Birthday Boy

Hard to believe it, but as of today the "Littlin" is eight years old...

An early look at the new UH football stadium

The 2012 University of Houston football season is almost here. Fall practices began last week and the first game is less than three weeks away. (The team also unveiled new helmets, which the Houston Press does not like.) Needless to say, I am excited. I'll begin work on my season preview shortly and expect to have it posted a few days before kickoff.

However, the most noteworthy football-related news coming from the UH campus this week has nothing to do with the season that is about to begin but will have everything to do with UH football from 2014 onward. This Wednesday the University of Houston System Board of Regents will meet, and one of their agenda items is to approve the negotiation and execution of a contract "up to $85 million for the design and construction of Phase One of the New Football Stadium at the University of Houston." The BOR agenda is here; scroll down to page 154 to see the actual agenda item, which reads in part:

Phase One will include approximately 500,000 GSF including approximately 30,000 seats, press box facilities, locker rooms, meeting rooms, concessions, central commissary, restrooms, ticket facilities, scoreboard, lighting package, shell space for future build-out of premium seating facilities (i.e. suites, club and loge boxes) and an approximately 25,000 GSF academic services building to support the marching band program.

 A couple of things of note:

• The stadium that is to be completed in 2014 is supposed to cost $105 million and seat 40,000, so I'm assuming that a $20 million "Phase Two" covering the build-out of the premium seating facilities (totaling 10,000 seats?) will be approved at a subsequent BOR meeting. I'm guessing that the construction of the entire stadium has to be separated into two separate contracts for financial or administrative reasons. 





New stadium will have east-west orientation

• Unlike most outdoor football stadiums whose fields are oriented north-south, this new football stadium's field will be oriented east-west. At least, that's according to the site plan that is included in the BOR agenda materials (I've reproduced it on the right, adding labels for buildings and streets as well as showing the alignment of the Southeast Line light rail, in green). While east-west fields are not unheard of - Boone Pickens Stadium at Oklahoma State and Sanford Stadium at Georgia are well-known examples - the glare of the afternoon sun and its effect on the players may become an issue. That's probably why there's no gap in the southwest corner of the upper tier of seating; the gaps in the northeast and southeast corners provide ventilation, and the big gap in the northwest corner will provide a view of downtown, but the continuous seating along the southeast corner will serve to block out the setting sun. No word yet on why an east-west configuration was chosen.

Of course, the stadium design has only been underway for a few months at this point and so everything, including the site plan, is preliminary. We'll know more in the coming months as new renderings and more details are released. According to the BOR agenda item, construction is still on schedule to begin following completion of the upcoming season in December, with the new stadium being ready in July of 2014.

Since this is the final football season for the existing Robertson Stadium, the Chronicle's Joseph Duarte is asking for everybody's top memories of the stadium. I'll have my own thoughts on that subject later this year.

Lawyers won't let us have a better bikeway network

Houston wants to grow, and connect the gaps in, its network of hike and bike paths. But a sensible and cost-effective way of doing so is currently unavailable:

The city of Houston's proposed November ballot measure to spend $100 million of taxpayer money on bike paths does not tap into a single free mile of utility-owned right of way.

Houston Parks Board executive director Roksan Okan-Vick said CenterPoint Energy agreed to give her group free access to land along its power lines, but only on the condition that it be protected from liability if a hiker or biker got injured while passing through. Houston and CenterPoint pushed for legislation in Austin last year that would have given utility companies immunity from lawsuits by recreational users of their property.

CenterPoint ROW adjacent to the UP Terminal Subdivision

"That would save us millions of dollars if we could get the land, and we have CenterPoint saying, 'We'll give you the land if you can protect us,' " said state Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Houston, who has carried bills in the last three legislative sessions that would have given utilities that protection.

Parks advocates, CenterPoint, the city of Houston, tort reform and running groups all advocated for similar legislation carried by state Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, but Okan-Vick and lawmakers say the legislation died because of opposition from the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.

The defeat in Austin means the trails plan will not use what Okan-Vick estimates is 100 free miles of right of way. "It's crazy not to do that," she said.

