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Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

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Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#21

Post by smkelly »

cwyers wrote: post #14

I am down in Houston about once a month for work, and I am thrilled by this. My experience with Uber has been much more pleasant (and less expensive) than with a cab. Coincidentally, the smartphone app you can use to hail a cab in Houston (and other markets, I think) has renamed itself from TaxiMagic to Curb, and the branding and UI seem a lot more modern and frankly Uber-like.

There is also Yellow Cab's Hail A Cab app, but it is terrible. Well, it is great once you manage to register and login, but the actual registration part is nearly impossible last I had to.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#22

Post by msandford »

_delirium wrote: post #15
nilkn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburban commuters of course won't use taxis or Uber. But Houston is experiencing an urban revitalization. Almost everybody I know either lives in the loop or wants to. For folks in the loop, having easy transportation to/from bars, for instance, makes Uber pretty attractive.

Interesting; I haven't seen an in-town movement in my social circles. If anything the opposite: big movement outwards, to areas that used to be considered way out but are now becoming part of the city in a huge exurban development boom. People who used to live inside Beltway 8 are moving to areas that I used to think of as farmland but are now apparently big growth areas, along the I-10 corridor towards Katy in the w…

It's happening both ways. The finance and finance-related things are all downtown and the inner-loop is gentrifying. So is the East End (in a BIG way).

BUT because the oil companies are moving their operations west (BP and others) and north (Exxon) people are also migrating those directions.

You would think this would mean that real-estate prices in the donut between the loop and the beltway would be pushed downward but it's not happening. The population seems to be growing faster than the "city" expands so prices are going up everywhere.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#23

Post by jonknee »

shliachtx wrote: post #12
hellbanner wrote: post #8

Houston has their downtown lights turn green sequentially if you travel the speed limit. Nifty: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...

I've heard about this before but never seen it in writing, thanks. It is pretty neat. Do other cities not have the same?

Tampa, FL does. I have seen it in several other places, I didn't think it was a novelty.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#24

Post by jofer »

msandford wrote: post #20
jnks wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think about it for a second, it's only really possible to do this for one direction of traffic at a time on a given multi-block street segment.

Good thing the streets are all one-way! Seriously though, in the downtown portion of Houston there are only two directions people want to go in a hurry, northeast and southwest. Those roads have at least double the carrying capacity of the cross-roads and as such it absolutely makes sense to optimize the lights for them. So what happens is that the "get me out of downtown" roads are very well timed and the cross-stre…

As someone who does need to travel on the cross streets fairly often, the downside of this is that the non major streets have lights that are _really_ poorly timed.

I realize why they do it, and it is optimizing for the majority use case, but damn is it annoying when you want to go the other way...

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#25

Post by majormajor »

diafygi wrote: post #13
shliachtx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard about this before but never seen it in writing, thanks. It is pretty neat. Do other cities not have the same?

Austin does. Also, feeder roads along highways are a great Texas feature, too.

Huh, ever since moving away, I've greatly enjoyed not having access roads. I feel like they greatly encourage a particularly walking-unfriendly sort of suburban sprawl in which there are long rows of large chain stores and restaurants directly facing highways and no opportunity for any sort of neighborhood to exist around them.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#26

Post by msandford »

jofer wrote: post #24
msandford wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing the streets are all one-way! Seriously though, in the downtown portion of Houston there are only two directions people want to go in a hurry, northeast and southwest. Those roads have at least double the carrying capacity of the cross-roads and as such it absolutely makes sense to optimize the lights for them. So what happens is that the "get me out of downtown" roads are very well timed and the cross-stre…

As someone who does need to travel on the cross streets fairly often, the downside of this is that the non major streets have lights that are _really_ poorly timed. I realize why they do it, and it is optimizing for the majority use case, but damn is it annoying when you want to go the other way...

Yeah it's terrible. I do the West End ride sometimes and all down washington it's fine. Then we hit downtown and we get stopped at EVERY light. Once we hit fannin and turn for the med center it's green lights all the way and you see 30-50 cyclists just cruising in an urban environment; it's surreal.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#27

Post by superuser2 »

hellbanner wrote: post #8

Houston has their downtown lights turn green sequentially if you travel the speed limit. Nifty: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...

There are places in Milwaukee where it seems that all the lights turn green as you approach them, but unfortunately this is of no use. The cars who have been waiting at the red light take ~30 seconds to get moving again (texting/delayed reaction time/conservative acceleration * 5-6 cars) so you still have to stop, it's just that you're stopping at green lights. Incredibly frustrating.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#28

Post by tingley »

shliachtx wrote: post #12
hellbanner wrote: post #8

Houston has their downtown lights turn green sequentially if you travel the speed limit. Nifty: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...

I've heard about this before but never seen it in writing, thanks. It is pretty neat. Do other cities not have the same?

Valencia Street in SF has this, but it's set for 13mph, for bikers.

Re: Houston City Council gives green light to Uber, Lyft

#30

Post by toddmorey »

majormajor wrote: post #25
diafygi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austin does. Also, feeder roads along highways are a great Texas feature, too.

Huh, ever since moving away, I've greatly enjoyed not having access roads. I feel like they greatly encourage a particularly walking-unfriendly sort of suburban sprawl in which there are long rows of large chain stores and restaurants directly facing highways and no opportunity for any sort of neighborhood to exist around them.

They are also very dangerous: they combine people getting off the highway with people accelerating to get on with people entering and leaving those shopping centers and restaurants. It really creates for messy traffic.
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