Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Houston

Houston’s “Pedestrian Pete” Has a Bone to Pick

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 19, 2012 | No Comments

Meet Pedestrian Pete, otherwise known as Houston notable Peter Brown. Brown, a former city council member and director of the urbanism group Better Houston, is conducting an ongoing video critique of this Texas city’s pedestrian environment. Watch the verbal tongue lashing Pete delivers to Houston’s public agencies when he encounters a utility pole in the […]

Streetsies 2011: The Local Edition

By Tanya Snyder | Dec 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

Yesterday, we started our year-end 2011 round-up. We lamented transit cuts in places where transit is more important than ever, cheered the successful ballot initiatives that will fund transportation lifelines, took a moment to explore the nuances of some difficult issues, and called out Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin for some hare-brained ideas about the […]

Meet the Rick Perry Donor Who Runs Texas DOT

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 10, 2011 | 6 Comments

Last week Streetsblog looked into the suburban real estate moguls who used their public offices to advance the country’s largest sprawl project — Houston’s third outerbelt, also known as the Grand Parkway. But even with all the cronyism and self-deal propelling this project forward, just a few months ago it looked like the Grand Parkway had […]

Texas Sprawl Builders Funneled Taxpayer $ to Highway That Enriched Them

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 2, 2011 | 11 Comments

If the U.S. had a national transportation policy, this story of corruption and waste never would have happened. But an enduring feature of the current policy predicament is that once federal funding is in the hands of state DOTs, they more or less have a blank check, and the merit of any given transportation project […]

Exxon: ‘One Mega-Highway, Please.’ Texas: ‘Coming Right Up’

By Angie Schmitt | Sep 13, 2011 | 10 Comments

It’s generally difficult to determine exactly how and to what extent the shadowy hand of Big Oil is at work in our publicly funded infrastructure decisions. Some of the more notable exceptions over the past few years have included the Koch Brothers-Scott Walker Wisconsin roads bonanza. Or the attempted assassination of the Cincinnati Streetcar by […]

Third Houston Outerbelt Would Turn Prairies Into Texas Toast

By Angie Schmitt | Apr 28, 2011 | 11 Comments

There’s a place just outside Houston where the vinyl siding and attached garages thin out and recede into grasslands. In this place — one of the country’s few remaining tall-grass prairies — something amazing happens each fall. First hundreds, then thousands, then millions of birds arrive here at Katy Prairie, an international wintering grounds for […]

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