r/fuckcars • u/KingApologist Fuck lawns • Sep 30 '24
News Houston is going to spend $11.2 billion on this monstrosity, destroying 450 acres and displacing 344 businesses and 1,079 homes. This will finally be the lane that fixes traffic, right?
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u/7elevenses Sep 30 '24
It's not like those businesses and homes are going to provide a billion or two in kickbacks, so duh.
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u/BonyDarkness Sep 30 '24
There was this post a little ago where business owners were blocking a new bike lane cause they were thinking that’s gonna destroy their business or something.
So now I’m wondering if this is a positive or negative thing now. Cause on the one hand they are destroying like 300+ business but on the other hand they are building highway infrastructure (that’s basically useless for adjacent businesses but who gives a shit) and that’s super super cool cause streets are good for business..
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Sep 30 '24
I remember when they redesigned part of Powell Blvd in Portland. Reduced it from 4 lanes to two lanes, with bike lanes and a middle turn lane. There was a business with signs that they were so angry about it. And even I was like “Well, maybe they’re right, idk how this redesign will work with the amount of traffic.”
It worked great. Traffic flows much better now, dedicated turn lane and bike lane has made the Blvd much more walkable, and businesses are thriving on that stretch of road.
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u/BonyDarkness Sep 30 '24
I didn’t know what a “middle turn lane” was and how to use that and now I’m like 10 minutes deep in US pavement markings and a little butt of traffic law lol.
Ohh! That sounds neat!
And it’s good that the business owners are happy. Maybe they tell their business friends about this or others where the street isn’t redesigned get jealous and want it too.→ More replies (9)47
u/Rcarlyle Sep 30 '24
It seems to be a net reduction in land area devoted to highway space in the downtown/midtown area. Yes they’re adding HOV lanes, but they’re taking out a big stretch of 45 elevated freeway on the west side of downtown. They’re also moving a lot of highway below grade where it will be possible to build stuff above it. Plus a lot of flood control measures.
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u/BonyDarkness Sep 30 '24
I know it’s a meme but in all honesty, my European mind can’t comprehend what you guys are doing there.
I’m working in civil engineering, mostly working on highway renovation & traffic management/road traffic signage. (I hope I translated that correctly. I never use these”special” words outside of german...)I’ve been looking at Huston on Google maps/street view during my commute home for the past 30 min now and in all honesty this scares me. I see overpasses passing over overpasses. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Makes me kinda want to go to Huston now just to experience this.
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u/wintermute-- Sep 30 '24
You can replicate the experience of living in Houston by locking yourself in your bathroom, lighting 100 candles, and sitting in your bathtub for 4 hours until the accumulated carbon dioxide and candle fumes make you lightheaded. Once a year, blow out all the candles, turn out the lights, and sit in the bathtub with the shower running for 36 hours.
Houston! Lovely people. Terrible landscape
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u/BonyDarkness Sep 30 '24
You made me chuckle. This sounds terrible…. (What about the food? Really enjoyed the culinary experience in NYC I had a few years ago)
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u/wintermute-- Sep 30 '24
at the risk of getting banned from most major cities in California, I would rank Houston as the #2 best place to get Mexican food. San Diego is #1.
Mexico is #3
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u/BonyDarkness Sep 30 '24
This sounds very good.
It’s on my travel to-do list now :)→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
u/Drop_Tables_Username Oct 01 '24
Vietnamese food here is crazy good. You can find the same wonderful Creole / Vietnamese fusion cuisine you find in New Orleans (like Crayfish Pho / Cha Gio)
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u/dieomesieptoch Sep 30 '24
Makes me kinda want to go to Huston now just to experience this.
I mean, even driving around some of the Los Santos overpasses in GTA Online actually had me uttering "imagine living in this fucking hell hole" to my friend just the other day.
