Road work ramps up as a city shuts down

There could be a (small) silver lining to Houston's Coronavirus-related economic hiatus:

A lighter load on Houston-area freeways and COVID-19 concerns have not slowed the heavy machinery making way for more lanes or new ramps along many of the routes seeing unprecedented drops in traffic.

Some crews will even ramp up work as traffic takes a coronavirus-induced holiday.

“Lighter traffic on our roadways potentially presents some opportunities to advance some of our work, and that is being assessed on a case-by-case basis,” said Raquelle Lewis, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation in Houston. 

All TxDOT projects remain active, Lewis said.

Houston Public Works and contractors on city jobs also remain out tying steel, pouring concrete and smoothing asphalt, Public Works spokeswoman Erin Jones said this week.

Of course, this is only for projects already in progress. Given how Coronavirus is affecting the business environment, it will be more difficult to prepare construction documents and bids, gather materials and manpower, and complete other tasks needed in order to undertake new projects.

(I should know. I tried to have an online meeting with TxDOT staff earlier today about a future planning study. It was a comedy of errors of lagging computers, reverbing microphones, and malfunctioning "virtual" computer displays. We continue to have actual, in-person meetings in this day and age precisely because they do not "malfunction." I don't think technology will ever replace the primacy and legibility of actual, physical interpersonal interaction.)

There’s also the question as to how work crews will be able to stay healthy and practice "social distancing" while still getting construction tasks completed.

All in all, however, it's generally a good thing that projects intended to improve mobility can be accelerated (and hopefully be closer to completion) by the time the city's traffic returns. It's also good that, even as so many businesses are shuttered and workers sidelined during this crisis, the region's construction workers will still be receiving a paycheck.

I also thought this tidbit was interesting:

Automobile traffic may be down, but bike use in Houston appears to be surging. Trips on Houston B-Cycle — each time one of the bicycles was checked out from a kiosk — were 51 percent higher from Feb. 23 to Tuesday, compared with last year, bike share officials said.

“It’s often more than one factor,” B-Cycle spokesman Henry Morris said. “Personally, I think the combination of good weather, spring break, school and work closures, and the need for solo or small group transportation/recreation options because of social distancing rules are all contributing to the rise in trips.”

Gyms also are closed, leading many to venture out in the pleasant weather.

This is good news. Between the reduction in automobile traffic as well as the nice spring weather, now’s probably a perfect time for a bike ride. As long as bicyclists sanitize the bikes before or after each use and stay six feet apart from each other, of course…

Restaurants will bear the brunt of this crisis

As bad as this Coronavirus crisis is going to get (and it's going to get really, really bad), it is going to be especially devastating for bars and restaurants:

Across America, restaurant dining rooms are empty. Some have locked the door; others have skeleton crews working to fulfill delivery and carry-out orders as customers hunker down in their homes, waiting to see what happens next. 

The coronavirus pandemic — fast-moving, and endangering people who spend time in public spaces — is uniquely poised to take down the restaurant industry as we know it. As if tailor-made to render restaurants unusable, the pandemic is a time bomb. And restaurants will not be able to delivery or takeout their way out of it. 

Many of the restaurants that close during the pandemic will not reopen their doors. Diners should also brace for a restaurant landscape that will be entirely different by the time — however near or far off it may be — they can be safely encouraged to enjoy a crowded night out again. 

“We are about to see a lot of places go broke forever.”

I've already begun seeing local restaurants put out pleas for gift card purchases, "virtual tip jars" for their staffs, and other requests for support on social media. It's heartbreaking. Corinne and I are trying to do our part by ordering takeout from our favorite local restaurants, but it's not particularly good  for our pocketbooks or our waistlines and it's not something we can do indefinitely.

A crisis of this scale and scope, so uniquely damaging to restaurants, is indeed unprecedented. And for now, restaurants are doing their best to stay afloat, ramping up delivery, offering curbside to-go service, promoting merch, offering gift certificates, begging diners to reschedule rather than cancel pre-paid reservations. But the truth is, compared to full dining rooms night after night, these are Band-Aids, temporary stopgaps to stop hemorrhaging money. Gift cards, which are effectively microloans to the restaurant owner, also do little to help workers in the short-term — or restaurants that don’t have the infrastructure to sell them. 

Independent operators need a major infusion of cash — cash that’s more readily available from the government than from their stressed-out customers — to make it. They need rent alleviation, eviction protection, and tax deferrals, at a minimum, to live through this body blow. Who knows what they’ll end up getting.

Restaurants operate on thin margins as it is; even a bad week or two can doom them. There's no telling what a shutdown of this magnitude will do to the industry. 

Both the large groups that have enough cash at hand to “mothball” and the restaurants that can run a successful delivery operation are on borrowed time. This outbreak has no clear end date. There will be businesses that simply cannot afford to stay furloughed or continue doing delivery. 

And when those restaurants that survive do reopen, they’ll do so with their pocketbooks depleted, without an emergency fund to spare should some other unexpected issue hit (and in the restaurant business, there’s always an expense around the corner). They will also reopen their doors to a new world of challenges, not least of which is facing a dining public likely either coming out of or in the midst of a global recession. Those diners who lost income after supply-chain disruption and nationwide business closures due to social distancing will simply have less money to spend on dining.