It's not really crazy; it's just trial lawyers being their typical greedy, ambulance-chasing selves. It doesn't matter that using these rights-of-way for hike and bike trails would save taxpayer money and improve Houston's quality of life. It doesn't even matter that CenterPoint is on board with their utility ROWs being used in this manner. The only thing that matters to the trial lawyer lobby is their ability to sue a multi-billion-dollar company like CenterPoint if a jogger trips and falls while running along a trail in the company's right-of-way.

Of special note is this especially idiotic attempt at justification from the trial lawyer lobby's spokesman:

Rick Plezia, TTLA's vice president of communications, said that if the Davis bill had passed, "CenterPoint could lay wires on the ground, eat popcorn and watch people get electrocuted."

What a load of horsecrap. Aside from the fact that there are state and federal standards and regulations that prohibit transmission lines from being laid on the ground (the National Electric Code and the Texas Health and Safety Code both quickly come to mind), CenterPoint is not going to put their high-tension power lines along the ground where they're most vulnerable to damage, vandalism, corrosion or theft. Please.

Yeah, I think The Simpsons got it right many years ago with this clip:

I'm sure there's a relatively easy solution to this. Obviously, CenterPoint should not be given blanket immunity: if they do something in their right-of-way that is clearly negligent - for example a poorly-maintained power line falls on a biker and electrocutes them - then they should be held liable. But just as obviously, CenterPoint should not be held liable if a jogger trips and falls due to their own clumsiness, or if some dumbass decides to get drunk and ride their bike and crashes into a power pole.

Perhaps somebody should look at the agreement the City of Bellaire has with CenterPoint so that the parking lot for Mulberry Park can be in the utility right-of-way adjacent to the UP Terminal Subdivision (near where I took this video). Ditto for the parking lot at St. Mark Coptic Church a bit further down. The article, meanwhile, suggests a possible solution that would have the entity building the trails provide some sort of liability insurance.

Whether any of these solutions will be acceptable to a trial lawyer lobby that puts lawsuit payouts ahead of the public good, however, is a completely different story.

Interstate 69 traffic could choke Houston

Last week, I noticed that recently-begun reclassification of US Highway 59 as Interstate 69 will likely bring an increase of traffic - especially truck traffic - through the Houston area. Now, the Chronicle provides some actual numbers:

Click to expand. Source: Houston Chronicle

Houston's segment, which already experiences traffic pileups and is not scheduled for any expansion under the plan, would be hit with the largest increase in traffic volume on Texas' interstate route.
 
"But that traffic is coming to us no matter what we do. We are going to see a huge increase in freight — more than 300 percent in a little over a decade," said a committee member, Ashby Johnson, the Houston-Galveston Area Council's deputy transportation director. "Some of it is coming from NAFTA and some of it's from the widening of the Panama Canal."
 
Besides increased trade, the Houston region must grapple with rapid population growth. The area is expected to reach 8.8 million by 2035 - a 51 percent increase.

That same year, traffic is expected to leap 60 percent to 350,000 vehicles daily, including 24,000 trucks, in the stretch of 59 that wraps around downtown Houston.

That stretch, of course, includes the trench between Shepherd and Spur 527, which is easily the city's worst bottleneck (especially in the northbound/westbound direction) in spite of the fact that it was completely rebuilt just a few years ago. And then just east of that there's the trench separating Midtown from Third Ward, which also tends to back up as traffic getting on or off 45 and 288 intermingles with through traffic on 59. I can't imagine how either of these stretches of soon-to-be Interstate 69 will be able to cope with the increased traffic volumes being projected.

Nonetheless, the report does not call for expansion of that stretch of roadway. It does recommend exploring traffic relief options such as a bypass around the city for those traveling long distances.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, a grass-roots committee member, said developing a plan to deal with the traffic is critical.

"Everyone agreed a bypass needs to be done," he said. "It's something that's been talked about for years, but it all costs money."

He would like to see a bypass on the county's east side that connects to the new interstate south of Wharton and reconnects north of Cleveland. Others, like Sierra Club transportation expert Dick Kallerman, would like to see tracks added to rail lines along this route so it could handle more freight.