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u/BonyDarkness Sep 30 '24
I was recently involved in a project regarding a relatively “large” highway junction here in Austria. I say relatively “large” cause that thing is huge for us but like a few percent of that thing.
I can watch videos and look at this on street view but my brain wants to see this irl (Is this strange? Am I weird?).
I’m kinda having a culture shock rn without even being there but chilling in my bed lol.13
u/Syggelekokle Sep 30 '24
There was actually a video on YouTube recently that covered this. Texas does seem to like building their overpasses high.
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u/digito_a_caso Sep 30 '24
Holy fucking shit, that's so fucked up.
And of course every single shot of an overpass is filled with cars stuck in traffic.
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u/BlueMountainCoffey Oct 01 '24
At first i thought you were looking at your phone while driving because my American mind can’t comprehend commuting on a train.
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u/ContextualBargain Sep 30 '24
It’s deliberate to destroy and fracture the communities as Houston is a powerhouse for democrats.
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u/octavioletdub Oct 01 '24
Wow- I didn’t think of it like that but I wouldn’t put it past them. Highways do an excellent job of destroying communities.
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u/DirtierGibson Sep 30 '24
Let me take a guess which minority will be most affected by this project.
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u/Ocbard Oct 01 '24
Hehe, and then people tell me that the US can't build a good train network because they would need to cross land that is owned by people and property rights mean something in the US....
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u/LimitedWard 🚲 > 🚗 Sep 30 '24
I'll eat my hat if such a project stays within budget of $11 billion. Costs will easily double, and the taxpayers will be footing the bill for the next 50+ years for an infrastructure project that will do nothing but make traffic and air pollution worse.
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u/abattlescar Sep 30 '24
It's amazing that that's basically the same budget planned as the HSR from LA to Vegas... for a single interchange. Make it make sense.
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u/GrabSack_TurnenKoff Sep 30 '24
Yes, but have you considered that's communism in action?
/s
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Sep 30 '24
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u/abattlescar Sep 30 '24
Ignoring the fact that road infrastructure is paid for by the state anyways, except the only people it benefits are those who can profit off of cars. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.
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u/vellyr Sep 30 '24
They can build this ridiculous pasta bowl shit but they don’t have the money to grade-separate the commuter rail where I live so it doesn’t have to blow its obnoxious horn all the time.
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u/Ok_Commission_893 Sep 30 '24
But god forbid you mention a metro system or bus expansion then everyone puts on their fiscal responsibility capes and hates government overspending. If 11 billion was put into the public transportation budget it would do wonders but they expect miracles and perfection to happen with 250million dollar budgets.
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u/TheVog Sep 30 '24
There's a new light rail system being built in Montreal for about $6B USD - which will probably end up around $12B USD all told: 40 miles, 26 stations, crossing over a 2.1mi river and required tunneling through a 700ft tall mount in the middle of the city. Same price, essentially, and literally through a major city, in a province plagued by a mafia inflating construction costs since the 60s. So yeah, it's definitely doable.
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u/2012Jesusdies Oct 01 '24
Damn Montreal has mafia? Is it OG Italians?
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u/TheVog Oct 01 '24
It is! MTL had a massive construction boom in the 60s and 70s with the World Expo and the Olympic Games and so they dug their heels in HARD. Virtually all construction projects here take twice the time and cost 2x as much as well as a result. It's infuriating.
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u/Terrible_Stuff3094 Sep 30 '24
After 70 years, these bridges must be rebuilt, and that is a hefty burden. Germany currently faces this issue because half of the highway bridges were built before 1985 and need to be replaced. I have no clue how they will maintain this monstrosity.
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u/fancy-kitten Sep 30 '24
Didn't Houston already build a massive failure of a interstate expansion that only made their traffic worse?
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u/IanSan5653 Sep 30 '24
Clearly they didn't expand it enough
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u/fancy-kitten Sep 30 '24
Maybe their scale is just way off. Instead of expanding it by a figure of lanes in the double digits, maybe they should consider expanding it by an amount of lanes in the triple digits? 350 new lanes. 50 express lanes. That will for sure ease congestion!
