Monthly Archives: June 2008

Main Break

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And the breakdown of city infrastructure continues.

Please be advised that two 2-inch water lines at the intersection of Dallas and Bagby downtown were ruptured during the night. This affects the water and chilled water systems for City Hall, City Hall Annex, the Central Library and the Juila Ideson building facilities. Currently, we have no water or air conditioning at those facilities and repairs are expected to take most of the day.

These four buildings are being closed for today while repairs are made. Employees who work in these buildings are being temporarily re-assigned for the day to an alternate work site – their homes. Employees should be available to their supervisors throughout the day.

This does not affect all City employees. It applies ONLY to those employees working in these four buildings – City Hall, City Hall Annex, the Central Library and the Julia Ideson Building.

Bill White,
Mayor

A Scourge on Taxpayers

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Bill Steigerwald of Townhall takes a look a mass transit with Wendell Cox. It isn’t pretty.

When you talk about transit in the United States, you have to be talking about best prisoner awards. These systems are a scourge on taxpayers. There are some that do some wonderful things, but nobody does it all right.

I keep arguing in my own mind, who is more responsible for the abject failure of transit in the United States? And mind you — transit expenditures have gone up more than 300 percent adjusted for inflation since 1970 and ridership has gone up less than 20 percent. There is no other sector of the economy, including health care, where I can find escalation even close to that. Transit holds the record. It is a damned outrage how bad transit has been.

Wendell doesn’t pull his punches either.

…the first reason why there is no hope for transit is that it can not be designed to be competitive with the automobile, except for very specific locations — that really only being a downtown area. It has to be a good concentrated downtown area, and they don’t come much better in my view than Pittsburgh. The other reason why there is no hope for transit is that whatever you give them will be frittered away without any impact whatsoever.

Frittered? Why?

The whole point of transit is to maximize costs. The management-labor arrangements maximize costs and so do the vendor arrangements with respect to capital expenditures. … In Europe what they discovered about 15 years ago is that centralized funding creates all sorts of incentives for locals to waste money. So just about everywhere in Europe they have stopped their national transit programs and forced it down to the local level. They’ve said, “If you want to spend all that money on transit, you go right ahead.” In a sense, they de-nationalized funding and they de-nationalized responsibility.

Head over there and read the article to see whose transit system he likes the most, and which American system he says “sucks least.” It’s an interesting read; pity Houston didn’t get a mention. Although it was interesting to see what market share the “less sucky” transit agencies have….

Rearranging Roads For Everyone’s, uh, Ed’s Benefit

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There’s been some confusion over a request by Ed Wulfe to swap some land and a public road in the Galleria area for his Boulevard Place project. After looking at the maps and reading the proposed ordinance carefully, I wanted to post to set the record straight. This is not S. Post Oak BLVD that’s being handed over to Ed, it’s S. Post Oak LANE. I’ve always been annoyed at the confusion engendered by the developers who want to make money by giving everyone a “Post Oak” address, and this is part and land-parcel of the effect. Although, the actual deal is almost as bad as if it were Post Oak Blvd.

Post Oak Lane is about one block to the west, and dead ends into Ed Wulfe’s Boulevard Place development. It doesn’t go anywhere. Skylark is a half-block further west, and also dead ends. Ambassador Way runs east-west, about a half-block west from S. Post Oak Blvd, and either dead ends or meets McCue’s northern end (maps differ).

The net effect of the land swaps is to either extend Ambassador Way, and/or move it a bit southward, to meet up with an extended SPO Lane. The latter will be itself curved west into line with Skylark, and Skylark’s southern end will be chopped off and twisted to meet SPO Lane from the west. The combined streets will apparently connect to the northern end of McCue, thus relieving congestion on S. Post Oak Blvd, which is only one block east, and providing customers of Mr. Wulfe’s development a less-trafficed access from the rear. Note that spillover traffic coming from the north is currently forced over to Sage or Chimney Rock.

How long until the residents of Chevy Chase (which meets McCue from the west in this area) want their street blocked off is anyone’s guess. My money’s on “when the construction starts, unless they’re reading this.” FYI I’m not sure if the Centre at Post Oak is a Wulfe development, but if it is, this will allow him to assemble a mega-block approximately the size of the current Galleria.

What kept me digging through this until I understood it was the lengthy discussion of the past history of this project — apparently the deal had been through previous incarnations in 2004 and 2006. The 2004 deal involved Ed getting to cut the streets in question off, and having to construct barriers and. Then the deal was renegotiated in 2006:

…City Council authorized the abandonment and sale of a portion of South Post Oak Lane, a portion of Skylark Lane, four turnaround street easements, two 10-foot-wide utility easements, and a 10-foot-wide prescriptive water line easement in exchange for the conveyance to the City of right of way for the realignment and the construction of South Post Oak Lane and Skylark Lane to City standards at no cost to the City…

Now Ed’s back again, with yet another re-negotiation of the deal. The new ordinance reads:

…an ordinance authorizing the abandonment and sale of a portion of South Post Oak Lane, a portion of Skylark Lane, two 10-foot-wide utility easements, and a 10-foot-wide prescriptive water line easement in exchange for a consideration of $1,500.00 plus the conveyance to the city of right-of-way for South Post Oak Lane and Ambassador Way…

Notice what’s missing? Ed Wulfe no longer has to construct the streets to handle the additional traffic caused by his development!

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Boy, talk about some rules for some folks (Ashby high-rise developers) and other rules for Ed Wulfe! Not only does he not have to spring for a traffic study (it’s not a multi-family high rise, after all), he doesn’t even have to build the streets — we get to do that for him at taxpayer expense!

But don’t worry… BLVD Place, a development the size of the Galleria, will be conveniently near a rail station, and that nice park we also got to pay for (screw the owners)!

Huh, a complete disregard for the effects on vehicle traffic, and land development coincidentally near the rail alignment. Y’know, has anyone ever actually seen Metro chairman (and also coincidentally, land developer) David S. Wolff and land developer Ed Wulfe in the same place at the same time? I’m just askin’…..


Ed Wulfe
David Wolff