Chronicle food critic Alison Cook fears for the future of Houston's unique and vibrant restaurant culture:

I could go on at length about the ways in which our Houston restaurants and bars are a powerful economic engine we can’t afford to lose. About the fact that they’re the city’s fourth largest industry, and the dire social consequences of all those jobs evaporating. About the whopping sales taxes restaurants and bars feed into the Texas treasury, gone like the wind. 

All that pales, however, next to the particular cultural importance restaurants have to Houston. Here in a city that has been on the leading edge of demographic change in America since the 1970s, restaurants have functioned as a kind of crossroads and social glue. 

Dining rooms, food truck and barbecue lines alike are public squares where different kinds of Houstonians come together to check out each others’ cuisines — and each other. If we think of ourselves as a tribe these days, and I maintain that we do, much of that awareness has sprung from our collective enthusiasm for our freewheeling culinary mix. Thanks to Viet-Cajun crawfish, Tex-Mex barbecue and a hundred other manifestations of our diversity, it always tastes as if there is more that unites us as a city than divides us.

I’ve watched it all happen over my long career as a student of Houston foodways. And that is where my grief gets so personal. I grew up along with the city’s growing worldliness and embrace of a riot of cultures. It has been my privilege to chronicle that change, to dissect and try to explain the restaurants big and small that helped make it all happen. 

Our vivid regional cuisine, once ignored by the world at large, is now celebrated as the city’s foremost attraction. We built this, fellow citizens, with our skills and curiosity, our adventurous spirit and our financial support. To see it all threatened now seems unbearable to me. 

I have a lot of friends and acquaintances that work in the service in food and beverage service industry. They are going through very tough time right now. I hope everything works out in the end, but I'm also bracing myself for a future in which some of my favorite dining spots and watering holes are no more.

Kuff is just as concerned as I am.

Love (and Marriage) in the Time of Coronavirus

Yesterday was supposed to have been the Big Day for Corinne and me. It was supposed to be the day our friends and family came to New Orleans to celebrate our wedding. We had spent well over a year (and many thousands of dollars) meticulously planning the entire experience: the venue, the food, the music.

Of course, none of that happened yesterday. Neither we nor our friends nor our families went to New Orleans. We did not have a ceremony. We did not eat and dance at a reception afterwards. The wedding that we so carefully planned did not happen.

We had been approaching the wedding date with a background awareness of the Coronavirus situation, but it wasn't until a couple of weekends ago - when SXSW in Austin was canceled and the first guests informed us that they would probably not be attending out of concern for their safety - that we began to become truly concerned. Over the following days more events were canceled - the Rodeo, sports - and more of our guests expressed concern about traveling to our wedding. We found ourselves among those with upcoming wedding plans who were agonizing about what to do: continue as planned, even though many people - our parents included - might not be able to attend due to the risk involved, or cancel, disrupting everyone's plans at the last minute and potentially incurring thousands of dollars in lost deposits and cancelation fees.

However, after Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards decreed two Fridays ago that schools be closed and that all public gatherings larger than 250 be canceled, we saw the writing on the wall. Even though our gathering would be smaller than 250 people, we knew things would only get worse as the number of positive Coronavirus cases in the New Orleans area increased. We couldn't ask our guests to put themselves at risk by attending our ceremony.

So we called our wedding off.

After hurriedly working with our venue and other vendors (all of which have been awesome!), we tentatively rescheduled for a date in July of this year and informed our guests as quickly as we could.

There's no telling if the Coronavirus situation will have passed by July - Louisiana is being badly affected by the virus outbreak right now and some epidemiologists are forecasting that it will take 18 months before this plague is brought under control - but it's the date the venue had available. Even if the Coronavirus threat does pass, there's no guarantee that the society and economy on the other side of it will even let us have a wedding. We're very worried about our vendors - our venue/caterer, our baker, our photographer, our deejay - and can only hope that they make it through the difficult weeks ahead.

Sure enough, last Monday the Centers for Disease Control suggested that all events of fifty or more people - weddings included - be canceled. That same day, the Mayor of New Orleans ordered that all "public and private gatherings" be canceled and that people not gather in groups larger than "the number of people in a reasonable household" in order to reduce social interaction and transfer of the virus. Had we not postponed our wedding, the decision would have been made for us.

But that's not the end of this story.

As the seriousness of the Coronavirus situation unfolded over the last week, Corinne and I began to discuss the need to be able to make legal and medical decisions for each other, should the need arise. We also found ourselves in a defiant mood: why should we allow this pandemic to interrupt our plans for our relationship?! It didn't hurt that we also had in our possession a marriage license from the State of Louisiana that would be valid through the end of the month.

So we made a few phone calls, and last Friday morning we drove from Houston to Lake Charles, Louisiana to meet our pastor, Tommy Dillon (the rector at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge) at a park on the south side of town. A couple of our friends drove separately and met us there in order to serve as witnesses. My son was with us as well, but unfortunately our parents were not as they are elderly and high-risk. (There were seven of us total, so we complied with the Governor's most recent prohibition of gatherings of ten people or more. We were careful not to touch each other and sanitized our hands frequently.)

It was raining, so we ended up having a brief ceremony underneath a picnic pavilion, with our bottles of hand sanitizer serving as paperweights to keep our marriage documents from blowing away and my son serving as photographer. It was not the most romantic setting, but it was nevertheless a moving and meaningful ceremony.