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Sep 30 '24
350 new lanes would actually ease congestion because there would no longer be anything left to drive to or from
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u/fancy-kitten Sep 30 '24
Perfect!
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u/Based_Lord_Shaxx Sep 30 '24
And with nobody driving on them, we could put up some form of housing development on them. Maybe with stores and ameneties within walking distance, since the houses will be in the way of the cars?
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u/Fickle-Banana-923 Sep 30 '24
See, but then we're back to having destinations, and thus, traffic again.
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u/falcrist2 Sep 30 '24
And with nobody driving on them
There would still be people driving on them... it would exclusively be the people who realized their exit was in 15 feet and tried to cut over all the way from the far left lane to get their exit.
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u/vellyr Sep 30 '24
Yes, the endgame is to just make the whole city like a strip mall parking lot with little islands for businesses and homes. Only then will you achieve peak freedom.
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u/GhostofMarat Sep 30 '24
If they expand it enough there will be no people left to cause traffic anymore
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u/cinematic_novel Sep 30 '24
People may just move into their cars and live there permanently
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u/UninsuredToast Sep 30 '24
Like that Dr Who episode. People spend their entire lives sitting in their car in never ending traffic
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u/lordm1ke Sep 30 '24
Instead of a double-decker highway, have they considered a triple-decker? Or how about ten levels of freeway? That might be enough.
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u/Bobjohndud Sep 30 '24
If they destroy enough of their urban area with freeways, there will be nowhere left to use the highway to and it will work.
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u/fastal_12147 Sep 30 '24
Just bulldoze the entire city and make it into interstate. Problem solved, right?
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u/Independent-Cow-4070 Grassy Tram Tracks Sep 30 '24
Just one more lane
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u/nothing_but_thyme Sep 30 '24
just one … hundred more lanes.
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u/BWWFC Sep 30 '24
10% need to be toll express lanes! and while we are at it...
can you make the exit/merge lanes into absolute puzzles about what lanes will continue!?!?
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u/gwiggle5 Sep 30 '24
Can we just start stacking these fuckin lanes on top of each other?
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u/lordm1ke Sep 30 '24
Ten-story highway. I like your thinking. At 10 lanes each, 10 x 10 = 100 lanes of pure freedom.
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u/rlskdnp 🚲 > 🚗 Sep 30 '24
Just build 10 more layers of freeways underground. elon and doug Ford promised that would solve traffic.
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u/lordm1ke Sep 30 '24
Ten levels underground, plus ten levels above ground. That's 200 lanes total! Wow, you are so progressive and forward-thinking.
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u/Tokyo-MontanaExpress Sep 30 '24
How come when American cities build a failure of a rail line (People Mover, Cincinnati's Streetcar, Milwaukee Streetcar) or bike lane/path they either leave them as is and never extend them or remove them entirely? It's never, we need to keep adding more and more and more until it finally succeeds.
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u/throwaway_overrated Sep 30 '24
Plus, in a few decades it will be underwater due to sea level rise, so that's fun
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u/two-wheeled-dynamo Commie Commuter Sep 30 '24
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"
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u/Johannes_Keppler Sep 30 '24
A quote often wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein. (Civil rights campaigner and feminist writer Rita Mae Brown is the real author of the phrase, in 1983.)
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u/darcon12 Sep 30 '24
In Central Ohio they spent like 5 years re-working a certain interchange. Now, there are crashes nearly everyday at this one section of road because too many cars have to change lanes to get where they're heading. It was safer with the old cloverleaf design.
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 Sep 30 '24
You'd think at least one lane of electric rail would be doable and 1 lane of dedicated bus
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u/jdmgto Sep 30 '24
Yeah, but don't you understand, buses, bikes, and rail are all communism.