At first I thought Judge Emmett might be referring to the southern and eastern segments of the Grand Parkway, but that highway is not proposed to reach either Wharton or Cleveland so he's probably talking about something completely new. I'm not sure exactly what route Emmett's new bypass would follow (or if it would even be necessary given that the Grand Parkway is already in the works). Kallerman's idea to double-track rail lines running through Houston is also worth exploring, but that's probably not going to help unless the yards, switches and interlockings in and around the city are upgraded as well. Then there's the obvious question of where the money will come from to do these things, which aren't included in I-69's estimated $16.5 billion price tag. 

"The Legislature has got to start adequately funding transportation. Within a couple of years, we'll only be able to maintain existing roads," Emmett said. "Then if goods can't be moved around adequately, that economic miracle we've seen in Texas will come to a grinding halt."

I'm not getting my hopes up. Raising the state gas tax, replacing it with a miles-traveled tax, or putting tolls on roads that were once free are not options that are within the realm of political possibility. Lawmakers are going to have to come up with something completely different in order to fund I-69 and other state highways, and I don't know if they are up to the task. It may fall upon local and regional leaders like Emmett to take the lead in finding funding solutions.

Interstate 69 will likely come into being in slow, piecemeal fashion, over the course of many years and as state and federal highway revenue streams permit. The new highway's effects on local traffic, likewise, will also be gradual but will nevertheless be real. The remedies required to handle and mitigate these projected traffic increases will need to be creative. Finding ways to pay for them will require even more creativity.

The 2012 Astros season in one play

After tonight's loss to Washington, the Astros are 36-75, by far the worst team in Major League Baseball. They have won exactly two of their last 21 games.

But don't take my word for it. Watch this play from Monday night's game against the Nats and see for yourself just how absolutely horrible this team is:

Yes, you saw that right. The Astros allowed the Nationals to bunt in a run. From first base. The mind boggles.

This play is the 2012 Houston Astros in a nutshell: little talent, no chemistry, and absolutely no hope.

Why NBC's Olympics coverage will always suck

We're halfway through London 2012, and the games seem to be following the standard script of any other Olympics in recent memory: a scandal involving one of the sports, allegations of doping, Michael Phelps racking up gold medals, and, of course, widespread complaining about NBC's Olympics coverage. Complainers even have their own Twitter hashtag to vent their frustrations with NBC.

Although it seems to be drawing the largest share of criticism about about their coverage of the games, I'm not too upset with the fact that NBC shows the major events in prime time via tape delay. The fact that London is anywhere between five and eight hours ahead of the United States makes tape delay a necessity. The fact that NBC wants to reserve the most attractive events for prime time, when the most people watch TV and when the network makes its money, is simple business sense; even when the Olympics were being held in Salt Lake City or Vancouver and there was no significant time difference to consider, NBC tape-delayed the biggest events in order to show them in prime-time.

My gripe is with the lousy quality of that prime-time coverage.

To be sure, NBC's Olympics coverage has always left much to be desired. I wrote about its shortcomings back in 1996. The network's formula for its prime time Olympic broadcasts - heavily-abridged coverage of actual events, ridiculous overexposure of certain athletes, patronizing and/or insulting announcers, little to no mention of sports that do not feature or favor Americans, a barrage of melodramatic athlete profiles, and silly, off-topic "human interest" stories (including tonight's excruciatingly inane feature on Scottish bagpipers), all punctuated by a tiresome stream of commercials and hosted by the ever-annoying Bob Costas - seems to have changed little in the intervening sixteen years.

As such, the numerous infractions committed by NBC one week into its coverage of the games - from clumsily editing the opening ceremonies (which could only be seen in the United States via tape delay) to coverage that ignores compelling stories about non-American athletes, to abysmal gymnastics coverage, to inappropriately-timed commercials, to commercial interruptions mid-event (and failure to return to the event at the point where it was left off, even though it's already on tape delay) - are simply par for the course.

NBC, which has the sole rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States (and will continue to have those rights for the foreseeable future), has made it clear that they don't care what critics think about the way they present their coverage: “it’s not everyone’s inalienable right to get whatever they want,” says NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus. As long as the games are getting good ratings (funny how that happens when your network has a monopoly on Olympics coverage), they'll continue to present it as an overwrought, over-edited, jingoistic quasi-reality-show tailored for people who aren't big sports fans. After all, sports aficionados will follow the Olympics regardless; NBC is trying capture the viewership of everyone else: they know that the only time a significant portion of the American population will care anything at all about beach volleyball, synchronized swimming, diving, hurdling, rowing, discus throwing, or water polo is during the Summer Olympics.