 

 

Afterwards we bid our pastor and witnesses farewell and drove to the Calcasieu Parish Clerk of Court to file the marriage license. All the bars and restaurants in Lake Charles were closed, so we couldn’t celebrate there. Corinne and I drove back home in the rain as husband and wife.

Even though we are now legally married, we still want to have our full ceremony in New Orleans with all of our family and friends. Corinne still plans to get her hair done and wear her wedding dress. We still plan to serve delicious food and dance to party tunes at our reception.

But as of right now, who knows when, or even if, it will happen.

UPDATE: Episcopal News Service interviewed Rev. Dillon regarding his ministry during the COVID-19 crisis. He used Corinne and I as an example of his work:

With the situation changing swiftly and unpredictably, Dillon is working with those he serves to meet their needs in a flexible way. He was scheduled to marry Corinne Perez and Thomas Gray of Houston, Texas, in New Orleans on March 21, with a full Eucharist and a reception. When those plans were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dillon encouraged them to get married anyway, recognizing that a couple’s legal status would be critically important in the event of a medical emergency. 

“I talked to them and I was like, ‘You know what? This is a time when the wedding needs to happen. Because, no matter what happens, you need to be legally married,’” Dillon said. “And so I said, ‘Let’s make this happen." 

The couple had a Louisiana marriage license, so Dillon suggested they meet in Lake Charles, Louisiana – near the border with Texas, and about halfway between Houston and Baton Rouge – on March 20 and have a big celebration with friends and family later. In keeping with health officials’ guidelines on physical distancing, it was a very small service: just Dillon, the couple, and a few friends as witnesses, who drove in separate cars. Standing by a picnic table in a park, Perez and Gray became husband and wife. 

“It was one of the holiest weddings I’ve ever officiated at,” Dillon said. “I said, ‘The kingdom of God is right here in the middle of this pandemic.’”

No-so-good monarch news

Just in case things aren't depressing enough right now:

The number of monarch butterflies that showed up at their winter resting grounds decreased about 53% this year, Mexican officials said Friday. 

Some activists called the decline “heartbreaking," but the Mexico head of the World Wildlife Fund said the reduction “is not alarming.”

WWF Mexico director Jorge Rickards said the previous year's large numbers were "atypical" and the monarchs had returned to their average population levels of recent years. 

The government commission for natural protected areas said the butterflies' population was “stable,” even though they covered only 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) this year. That was down from 6.05 hectares (14.95 acres) the previous year. Because the monarchs cluster so densely in pine and fir trees, it is easier to count them by area rather than by individuals.

Not everybody agrees with Rickards' assessment, however.

In contrast to Rickards' view, Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote that “scientists were expecting the count to be down slightly, but this level of decrease is heartbreaking."

"More protections are clearly needed for this migratory wonder and its habitat,” Curry wrote.

Environmentalist and author Homero Aridjis said that “the decline of over 53% of populations in the butterfly reserve is worrisome, above all because of the effects of climate change on the migration route and on the wintering grounds in Mexico.”  

Aridjis said crime and deforestation in Mexico is also a cause for alarm. One butterfly activist and a part-time guide in the reserve were murdered earlier this year.

Monarch Watch director Chip Taylor had predicted that the overwintering population would be lower this year than last, based on the following factors:

Population growth
• Less than optimal egg distribution in March and April
• Later recolonization of the Upper Midwest
• Low monarch production in Iowa and maybe western portions of the upper Midwest
• Lower summer temperatures than in 2018 

Migration
• Late migrations are associated with lower numbers reaching Mexico
• Droughts are associated with lower numbers reaching Mexico
• High numbers in the northeast do not translate to high overwintering numbers
• Northeast butterflies take too long to migrate southwest

Even so, Taylor expected the overwintering population to occupy 4.7 hectares, which means that the actual numbers were worse than his prediction.

As good as last year's numbers were, they very clearly appear to be an outlier in the Monarch Watch graph:

The bottom line: the monarch butterfly migration continues to be threatened by herbicide and pesticide use along the migratory path, illegal logging in the overwintering region, and climate change in general.

Since people have a lot more time to do things like gardening these days, my suggestion is the same as it's always been: plant that milkweed.

Local football musings: Roughnecks season cut short, Bill O'Brien is an idiot

A couple of weeks ago the reformulated XFL followed the lead of other sports leagues in the face of the Coronavirus crisis and shut things down, canceling its halfway-finished regular season. There was an initial possibility that some type of postseason could still occur, but as a of a couple of days ago that wasn't happening, either:

The XFL left open hope of playing a postseason when it suspended its season March 12. It has become clear that won’t happen, and with XFL players interested in signing with NFL teams, the league has pulled the plug on the rest of the season. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic, and the most recent local and state regulations, have left the XFL no choice but to officially cancel the remainder of the 2020 season,” XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck said in a statement. “This decision has been made with the health and safety of the entire XFL family as our top priority.” 

Luck reiterated in the statement that the league plans to return in 2021.

It sucks, because the Houston Roughnecks were the only team remaining undefeated in the new league after five weeks of play. (Does this mean that the Roughnecks are league champions?)

I attended all three Roughnecks home games at TDECU Stadium and had a fun time. The play was sloppy at times - too many dropped passes, missed tackles and penalties - but Roughnecks quarterback P. J. Walker was fun to watch (and will probably be playing in the NFL this fall, provided the Coronavirus crisis is over by then). Here are a few pictures I took of the action:


Roughnecks QB P. J. Walker throws a pass from the 50 yard line at TDECU Stadium.