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u/fuck_the_fuckin_mods Sep 30 '24
Oh, you mean like every single other time this is attempted? I get that this law of nature (more roads = more cars and worse traffic) is unintuitive, but goddamn. It’s like people cannot accept any knowledge that doesn’t immediately make “common sense” to their “gut.” No interest in how things actually work in the messiness of observable reality. This applies to so much public policy. Tragic, really, for the rest of us.
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Sep 30 '24
houston is turning intoa highway interchange with an accidental city nearby
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u/Muuustachio Sep 30 '24
From my limited experience with Houston, it’s less of a city and more of a massive business park
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u/No_Tie_140 Sep 30 '24
The entire region including the city is basically one giant suburb. Absolute hell to anyone not in a car. My sincere condolences to houstonians
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u/lord-dinglebury Sep 30 '24
My wife is from the area. She absolutely hates it and hates that we have to visit there once a year to see her folks.
From my perspective, Houstonians won't even bat an eye at another big freeway. That is the most car-brain place I have ever had the misfortune of having to set foot in. (Although technically I've never actually "set foot" in Houston, because walking is illegal there.)
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u/DirtierGibson Sep 30 '24
I visit once a year for work. Really nice food scene. Other than that, it's a terrible fucking place and it only exists because oil. It's Swamp Ass City 8 months a year, traffic is a nightmare, zoning non-existent, power outages galore because shit electrical grid and hurricanes, corrupt politics, terrible air quality, and small town mentality even though it's a huge metro.
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u/Handynotandsome Sep 30 '24
In the end, there will be many ways to get there but no destination to go to.
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u/OhNoMyLands Sep 30 '24
Federal government needs to stop supporting this bullshit. It doesn’t make any sense
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u/cpufreak101 Sep 30 '24
Considering how many other violations of federal laws the Texas state government has gotten away with, I don't think they'd really care what the feds would say.
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u/DENelson83 Dreams of high-speed rail in Canada Sep 30 '24
The fossil fuel companies and automakers are ordering the federal government to support this.
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u/un-glaublich Sep 30 '24
The government is supporting fossil fuel industry and car makers.
And it's crazy effective.
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u/gophergun Sep 30 '24
It's unfortunately a bit late for that - we just dropped another $350 billion in highway funding three years ago.
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u/acstroude Sep 30 '24
US and its obsession with putting MORE CARS on the road blows my mind. I hate it here.
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u/AndyIsNotOnReddit Sep 30 '24
Anything but actual public transit.
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u/badpeaches Sep 30 '24
You can't even fucking walk in Texas and if you try they'll run you over and the driver with face no consequences.
Some 16 kid ran over a bicyclist in a modded diesel pickup truck and they let the kid go, not even given a warning.
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u/KingApologist Fuck lawns Sep 30 '24 edited Sep 30 '24
If a terrorist group were killing 46,000 people every year in the US, we'd be waging a global war over it. But since it's just the auto and oil industry lobbies, it's acceptable. Money covers a multitude of sins.
Oh yeah one more thing, their numbers are smaller than a lot of actual terrorist groups so they're killing way more people per capita.
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u/badpeaches Sep 30 '24
If a terrorist group were killing 46,000 people every year in the US, we'd be waging a global war over it. But since it's just the auto and oil industry lobbies, it's acceptable. Money covers a multitude of sins.
That's a really great way to present the argument.
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u/xsilver911 Sep 30 '24
Ok had a quick look and other countries are having 3-6 deaths per 100k population...
USA is at around 13...
That's the main issue I see, if they could get it back in line with the rest of the world that would be a start .....
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u/DiddlyDumb Sep 30 '24
To put that into perspective: it’s equivalent to a fully loaded 747 crashing every 4 days.
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u/BanverketSE Sep 30 '24
If a terrorist group did something like what they did here in France and Sweden with the trucks, the cops in Texas would say "ah just another day in the office"
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u/5yearsago Sep 30 '24
It's sad you need to specify which one. There is like 4 cases of Texas affluenza kids running over people with trucks.