There is, to be fair, live daytime programming of some events on NBC's broadcast and cable channels (which, by virtue of being live, is less likely to be over-edited or laden with "human interest" stories), and NBC is also providing live internet streaming video of all of the events (with the notable exception of the opening and closing ceremonies) to anybody who already has a cable subscription. But for those of us who work during the day, those viewing options aren't always available: if we want to watch, we're stuck with the prime-time gruel NBC feeds us.

And yes, that also means we know the results of Olympic events well before the prime time broadcast begins. For all the complaining about "spoilers," the time difference between when the events happen and when they're shown on TV makes them inevitable. This is especially true in the era of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, where it truly requires effort to avoid spoilers (and NBC itself hasn't helped in this regard, either, revealing the results of much-anticipated events by way of either the nightly newscast preceding primetime Olympic coverage or promos during the programming).

The harsh truth is that those of us who hate NBC's presentation of the games have little recourse. There are, as I noted, live internet feeds available for those able to see them, and for the truly tech-savvy there are ways around NBC's monopoly entirely. But for those of us who can't stay home during the day to watch live coverage of that weightlifting competition or who can't access live streaming video of those taekwando matches from work, it's either NBC in primetime or nothing at all.

Which is why I get the results of events via internet and smartphone by day, and watch NBC's coverage on my DVR at night. That way, I can fast forward through all the commercials, human interest stories, sports I don't care about and irritating interludes from Bob Costas. It's not perfect, but it makes it at least somewhat bearable.

As I wrote during the 2010 Winter Olympics, "NBC will stick to their craptastic formula for as long as the ratings say it works. Which is why I guarantee you that NBC's coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics from London will suck just as much as their current and previous efforts." Since I was have been proven right, I can now go on record as guaranteeing that coverage of the 2014 winter games in Sochi, the 2016 summer games in Rio, and, well, any future Olympics broadcast by NBC, will also suck.

(UPDATE: But don't take my word for it. Listen to Dick Ebersol, the person largely responsible for the way NBC has, is, and will continue to present the Olympics: basically, it's a television event, not a sporting event.)

And then there were four

The cottontail convention in the back yard just keeps getting bigger and bigger:

And, now that the monsoon of a few weeks ago is over, the dirt in the back yard has dried out and the rabbits can stretch out in style:

Maybe I should start charging rent or something...

Houston, we have a new Interstate

Let the double entendres begin!

The first Houston-area piece of a trade corridor — debated for more than a decade and envisioned as one day linking Mexico to Canada — has been officially designated.

 Motorists will soon notice new road signs naming a 35-mile stretch of existing U.S. 59, from the 610 Loop to FM 787 in Cleveland, as part of the new Interstate 69.

With little fanfare, the Texas Transportation Commission recently voted to put up the new signage while keeping the U.S. 59 designation.

I was made aware of last week's TTC decision Monday afternoon, when I received a press release from TxDOT on the subject. However, this particular route designation has actually been in the works for months. The TTC had to first wait on the Houston-Galveston Area Council, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Federal Highway Administration to sign off on the new designation before they could make it official.

This isn't the only section of US 59 that will receive Interstate Highway status. Perhaps within the next several months, all of US 59 through Houston to Rosenberg will be signed as Interstate 69 (although, as the article states, the existing US 59 designation will be retained). Eventually, more pieces of I-69 will appear as other sections of US 59 (and, between Victoria and Brownsville, US 77) are upgraded to interstate standards. To that end, the TTC recently authorized $150 million for several I-69 upgrade projects throughout its proposed route; another section of I-69 near Corpus Christi was officially designated last fall.

So what does this mean for Houston? In the near term, probably little more than some confusion on the part of motorists, as well as a lot of adolescent jokes about the number "69." In the longer term, however, I-69 will extend all the way from the Rio Grande through Houston and East Texas to Louisiana and Arkansas. From there, the new highway will make its way to Indiana, where I-69 already exists to the Canadian border, and another "NAFTA Superhighway" linking Mexico to Canada will come into being.

This will likely mean more big rig traffic through Houston, as truckers are given an alternative to I-35 for trans-national shipping. But it will also mean that your own drive to the beaches of South Padre or the casinos of Shreveport will be that much quicker.