The Roughnecks line up for a red zone play against the St. Louis Battlehawks.

Fans fill up the lower bowl and second deck of TDECU Stadium to watch the Roughnecks play. The Roughnecks actually saw their highest attendance of the season in what would be their final game.

I also enjoyed the wrinkles that the XFL added to the rulebook: the kickoff formations that were designed to make the game safer, the after-touchdown conversion attempts that would be worth one, two or three points depending on where the ball was placed, and the faster play clock designed to speed up the game. I commend the XFL 2.0 for taking these chances to improve the game of football in general.

The XFL says it's committed to returning in 2021. But will it be able to do so? Ben Kercheval of CBS Sports is confident that the league will return, but Awful Announcing's Joe Lucia is more circumspect, especially given the nation's uncertain financial future:

Overall, the XFL is in a precarious position. The first five weeks went about as well as anyone could have expected, yet the league was unquestionably trending in the wrong direction over those five weeks. The way this debut season ended, in lockstep with the other sports across the country and the world, does give the XFL something of a mulligan. But there are so many other factors regarding the league’s second year (including the length of the state of emergency surrounding the coronavirus, to the inevitable resumption of the other major sports leagues in America, to even the NFL’s new CBA and the sliding stock market) that we can’t even begin to process what a second year for the XFL would look like. On the bright side for the XFL, McMahon didn’t torpedo the league like he did 19 years ago, and if the XFL doesn’t return, you can’t put all the blame on the league and its decision makers.

ESPN's Kevin Seifert surveyed the state of the XFL right before the season was canceled and was generally positive about the league's overall state but expressed concern about uneven quarterback play and declining attendance and television ratings. Viewership for the latest incarnation of the XFL started out well but declined as the season wore on. (It suspended operations before it ever had to go up against the spring's premier sporting event, the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament.) While the Seattle and St. Louis franchises did well at the gate, the Los Angeles and New York teams struggled. (Given that football-hungry fans showed up to support the XFL in St. Louis, one wonders if it makes sense to move the Los Angeles team to San Diego?)

Spring football – whether it be the USFL, the WLAF/NFL Europe, the first iteration of the XFL or the AAF – simply does not have a good track record. Why should the new XFL be any different? We'll find out in February of 2021.

I hope the Roughnecks return in 2021, because this city's football fans are going to need something to cheer about after Houston Texans head coach and general manager Bill O'Brien, fresh off his spectacular quit-while-ahead loss against Kansas City in the playoffs, once again managed to show the world how much of a idiot he is by trading three-time all-pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals.

Trading one of the best wide receivers in the league and, along with Deshawn Watson and J.J. Watt, one of the faces of the franchise, is a stunningly idiotic move. Especially since all the Texans got in return was an injury-prone running-back and a couple of draft picks.

But don't take my word for how stupid this decision was. Here's Sean Pendergast, who calls the deal "a soul-crushing, disastrous move" Or ESPN's Bill Barnwell, who describes it as a "jaw-dropping, mind-bending, inexplicable trade."

It's probably bad form to spend a lot of time getting worked up over this - again, who knows if there will even be an NFL season once this Coronavirus crisis is all over - but the Texans franchise clearly has two problems on its hands: Bill O'Brien, and a fanbase that enables him.

As long as Texans fans continue to blithely support the franchise, paying big bucks for their season tickets and buying overpriced merchandise, they will get what they deserve: a crappy, underachieving team helmed by an utterly incompetent head coach/general manager.

Sportsmap's Paul Muth is "punting" on the Texans, and urges others to do the same:

So I declared that day that until Bill O'Brien is gone, I will take my fandom elsewhere. And that's what it's going to take from everyone.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of [terrible coaching/ownership] is for good [fans] to do nothing." 

-Edmund Burke, sort of. 

It's true though. I've been called a quitter and a fake fan (of 18 years I guess) since I made that announcement. But if anything is going to ever actually change, it's going to need to come from the stands. Only when the McNairs see a change in their balance sheet at the end of the season will they consider removing O'Brien from the obscene amount of power he currently holds. If you truly love your Texans, the best thing you could do is not "weather the storm," but walk away. Most wont, though, and that's why Grumpy Bill will keep his job.

Unfortunately, he's probably right; Houston's is a notoriously fair-weather, front-runner sports town except when it comes to the Texans, who somehow manage to keep their fans coming to games no matter how crappy they are.

That has to change. As O'Brien continues to run this franchise into the ground, and as the losses continue to pile up, it just might.

2020 Houston Cougar football schedule released

The 2020 campaign will look like this:

     Thu Sep 03     Rice
     Sat Sep 12      at Washington State
     Sat Sep 19      at Memphis
     Sat Sep 26      North Texas
     Sat Oct 3        (off)
     Thu Oct 8       Tulane
     Fri Oct 16       at BYU
     Sat Oct 24      at Navy
     Sat Oct 31      Central Florida
     Sat Nov 7       at Cincinnati
     Sat Nov 14     South Florida
     Sat Nov 21     at SMU
     Sat Nov 28     Tulsa

I have five thoughts about this schedule:

1. It's easier than last year, but still pretty tough. Last season's schedule began with a ridiculous run of four games in 19 days, including an opener on the road against eventual CFP participant Oklahoma. This year's schedule isn't nearly as adverse; in fact, in many ways it sets up pretty well for the Coogs. They have two home Thursday night games that give them an extra couple of days to prepare before going on tough road trips, and the off week in early October gives them a breather after the first third of the season. That being said, the road schedule is still pretty tough (more on this in a moment), and the four-game stretch in the middle of the season - at BYU, at Navy, Central Florida and at Cincinnati - is especially nasty.