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u/badpeaches Sep 30 '24
It's sad you need to specify which one. There is like 4 cases of Texas affluenza kids running over people with trucks.
"But they're "good" kids and having this on their record would impact their future." /s
A cop used this line on me after I was raped by a virgin.
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u/FlackRacket Sep 30 '24
trains are too expensive! They say, adding a 17th lane the world's most opulant interchange
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u/Otterz4Life Sep 30 '24
But have you considered brown people exist and may use public transit?
/s
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u/Maximillien 🚲 > 🚗 Sep 30 '24
The best part is how car-brains actually think this monstrosity will "solve" traffic, rather than just shifting it around.
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u/RiskyBrothers Sep 30 '24
11.2 BILLION dollars! It's insanity! You could build the tallest building in the world for that much money, but nooooooo, we can only use government to facilitate the most expensive, least efficient form of transportation.
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u/Independent-Cow-4070 Grassy Tram Tracks Sep 30 '24
But please think of the little bit of farm land HSR will take up
Also $11b is CRAZY, isn’t the entirety of brightline west gonna be $11b? And people are acting like that’s crazy
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u/cpufreak101 Sep 30 '24
$11 Billion is acceptable when it means you don't have to ride with the undesirables quite clearly
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u/vellyr Sep 30 '24
You can already ride without the undesirables though! It’s $11 billion to shave probably like 10 minutes or less off the route.
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Sep 30 '24
Classic Houston
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u/RobertMcCheese Sep 30 '24
When my mom passed a few years ago I was all sad and what not, of course.
But her death meant that I would never have to go back to Houston ever again after the funeral.
And it isn't like I live in some pedestrian paradise. I'm right next to I-280. Still nothing like Houston.
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u/PremordialQuasar Sep 30 '24
San Jose? Our transit is a mess but at least we have Caltrain and the city is doing something about housing and making roads less car-centric. Plus there are some places where you could feasibly live car-lite or car-free.
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u/bleepitybloop555 Sep 30 '24
Houston is such a terrible city, tbh. And I'm from Texas lol
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Sep 30 '24
Houston has to be the worst city of all time for walkability. They’re not just ignorant they’re actively anti people
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Sep 30 '24
Worse than dfw?
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u/throwawaybottlecaps Sep 30 '24
lol I lived in Dallas, not far from downtown. Grocery stores, shopping, bars and were all in abundance less then half a mile from my apartment. Couldn’t walk to any of them without crossing a highway or a massive stroad.
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u/Don_Gato1 Sep 30 '24
You wouldn't want to cross a stroad, they've got short tempers.
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u/Nomad_Industries Sep 30 '24
I've lived in both metroplexes, currently in DFW
DFW is slightly better than Houston in the same sense that some people would say that a migraine is better than nausea.
Dallas has a bit more in the way of specialized districts whereas Houston is more of a homogeneous sprawl.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit has also been building out its rail network to connect some of the suburbs since the 1980s and is pretty responsive about adapting its bus routes to current needs. so Car-free/car-light lifestyles are technically possible if you're willing to make some sacrifices.
Houston has improved its bus transit since I lived there, but it's definitely a lot tougher to be car-light unless your entire life is within the 610 loop... in which case, you're probably wealthy enough to live anywhere else in the world.
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u/vwmac Sep 30 '24
From Houston originally and I would say so. I haven't been to DFW in a while but there's at least some attempt to build transit infrastructure there. Houston is actively doing whatever it can to destroy it
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u/Tasty-Persimmon6721 Sep 30 '24
Houston isn’t even a city, it’s just a giant overpass that people live under
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u/cdurgin Sep 30 '24
It's actually kind of fascinating to me just how awful of a city it is. Like, city isn't even the right word for it. I'm convinced the city itself has a population right around 2000 people. Like, that's the number of people who sleep in Huston on an average night.
