Fast forward to today however and Houston's 3/4 mile plinth to bicycling greatness has suddenly morphed into a boondoggle. At least, according to the group of bumblers at the Houston Chronicle's increasingly irrelevant editorial board....
City Hall Update. HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
The city's looming budget crunch should rebut any presumptions that Houston is going to have a newly recommended $500 million bicycle network in place anytime soon. However, pedaling out the proposed network at a slow pace risks a disconnected system that doesn't help cyclists or drivers, and doesn't do much to reassure taxpayers that their money is spent wisely. Houston already has a warning sign against this practice highlighted in dark green - the Lamar Street bike lane to nowhere.
The bike lane to nowhere. (You see what they did there right? Copying the bridge to nowhere which was a sign of government waste and earmark abuse?)
Clever.
Except, for the Chronically inept editorial board, the solution isn't to eliminate a bike lane that's almost completely unused and which is creating more problems than it solves. The solution, is to increase the madness exponentially.
City Hall should model San Diego, which is planning to add a grid of protected bike lanes in its downtown in a single project
Because what Houston needs are more lanes of traffic off-limits to 93% of commuters and workers who drive their cars so bicyclists can repeatedly pedal outside of the lane.
The rest of the editorial, found above, is an exercise in silliness and bad civics.
The irrelevant editorial board chastises Turner for not addressing the pillow-soft revenue cap, without mentioning that he is prohibited by Texas law from doing so until 2017. The Chronicle also seems to imply that, under no circumstances, are cuts to anything except for pensions and the revenue cap going to be acceptable as a means for fixing Houston's budget.
As Houston continues to increase the tax and regulatory burden on small and large businesses the threat of flight becomes more and more a reality. Soon all that's going to be left within the city of Houston are those too rich to care, and those too poor to do anything about it.
Rebuilding jobs and the economy in Houston's disadvantaged neighborhoods isn't going to be accomplished by taking a bigger piece of the pie from those who are succeeding, it's going to be accomplished by streamlining interaction with City Hall and allowing people to reinvest more of their money into their business.
While it's true that I'm no supporter of Sylvester Turner, that doesn't make it fair to call him out for what he's done so far.
Has he solved Houston's problems? No. But it's fair to say that, at least for now, he hasn't made them markedly worse. Given my expectations for his Mayoral tenure that's meant as praise. Faint praise yes, because we haven't seen his long-term plan.
It's fairly clear however that the Chron won't be willing to praise Turner until he squeezes more dollars from Houston's citizens. Given that the Chron just saved a bundle in property tax with the sale of their downtown operation, I'm willing to be their budget can absorb quite an increase at the new digs while still coming in under the old total.
If only all of us could be so lucky as to sell our house when the tax bill gets too high and relocate to another property with a lower bill in the same city.
This is the world that the Houston Chronicle's editorial board lives in. And residence in such is the main contributor to why it needs to be disbanded, it's members cast free and the resulting free dollars be spent hiring new beat reporters. Because listening to the advice of the editorial board has likely saddled Houston with Billions of dollars in boondoggles.
Let's not waste our time building any more.
