlier than adults. Some of most vicious crimes have been committed by juveniles and the juvenile system is not capable of handling such a person.
Posted by Jason @ 06/07/09 12:46 PM |
06 June 2009
9 Time DWI Gets 75 Year Prison Term
Keith Peltier got his first DWI conviction in 1986. His ninth was just this week.
I can't give Keith Peltier another chance to kill someone," said Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne.
How many stories have we read where someone was killed by a repeat drunken driver? This time Brazoria County took initiative and probably saved someone's life (or Mr. Peltier's own life down the road). Perhaps he just didn't have the benefit of Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos' idea of pre-trial diversion to forgive first-time offenders who go to rehab.
In response, Mr. Peltier's attorney released this statement:
His attorney says the sentence was too severe. Attorney Jon Jaworski says the prosecution of his client this time was payback for another case where Peltier was acquitted. In this case, Jaworski says also says, "I don't think he was intoxicated by alcohol."
He tells us he thinks his apparent intoxication was, in reality, a "diabetic reaction.
It's a good thing that the jury didn't buy this; had he truly been having a diabetic condition he should have taken the Intoxilyzer test. As far as retaliation for a case in which he was acquitted, this means he was arrested more than nine times for DWI. I bet he has driven drunk around a hundred times and just didn't get caught. It's been a long time but, if I remember the class correctly, most drunk drivers arrested have driven drunk an average of eight times without being stopped by police.
Posted by Jason @ 06/06/09 12:20 PM |
05 June 2009
Washington Avenue: 30 bars, 10 blocks, lots of drunks
Sounds inviting! KHOU-11 reports the homeowners have some....concerns:
11 News rode along with Steffan, a 17-year police veteran, to witness firsthand what he and his fellow officers encounter on a typical Friday night.
There were illegally parked cars being towed and large crowds of people on the street.
“DWIs, people parking in the middle of the street who are intoxicated is a big issue. Noise is a very big issue,” Steffan said.
The streets were full of suspected drunks – both behind the wheel and on foot – hopping between roughly 30 bars crammed into a 10-block radius on Washington. The strip has become a magnet for people looking to have a good time.
“I don’t understand how all this came together and how everyone decided, ‘Hey, Washington Avenue is a great place to open a bar,’” Steffan said.
[snip]
Friday and Saturday nights find Washington Avenue bathed in neon lights and often shaking from the sound of traffic and non-stop music.
Neighbors have even posted videos of street fights on the Internet.
[snip]
The neighbors have taken their complaints directly to the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission, which is currently reviewing license applications of the bars that are still under construction.
“We do want development. We want to see businesses come, but the right kind of businesses,” said Thomason.
BLOGVERSATION: When NIMBYism meets World Class, Lose an Eye, It's a Sport
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/05/09 06:12 PM |
04 June 2009
"Pedestrial realms" to be considered by Council
The Chron's Mike Snyder has the exciting details:
The city’s urban transit corridors ordinance, which it began developing in June 2006, is expected to be considered by the City Council in July. It would offer incentives for developers in six light rail corridors to include a 15-foot “pedestrian realm” with broad, unobstructed sidewalks and other features intended to create appealing, walkable environments.
The new development created under this ordinance will become part of the daily lives of more than 160,000 people the Metropolitan Transit Authority expects to be riding its trains by 2030. Within the next five years, the agency plans to add five new rail lines to the Main Street line it opened on Jan. 1, 2004.
The impact of the ordinance will depend on developers’ willingness to comply with its mostly voluntary standards. Those who agree to create the pedestrian zone will automatically be exempt from rules requiring buildings to be set back a specified distance from the street, giving them more space to build revenue-generating offices, homes or shops.
The ordinance is more limited than steps recommended by the city’s consultants and by the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit real estate organization, to promote transit-oriented development.
Officials in the city planning department, which drafted the ordinance in consultation with community leaders, real estate professionals and the general public, described it as a first step toward changing a development culture that’s long been focused on the automobile rather than on trains or pedestrians.
Imagine where we'd be today if our culture had been pedestrian/mass transit-focused instead of automobile-focused for the past 100 years. But hey, by 2030 METRO expects 160,000 people to be riding the Danger Trains (and you know how good METRO is with projections), so this seems well worth the effort, right?
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/04/09 04:50 AM |
03 June 2009
METRO's Quickline vs. John Nova Lomax...on a bike
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/03/09 05:55 PM |
City Council budgets increase for 2010
Bradley Olson's Chron story notes the increase is small, but with times being what they are...
In an austere year for the city of Houston, when the 2010 budgets of several major departments that provide essential services to taxpayers were cut, one highly public group managed to broker a rare increase: City Council.
Although the $13,331 increases scheduled for each council office form but a fraction of the city’s $4 billion budget, they have taken on a symbolic power this week as the police chief and other department heads have endured multihour grillings in budget hearings from council members about every jot and tittle of their spending plans.
Unlike with the department heads, council members on Tuesday spent less than 30 minutes reviewing their budget.
According to the article, Councilwoman Toni Lawrence says she will propose a two percent cut to the Council's budgets.
And there's this:
Much of the increase comes from pay raises that are mandated for council staffers as part of the city’s contract with its union [...]
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 06/03/09 04:37 AM |
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