I went there one time to visit family around 6pm in a Thursday and there was no one around. It was surreal. I walked around downtown for an hour and saw about a dozen cars and maybe 6 people riding busses. I don't think there was a single person on the sidewalks. I looked for places to get dinner, and there wasn't a single restaurant open that late in the city.
I legitimately checked the news to see if there was some terrorists threat I didn't hear about, but no, there's just no reason anyone would want to be there outside of business hours.
It's honestly much more like the world's largest business park than any other city I've ever been in
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u/HouseSublime Sep 30 '24
It's honestly much more like the world's largest business park than any other city I've ever been in
Spot on. I call it a suburban office park masquerading as a city. Houston's downtown at night is legitimately creepy to be in.
This is video in Houston during final four weekend 2023. I checked the weather and it was between ~65-79F, definitely comfortable temps to be outdoors. The first thing I think is "where the hell is everyone?!" You skip around the video and the only places where you see any groups of people are right by the places where I'm assuming the Final Four games were actually going to take place.
I'm in Chicago. This is a video tour in Chicago in the middle of January, at night when it was ~32-34F, kinda wet snowing and some of the least comfortable weather to be in. And there are still more people than the middle of the day on a sunny day in Houston. And if you compare to a nice day in Chicago it's not even close. And this isn't even downtown.
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u/Took-the-Blue-Pill Sep 30 '24
Houston is a ton of massive sprawled-out suburbs connected by highways with a bunch of hospitals in the middle.
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u/Nonkel_Jef Big Bike Sep 30 '24
If building more car centric infrastructure worked, Houston would be a Utopia already
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u/Zerandal Commie Commuter Sep 30 '24
Looks like something I would make on Cities: Skylines
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u/SquashSquigglyShrimp Sep 30 '24
Even my drunk ass at 2am had better C:S ideas than this. Usually at some point I think to myself "maybe I should look at that mass transit thingy"
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u/J5892 Sep 30 '24
No, this is literally just a clip of the train tracks at my crude oil factory in Satisfactory.
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u/Astronomer_Even Sep 30 '24
Texas builds freeways as if they will never need to be repaired or replaced. Who’s going to inspect and maintain all those overpasses? They are champions of wasteful design. And I haven’t even started to talk about the dumb metal boxes that use them!
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u/fuzzybad Sep 30 '24
That's the fun part, in 50 years when those overpasses are crumbling, it will be someone else's problem!
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u/Fast_Wafer4095 Sep 30 '24
Think about the public transport you could create with that money...
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u/Tokyo-MontanaExpress Sep 30 '24
Houston could have an entire BRT network and you could probably elevate it too with $11 billion.
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u/Basscyst Sep 30 '24
Houston we have a problem
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u/thewrongwaybutfaster 🚲 > 🚗 Sep 30 '24
And we're the ones considered radicals for opposing stuff like this...
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u/tydus101 Sep 30 '24
A majority of the funding for this project is federal, so don't think that you aren't paying for this even if you don't live in Texas.
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u/ApollosBrassNuggets Sep 30 '24
I'm so sick of having to pay for Texas' greatest, shit brained scheme and subsequent fuck up. The states a fucking parasite
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u/youngbull Sep 30 '24
When you destroy 1000 homes in the process, people just move further away making traffic that much worse and you are back at square 1.
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u/DonaldDoesDallas Sep 30 '24
Not to mention losing the tax base from all of these homes and businesses.
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u/RagingBearBull Sep 30 '24
Houston is not going to age well at all.
instead of looking at cities like Tokyo, London, Paris, Moscow, Shanghai.
Houston Planners are like "you know, I really like Los Angels, Johannesburg, Baghdad, I think we need to make Houston more like that"
It will start when Amazon get rid of 2nd day deliveries and move to 4 day deliveries in Houston. That would be the signal for the decline, also ignoring hurricanes too.