2. This schedule probably isn't going to sell a lot of tickets. The home slate features no "Power 5" opponents that will attract casual fans. The closest thing the Cougars have to a "marquee" opponent at home is Central Florida, and the fact that it's on Halloween is a probably attendance killer. The two Thursday night games are also attendance killers, as is the Saturday-after-Thanksgiving game against Tulsa. UH football needs to break its three-year attendance slide, but this is probably not the schedule to do it with.

3. At least all the early home games will be at night. The Thursday games against Rice and Tulane are by definition night games. North Texas is unlikely to be televised and therefore will probably be a night game streamed on ESPN+. This means that all of Houston's home games in September and October will be night games, and that will come as good news to anybody who suffered through the "stupid" heat of the Rice and Arizona games a couple of years ago. I maintain that forcing players to play in, and fans to sit in, Houston's September heat and sun is cruel and unsafe; fortunately that won't be an issue this fall.

4. The road schedule is brutal. It features two sets of back-to-back road games, and requires the Coogs to travel to all four time zones. With one exception, every team the Cougars play on the road this year is a team they lost to at home last year. The exception: a physically tough BYU team in Provo. Ouch. (That would actually be an awesome roadie, though...)

5. I'm having trouble finding six wins on this schedule. In order to show progress, sell tickets, and validate the decision to hire Dana Holgorsen away from West Virginia (as well as his own decision to redshirt much of last year's team), the Cougars must make significant improvement over last season's 4-8 disappointment. Right now, I'm not optimistic. The home games against Rice, UNT, Tulane, USF and Tulsa are must-wins, because the roadies against Washington State, Memphis, BYU and Cincinnati are probable losses. If the Coogs can knock off back-to-earth Navy and SMU programs on the road, and maybe even upset Central Florida at home, they could achieve an eight-win season. If not, they're looking at 5-7 season, an empty stadium in 2021, and a program that has fallen back into oblivion.

Ryan Monceaux, who describes the schedule as "much more friendly" than last year's, shares his thoughts in his podcast.

UH medical school receives accreditation

I've been following this saga for the past thirteen years (see here, here, here, and here), so I'm pleased to report that it has a happy ending:

The University of Houston has received the green light to move forward with its recruiting and enrolling its first class of 30 medical students for the first new medical school in Houston in over 50 years. 

The University of Houston College of Medicine has received its preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the authority on medical education in the United States and Canada that is sponsored by the American Medical Association and the American Association of Medical Colleges.

This accreditation means the school can begin enrolling its inaugural class of 30 students and begin classes on July 20. Each of these new students will receive a $100,000 four-year scholarship thanks to an anonymous donor.

To be sure, preliminary accreditation simply means that the new medical school is in a "probationary" period; the school now has to prove that it can meet the LCME's standards and, assuming it does so, will receive full accreditation in about four years.

Otherwise, the University of Houston College of Medicine is now officially a thing. I remember the days when the idea of UH having a medical school would have been considered a laughable fantasy, so this is a huge step forward for both the university and the region as a whole.

The school will focus its curriculum on primary care, behavioral and mental health, and preventive care, per the release, and create a household-centered care program that involves connecting a student with a family in an underserved community. According to the release, UH med students will be required to spend four weeks in a clinic in a rural part of the state. 

"At full staffing we will have 65 full-time faculty teaching on campus, but there will be also be a large number of community-based faculty teaching in the outpatient and inpatient clinical settings," says Dr. Stephen Spann, founding dean of the medical school, in the release. "It is imperative that we place our medical students and faculty directly in the communities with the most need."

The school will initially operate out of the Health 2 Building on campus, but will eventually move to an $80 million facility at the corner of Old Spanish Trail and Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. That facility will break ground this summer and is expected to be completed in 2022.

Deadbeat student discovers that actions have consequences

I didn't even know "parking barnacles" were a thing until I saw this story:

A University of Houston student’s tweet expressing frustration about the hefty price to remove a clamp the school placed on her car’s windshield has gone viral. 

The tweet, posted Wednesday by a student identifying herself as babayaga, Friday had received more than 2,800 retweets, 12,000 likes and 1,300 comments, both supportive and critical. 

“$920 to get this removed,” the student tweeted with a sad face emoji. “All bc the university doesn’t have enough permits available nor parking options that are affordable for students that already pay to attend the University. Everyone send a dollar my way.”

Look, I get it: parking has been an issue at the University of Houston ever since I was a student there almost three decades ago. The university has tried to increase parking capacity by building garages. They've also increased student housing options in order to encourage more kids to live on campus and avoid the parking problem altogether. But at a school that by its nature has a large commuter student population, finding a place to put your car while you go to class remains an issue.

That being said, my sympathy for this student evaporated when I read further:

UH spokesman Chris Stipes and Neil Hart, head of the university’s parking and transportation services, emphasized that barnacles — the bright yellow, plastic immobilization devices that suction to vehicle windshields with up to 1,000 pounds of force and block the view of the driver — are only used on the cars of habitual offenders of parking protocols.

"Habitual offenders" being the key phrase there.