The new paleontology exhibit at HMNS

Although it opened almost two months ago, Kirby and I did not finally get around to visiting the new hall of paleontology at the Museum of Natural Science until this weekend. Here are some photos.

The new hall, which is a permanent exhibit, is described as a "prehistoric safari" that begins with the early aquatic life forms of over 500 million years ago and follows all the way through early fishes, plants, amphibians, dinosaurs and early mammals to the evolution of modern man.

The exhibit starts with an impressive collection of trilobites, which appeared in the Cambrian Period about 525 million years ago and managed to hang around for the following 270 million years before finally going extinct.

The hall features a broad array of plant as well as animal fossil, including a very large and rather beautiful assortment of petrified wood.

 Flying insects, such as this dragonfly ancestor, began to appear about 315 million years ago.

The sharp teeth of Tyrannosuarus Rex, which lied between 67 and 65.5 million years ago. Like the rest of the dinosaurs, T-Rex was wiped out by an extinction event that may have been caused by an asteroid impact.

Triceratops is instantly recognizable by the horns and frill of its skull. This particular specimen apparently includes fossilized skin as well as bone.

The new hall is only a handful of weeks old at this point, and some of the exhibits are still under construction. Here, a curator reconstructs what appears to be a skeleton of an early mammal.

This frightening skeleton belongs to "Slothzilla,"an enormous ground sloth that (perhaps thankfully) no longer exists. In addition to its impressive size and powerful limbs, this beast had massive claws that could tear apart predators like saber-toothed tigers.

Anyway, the new exhibit is as expansive as it is impressive and a handful of pictures on a blog don't come close to doing it justice. So go to the museum and check it out for yourself!

My city is cooler than yours!

But don't take my word for it; see what Forbes has to say about Houston:

The Bayou City may not be the first place you associate with being hip or trendy. But Houston has something many other major cities don’t: jobs. With the local economy humming through the recession, Houston enjoyed 2.6% job growth last year and nearly 50,000 Americans flocked there in response — particularly young professionals. In fact, the median age of a Houston resident is a youthful 33.

The result? Over the past decade, the dreary corporate cityscape has been quietly transforming. Stylish housing developments have popped up downtown, restaurants have taken up residence in former factories and art galleries like the Station Museum have been inhabiting warehouses.

Combine that with a strong theater scene, world-class museums and a multicultural, zoning-free mashup of a streetscape and you have the recipe for the No. 1 spot on Forbes’ list of America’s Coolest Cities To Live.

Which brings up the obvious question: how do you quantify something as quinessentially subjective as "coolness," anyway? Forbes explains that they rated the nation's 65 largest metropolitan areas based on the following criteria: the number of cultural, entertainment, sports and recreational opportunities available; the number of (non-chain) dining establishments available; the diversity of the population; the median age (with "a large young adult population" being favored); the unemployment rate; and net migration. Thankfully, factors like climate, the murder rate, traffic congestion or the quality of local sports franchises were not considered.

Even if rankings like these should be taken with a grain of salt, this list is no more dubious than Men's Fitness declaring Houston to be the nation's "fattest city" based largely on circumstantial factors such as the number of fast food joints in the city or the average commute times of residents (as opposed to, say, a scientific sampling of locals' body-mass indices). Besides, if a news magazine like US News and World Report can publish a (highly flawed and biased) list of college rankings every year, then I guess a business magazine like Forbes can publish a list of cool city rankings. So I'll take the positive publicity for my city.

The idea that a place like Houston could actually be the nation's "coolest" city will naturally receive mocking derision from people in New York City or San Francisco (because, after all, what can be cooler than paying $1,600/month for a 350-square-foot studio apartment?) and outright hostility from folks in Austin and Dallas (which were ranked 19th and 4th, respectively). But whatever one might think of these rankings, there is a measure of truth to them: the cost of living here is low, the economy is good, the population is diverse, the winters are mild, there are a lot of activities to do and the food is great. Even if that doesn't make Houston the "coolest" place to be, the fact remains that this is a good place to live.

Here's a slideshow of the top twenty cities or, if you want to skip all the way to the top, Houston. The Houston Press and CultureMap Houston have more.