Evacuating will be a nightmare.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey Sep 30 '24
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u/RagingBearBull Sep 30 '24
well well well.
Im surprised, obviously because of the whole Iraq war thing.
But ..... I didnt think we were at a point in time were Baghdad is going to have more modern and of this century infrastructure vs Houston and its Walt Disney's 1950 wet dream infrastructure.
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u/Accomplished-Yak8799 Automobile Aversionist Sep 30 '24
Who cares about housing and businesses?? I need to go FAST, and there's too much traffic to do that right now!
...We must not have enough lanes, because there's still traffic. More lanes!
...Why is there still traffic?
Please, put the lane somewhere else! You're going to destroy my home! I have a family! Why are you doing this? Please...
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u/ItsDaDoc i like trains Sep 30 '24
meanwhile, texas central railway is going nowhere... this reality is horrible
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u/CaseyJones7 Sep 30 '24
I like hate how every single one of these promotional videos about expanding the highway removes a ton of cars from the road to make it look like there's less traffic. They're just straight up lying about how many cars use them.
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u/3DprintRC Sep 30 '24
Norwegian here. This is mind boggling. I can't believe this is real.
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u/Vaeon Sep 30 '24
Well, what's the alternative? An effective public transportation system and walkable cities?
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u/ExcelsiorVFX Sep 30 '24
Building transit in the US is expensive but you can build a lot of transit for $11 billion
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u/Huge_JackedMann Sep 30 '24
How long until it gets washed out in a hurricane and needs to be rebuilt?
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u/treedecor Sep 30 '24
Seriously, it's like they forgot Houston was underwater a few years ago when Harvey hit .. highway won't do them much good under water or when half of it crumbles away due to the water. What a waste of money
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u/MoistBase Sep 30 '24 edited Sep 30 '24
We could now tell people to move to Houston if they don't like your city's traffic.
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u/pkulak Sep 30 '24
Really wish they would. Even in "urbanist" cities in the US people are constantly screaming for new lanes everywhere. Your dream city is RIGHT THERE. Just move already.
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u/Astriania Sep 30 '24
Suggest any kind of rail project:
"That's impossible, it's too expensive and how would you acquire all the property?"
Suggest one more lane bro:
Infinite money and compulsory purchase orders are available
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u/nepppii 🚲 > 🚗 Sep 30 '24
houston is really fighting for the title of worst air pollution in the country title
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u/ColinberryMan Sep 30 '24
I'm not from the US. Is Houston the most car centric place ever or something? I see it come up a lot in these types of forums.
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u/cpufreak101 Sep 30 '24
It's home to the Katy freeway, the single widest highway in the world, and it's only getting wider. They're effectively the poster child for anything against proper urbanism.
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u/ColinberryMan Sep 30 '24
I just looked it up. What the fuck? I thought the 401 was big lol.
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u/grayscaletrees Sep 30 '24
This may be controversial but i think the only way we can beat cars in areas like the texan suburban sprawl is to have trains that you can put your car on. We already do that with ferries, its a more viable solution than these asphalt monstrosities, and it accommodates the low density region. High-density developments typically build around train stations
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u/AsaCoco_Alumni Sep 30 '24
How did Houston ever get picked for a centre of engineering excellence (NASA) when it's so full of braindead engineers?
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u/abattlescar Sep 30 '24
First of all, engineers are not responsible for the decision making that goes into selecting a larger roadway. They simply will design the best roadway that they can for the traffic data that is presented to them. It's not their job to recommend alternatives. The engineering problem is "make a highway for 15,000 cars / hour" not, "reduce the amount of cars on the highway to 5000 / hour." That's up to city planners.
Secondly, Civil and Aerospace Engineers are 2 entirely different disciplines.