UH’s barnacle devices, implemented in early December 2019 as a way to deter parking violators and simplify fining processes, are only used for cars consistently parked on campus without a permit and with five or more existing citations, according to the spokesmen. To date, 37 cars have been barnacled, with the violators receiving an average of nine citations for parking without a permit. 

“When somebody is parking illegally and doesn’t have a permit, they’re taking a space from someone else who has paid,” Stipes said. “This is a deterrent against that. We don’t have free parking on campus.” 

In the past, the university would tow the vehicle, a process that costs more time and money.

So in other words, this person did not possess a valid parking permit, parked on campus illegally multiple times, finally had this "barnacle" contraption attached to her windshield, and is now upset with the school and is asking strangers for money to remove the device. Entitled much?

When you park your car on campus without a permit, you are essentially committing theft because you are taking a space away from somebody who has purchased a valid permit. And while parking permits might not be cheap, there are other options for getting to class if you have trouble affording one. You can park remotely, you can carpool with a student, and you can even (gasp!) use public transportation, which is available to UH students at a discount.

You're in college now. You can solve this problem without being a deadbeat, and without resorting to whining and begging for social media to help you fix the problem you caused.

Fare-free public transportation is still a bad idea

If public transportation is, as its name implies, a public good, and if farebox revenues typically cover only a small amount of a typical transit agency's operating costs, then why not just make public transportation free for everyone to use? More people might be encouraged to get out of their cars and use transit if it were free, and the economic barrier to low-income people who need it the most would be eliminated.

It's a well-intentioned idea that has been around for as long as public transportation has existed, and transit agencies around the country give it a try from time to time. Kansas City, Missouri is the latest city to experiment with fare-free public transit, and there was a suggestion to make public transportation free here in Houston as well. However, that does not appear likely to happen:

After a comprehensive analysis by Metropolitan Transit Authority staff, transit board members said removing fares from the system actually would increase agency costs by creating a need for more buses and operators, potentially to the tune of $170.6 million annually.

"It is just not feasible to do free fares," Metro board member Jim Robinson said, echoing others on the board and in the transit agency.

Proponents argue transit use would skyrocket and reduce overall traffic volumes if transit was free. Riding also would be easier, they say, because buses and trains could open front and rear doors for boarding without the need for users to stop and pay fares. 

Metro's analysis concluded that ridership would jump from 86 million trips a year to an estimated 117 million if fares were eliminated altogether. Even offering free rides only during peak hours could boost ridership to around 100 million, the study found. 

Those new riders, however, would come at a big cost, said Julie Fernandez, the transit agency's lead management analyst. To handle the demand, Metro would need nearly 500 more vehicles, mostly buses, and 415 new operators. Such a sizable jump in vehicles and employees would require the agency to build a new bus operating facility to complement the existing six bus depots. 

Even preparing the transit system for free rides would take four years, Fernandez said, adding, "it takes time to order new buses." 

The cost of going free prompted many Metro board officials to conclude it was not likely.

It's possible that, as they considered the effects of fareless transit service, METRO staff took a look at lessons learned from another Texas transit agency that experimented with free fares: Capital Metro in Austin in 1989 and 1990. That experiment did not go well, a former Cap Metro dispatcher explains, because it created a host of problems that were costly to solve. "[B]y the time it was over our customers, operators, union, public, police and transit staff were begging for it to end," he says:

Guess what? With free fare, you will need more bus operators. Yes, even with existing capacity on your buses you will need more staff. This is because your newly gained riders won’t conveniently fill the buses during off-peak times when seats are available. They’ll crowd out your regular commuters and local passengers during the afternoon peak. Your system will be overwhelmed during the weekday afternoon peak because this is when everyone likes to ride.

Cap Metro didn't just have to find new bus operators, either; they also needed more security:

Security services will have to be expanded because incidents will increase. Operator staffing requirements will increase exactly at the time attrition increases. Field Supervisory requirements will increase as problems multiply. Why? More people, more problems. More medical emergencies (seizures and falls), more theft, more sex crimes, more lost children and elderly, more drunks, more fights, more operator assaults, more service interruptions. You’ll have to increase street presence of supervisory personnel, which come from the bus operator ranks, increasing attrition even more. You may want to reorg to put superintendent-level personnel in the field to supervise the supervisors. Oh, and you may have to hire more staff in the customer service (complaints) department as your system reliability rapidly declines and complaints skyrocket.

Reliability is a critical aspect of transit service:

Reliability will take a huge hit. Just because your system is free does not mean customers will forgive poor service. Making a bus system wonderful does not mean making it free. Customers want reliability and safety and are willing to pay for it. 

As ridership grows the number of passengers at the bus stop increases. This increases dwell time at the bus stop. Already it is taking longer to get to your destination. This compounds over the length of the route. The longer and busier the route, the greater the impact. This is extremely difficult to schedule properly as morning and afternoon travel times will vary greatly. Anticipating free fare ridership growth and service impact six months in advance is challenging. In the meantime, on-time performance will decline precipitously. As the bus drags down it affects the next assignment for the operator. All these negative effects focus pressure on the afternoon peak. Everything gets later until we reach the highest peak travel time of the day. Trips will be lost as operators try to get to the terminal with full buses. Stops are bypassed in the final quarter of the route as capacity is reached. Some passengers are bypassed by two buses. Adjusting schedules lengthens service hours, conflicting with union work rules and maximum drive times, ultimately requiring more operators.

