Stop Bagby Closure, Oil Import Tariffs, MaX Lanes, Covid-19 vs Density vs Heat

Apologies for the long gap between posts – I wanted to give the 15-year anniversary post extra time as the lead post on the blog. But in the meantime we’ve accumulated a whole lot of news items to get out, only a few of which related to the coronavirus (maybe a good thing?).

First, following up on my post last month about the potential for a permanent closure of the Bagby and Brazos entrance/exit to/from the 59 Spur, there’s now a formal opposition website to the closure where you can sign the petition.

• Here’s your chance to weigh in on Houston planners’ $9.8B plan for freeway, transit projects: I’d like to see consideration for making the inner Katy BRT lanes MaX Lanes that can accommodate all sorts of vehicles that could use them to their full capacity.  No matter what, BRT will only use a small fraction of any dedicated lanes.
• Houston boasts the best home values among major U.S. metros, according to new report. The median US home price of $239,900 will get you 1,935 sq.ft here vs. 540 in LA or 361 (!) in NYC. That’s a downright claustrophobic quarantine…
• Harris County #3 on the list of worst counties for drunk driving. Half of all auto-fatalities involve a drunk driver! That’s your real target for Vision Zero.  I think we should start with any DUI conviction requiring passing a breathalyzer test to start their car for a decade+.
• Evan Mintz in Texas Monthly: Houston Is Not Prepared for the Oil Bust. He mentions a quota or tariff on oil imports, which I also support.  Why do we protect other domestic industries from predatory pricing, but not oil? (like what Saudi and Russia are doing now).  The American Conservative has also called for an oil import tariff to put a floor on prices and protect the domestic industry.  And the environmental left should be all over supporting this – anything that makes emitting carbon more expensive.
• CityLab: Are Suburbs Safer From Coronavirus? Probably Not.  Wow this is annoyingly biased. Completely ignores risks in urban common areas, doors, elevators, crowded sidewalks, transit, taxis, and shared rides. Suburbs are way safer! Anything where you control your own private transportation instead of shared. Even the NY Times has acknowledged that density has really hurt NYC during this crisis.
• First time I’ve ever been eager for a Houston summer! “high temp and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of COVID-19 …the arrival of summer and rainy season in the northern hemisphere can effectively reduce the transmission”. More at the NY Times.

There are more backlogged items, but I’ll save them for a future post.

Finally, our quote of the week:

{NYC} Mayor de Blasio has scoffed at the “road diet” idea that traffic will melt away if fewer lanes are provided. “We have to be careful,” he told Gothamist recently. “If we say, ‘Hey, let’s reduce the amount of lanes,’ that’s not a guarantee people get out of their cars; it is a guarantee of traffic jams and other problems.”

This piece first appeared on Houston Strategies Blogspot.

Tory Gattis is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Center for Opportunity Urbanism and co-authored the original study with noted urbanist Joel Kotkin and others, creating a city philosophy around upward social mobility for all citizens as an alternative to the popular smart growth, new urbanism, and creative class movements. He is also an editor of the Houston Strategies blog.

Photo credit:Socrate76 via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.