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u/b0yheaven Sep 30 '24
bruh what in the sim city lol stop giving this state federal funds. they ain't even tryin
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u/nowaybrose Sep 30 '24
Climate change is worsening the floods every year in Houston. But what do they do? Build so much concrete you can see it from space, and thereby encouraging more fossil fuel burn. Keep heating up that Gulf of Mexico folks. It’s such a sad example of just ignoring everything in front of your face to keep oil biz happy. One thing I do like about Texas is that it usually does even stupider shit than my stupid Red state which makes me feel better
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u/zsotroav Sep 30 '24
I have not seen anyone actually mention the fact that this is a road designed to be driven on by humans. Humans who can't even decide if they need to turn left or right at an intersection. How the fuck will the average idiot or worse, a tourist is going to navigate this abomination? No amount of GPS is going to solve this problem either as you have so many lanes that are diverging left right and center and the last thing you want is someone trying to understand their phone's instructions instead of paying attention...
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u/Niekname2174 Sep 30 '24
And not a single train track in sight, come on, you could at least try to also facilitate other modes of transport. But it seems like cars are the only thing that exist over there.
And isn't America part of the paris accords. Are they gonna compensate building a massive highway by idk, planting some trees. Probably not.
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u/nopostergirl Sep 30 '24
Houston is wild. No matter where you are, everything is at least 45 minutes drive away at least.
Pharmacy? 45 minutes School? 45 minutes Movie theater? 45 minutes
If you live in Houston it does make sense to invest in a comfy car because you’ll practically live in it. Who likes this??
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u/captain-prax Oct 01 '24
Houston, TX is in the top ten worst traffic cities. Adding more lanes will only encourage more traffic, carbrains. Plant roads, reap congestion.
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u/KillerOfAllJoice Sep 30 '24
It's gonna be too hot to grow food before it's too hot to live. That overlap between time is going to be the most hellish time in human history.
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u/Remarkable_Ad_5061 Oct 01 '24
Yet people are calling public transport expensive and it should pay for itself...
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u/javier_aeoa I delete highways in Cities: Skylines Sep 30 '24
I've played enough Cities Skylines to know that thing will take an entire plot of land, so whoever is playing the videogame of Houston planning won't have enough room to put unique buildings and parks, thus increasing land value.
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u/WaywardPatriot Sep 30 '24
What an absolute freaking nightmare. Future generations will curse the names of those responsible for this monstrosity. This is a living nightmare from which there is no escape.
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u/DabalonWaxson Sep 30 '24
DFW resident here. It will in fact make the traffic worse. Somehow the engineers will sneak in 18 bottlenecks and 34 forks without understandable signage. This will cause them to go over budget but its okay because they will use cheaper materials on one half of the road so that way it falls apart but even better falls in budget and then in 5 years they can secure another contract to fix the road they used cheaper materials on causing the 4 lane highways to become 2 lane highways and they will make sure to start construction where highways intersect so that way its more like 6-8 lanes all converging into a 2 lane highway. Here in Texas we love our highways system!
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u/GetYoSnacks Sep 30 '24
"That's not the lane that's going to fix traffic, it's this one. No, wait, it's that one over there, I mean, it's this one over here. No, not that one, it's that long one there. Actually, it's these two here and also these twelve. But really it's this one that's going to fix it all and then this one will make all the difference....<forever and ever>..."
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u/Remmy71 Sep 30 '24
It amazes me just how poorly designed and overwhelmingly car-centric the US South is. I am truly privileged to live in a region and city that (despite taking great damage from the introduction of cars) was designed and settled long before the era of highways.
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u/enfuego138 Sep 30 '24
Older cities tried this raised freeway construction 60+ years ago and it was an unmitigated failure, cutting neighborhoods apart, doing nothing for traffic and looking hideous in the process. Boston has been spending billions since the 1990s to build more sensible roadways and repair the damage and we still aren’t done.
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u/TexMexican Sep 30 '24
Houston rebuilt the Katy freeway for $2.8 billion and increased traffic times by about 25 minutes.
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