The end result for Austin was that fare-free public transportation ended up hurting the very riders it was supposed to help: it made buses overcrowded, less safe, and less reliable. While this isn't to say the same thing would happen in Houston, given enough time to plan and prepare, or that it will happen in Kansas City (which carries only a fraction of riders as Houston's network), it is a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of good intentions.

All that aside, my misgivings about fareless public transit remain the same today as they were when I wrote about it a decade ago: it reduces revenues which in turn could lead to service cuts, it allows buses and trains to become rolling hangouts for people who aren't actually "going anywhere," and it deprives the system's actual users of any sense of stakeholdership:

Even if it is mostly subsidized through tax revenues, the fact that a fare is being collected gives transit's actual users a special sense of ownership of the system because they pay for the service twice: once through taxes and again through fares. That, in turn, empowers them to hold the agency accountable for things like shelters that are clean or buses that run on time. Eliminate fares and the user becomes no more of an "owner" of the system than the public at large. This reduces or eliminates entirely the rider's sense of empowerment and leads to a lack of respect for riders' needs. Service quality degrades, and people are discouraged from using the system.

There are good discussions to be had about targeted fare reductions (e.g. for students, or during ozone action days), or about how much of an agency's operating revenues should be covered through the farebox (METRO's $1.25 one-way base fare hasn't been increased in years, despite inflation). But eliminating all fares on a large public transportation network such as METRO's would likely create more problems than it solved and hurt the people who depend on it the most to get around. 

It will be interesting to see how things work out for Kansas City.

Kuff, who has been similarly skeptical, has covered this discussion here, here and here.

It's tough being a Houston sports fan

Well, I said I was unlikely to post again until after the wedding, but then last Sunday and Monday Houston had to go and have the worst 48 hours in its (already generally miserable) sports history.

First, the Texans.

The Texans authored their own galling chapter in Houston’s tortured NFL history Sunday, blowing a 24-point lead en route to a 51-31 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in an AFC divisional-round playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.

With roughly 40 minutes to go and a 24-0 lead, the Texans seemed primed to host the AFC Championship Game next week in Houston’s first visit to the NFL’s final four since the Oilers did it 40 years ago.

Instead, the city’s long-suffering football fans were given another crushing defeat to bookend the 1992 AFC wild-card game in which the Oilers blew a 35-3 second-half lead and lost 41-38 in overtime at Buffalo. Sunday's Chiefs comeback tied for the fourth-biggest in NFL postseason history. The Chiefs also became the first team to win a playoff game by 20 or more points after trailing by 20-plus points.

There was a time when such a miserable, choking performance would have sent me into an obscenity-shouting, fist-pounding, chair-throwing, door-slamming rage. But I could only laugh as I watched Sunday afternoon's meltdown. In fact, I could see it coming as soon as the Texans, just one minute after having gone up 24-0, allowed the Chiefs to score the first of what would turn out to be six consecutive touchdowns.

Much, if not all, of the blame for this loss is rightfully being placed at the feet of head coach Bill O'Brien. He's the one who made stupid in-game decisions (e.g. not going for it from fourth-and-a-foot at Kansas City's 13, but later attempting a ridiculous fake punt on fourth-and-four from Houston's own 31), he's the one who failed to refocus the team or otherwise make adjustments at halftime when the Texans were reeling from 28 unanswered Chiefs points, and he's the one who continues to employ the ineffective fossil Romeo Crennel as his defensive coordinator. (He's also, in addition to being the head coach, the team's de-facto general manager.) The buck stops with Bill O'Brien.

Alas, last Sunday's epic chokejob - once again, I need to update my list - is just another example of O'Brien's ceiling: "the most easily identifiable ceiling of any head coach in the NFL." He will never lead this team to an AFC Championship Game, let alone the Super Bowl. He's simply not good enough. As long as he's at the helm, massive letdowns like last Sunday's are going to be the rule.

While the obvious solution would be for O'Brien to be let go, that's not going to happen. As long as he keeps winning the AFC South, as long as he gets the Texans to the postseason, as long as Texans fans continue to pack NRG Stadium and buy their merchandise and make the McNair family money, he isn't going anywhere. Even if he did, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference as long as its fanbase continues to accept the franchise's culture of paralyzing mediocrity:

As a big time fan of this woebegone organization you have a right, even a responsibility, to demand better; not just with your voices but with your wallets. Next time you fill up the call-in lines of local sports to talk about the depth at offensive line, consider the alternatives. Maybe if the only fans who showed up to Texans games were wearing bags like they used to do at the Astrodome for the Oilers, the message will finally get through to the people who make the decisions. Maybe it will convince them enough is enough.

I really feel bad for guys like J. J. Watt, who really deserve better than to see their entire careers be wasted because they were stuck with the Houston Texans.

Then, the Astros.

Astros owner Jim Crane fired manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow on Monday shortly after Major League Baseball announced the pair would be suspended for a year as part of the penalties for the investigation into alleged electronic-sign stealing. 

"Today is a very difficult day for the Houston Astros," Astros owner Jim Crane said in a press conference Monday. "MLB did a very thorough investigation and the Astros fully cooperated and we accept their decisions and findings and penalties." 

The franchise also was stripped of its first- and second-round picks in both the 2020 and 2021 drafts and fined $5 million. 

MLB's report detailed the Astros' efforts to steal signs in 2017 and laid out the punishment handed down to the Astros. Crane opted to go a step further. 

"I have higher standards for the city and the franchise," Crane said.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred determined that the Astros were using cameras to spy upon and decipher opponents' pitching signs during the 2017 season - the season they won the World Series - and then relaying pitch information to batters by banging on a trash can in the dugout. The full statement on his investigation into the sign-stealing scheme is here. Key quote:

Some Astros players told my investigators that they did not believe the sign-stealing scheme was effective, and it was more distracting than useful to hitters. I am neither in a position to evaluate whether the scheme helped Astros hitters (who were unquestionably a very talented group), nor whether it helped the Astros win any games. There are so many factors that impact the outcome of games that addressing that issue would require rank speculation. But for purposes of my decision, regardless of whether the scheme was effective or not, it violated the rules and, at a minimum, created the appearance of unfairness, and for that, it necessitates severe discipline.

Even though we don't know if the Astros truly benefitted from the scheme, the simple fact that they cheated nevertheless casts a pall over their 2017 World Series title that will never be erased. Astros fans such as Chris Kyle rightfully feel betrayed:

This whole scandal has been akin to a crisis of faith for me. It has literally changed my behavior. I have made the conscious decision not to wear my 2017 World Series champs sweatshirt into public because I don’t want to get razzed for it, especially not when in the company of 6-year-old daughter. I can only imagine how much worse this situation would be if she were actually interested in baseball and I had to explain the cheating scandal to her directly. As it is, I no longer encourage her to wear her Astros shirts or cap to school like I used to.

This betrayal, furthermore, extends beyond Astros fans themselves and affects an entire city - one which was recovering from Hurricane Harvey when the Astros won that now-asterisked title - as Jeff Balke explains:

Now, in a scandal some are mentioning in the same breath with the Black Sox, the Astros have forever tainted their 2017 World Series win. That's reality. You may as well accept that is going to be the opinion of virtually everyone, including some Astros fans. The same fate likely awaits the Boston Red Sox and their 2018 title, but they have other championships to fall back on. We don't. While the Astros didn't have their championship vacated, the luster on that trophy is forever smudged. 

And Houston suffers.

I myself had a magical experience from that 2017 World Series, one that feels much less magical today than it did just a few days ago. I'm very disappointed in this team, and while I'm not prepared to say I'm no longer an Astros fan - that's not something that you can just discard after fortysomething years - I can't say I'm particularly enthused about them right now, either. I'm pretty sure I'm the only fan who feels this way, and I think there are going to be a lot of empty seats at Minute Maid this summer, regardless of how many games the Astros win.

The sign-stealing scandal also cost the jobs of Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora and New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran - a pitching coach and a player on the 2017 Astros team, respectively, who were specifically implicated by Manfred for their role in the scheme. There are also conspiracy theories regarding the Astros using electronic devices to cheat in 2019, even though the MLB investigation found no evidence that the Astros were engaged in illegal activity after the 2018 season. But this is to be expected: if you cheat once, you're considered a cheater forever.

And finally, the Cougars.

University of Houston quarterback D’Eriq King announced Monday night that he plans to enter the transfer portal. 

“I think it’s best for me and my family,” King wrote on Twitter. 

King announced Sept. 23 that he would take advantage of the NCAA’s four-game redshirt rule with the intention to return to UH for the 2020 season. 

A source said King has been on campus several times in the past week and participated in team activities upon returning for the spring semester. Classes resumed Monday. 

King did not list potential destinations, although there has been speculation he could transfer to Miami or rejoin former UH offensive coordinator Kendal Briles at Arkansas.

To be sure, I anticipated that this would happen from the moment he announced that he would sit out the rest of the 2019 season. I nevertheless held out hope that he would stick around, and am annoyed with his dishonesty in the matter: by insinuating that he was going to stick around for 2020 and that reports of him transferring were "fake news," he misled his fellow players as well as his coaches.

Ryan Monceaux reports that the redshirt ruse may have been orchestrated by D'Eriq's father, Eric:

Now that King has decided to leave, GoCoogs can reveal information we’ve known since that time: the “plan” to redshirt King did not originate with Dana Holgorsen nor was it first discussed on the day after the Tulane game. The plan originated with Eric King himself. 

According to two sources, Eric King contacted UH AD Chris Pezman in the days before the Tulane game to inform him that if UH lost to Tulane, D’Eriq would “shut it down” and redshirt the rest of the season. One of our sources insisted we not release the info unless King decided to enter the portal.

D'Eriq King might not have been the best quarterback to put on a UH jersey, and he might not have been the best fit for Dana Holgorsen's offense. But he was definitely the most athletic quarterback on the UH roster and the 2020 UH offense would certainly have been better with him on it. Dana Holgorsen and his Cougars now face what will be a very tough 2020 season with a huge question mark behind center.

Fred Faour says that these three developments have revealed Houston's sports identity to the nation as one featuring "liars, cheats and hypocrites:"

The city's teams are finally getting national run. Whether or not it is for good reasons in immaterial. Houston is in the national spotlight. If you are a fan, all you can do is embrace the liars, cheats and hypocrites, and roll with it. And wait for the Rockets to find a way to make news.

You mean the same Rockets who dropped back-to-back games this week? Like I said: it's tough being a Houston sports fan.

But there's always hope for the future: maybe the Roughnecks will make us all feel better!