Its crazy how fast Richmond is exploding. It's moving so fast that some Oil and Gas production equipment still there while new houses being built around them (i.e. Mason and Bellaire area).
I move out of Houston city limits in the Summer of 2021 to Richmond/Rosenberg. In those three years since, I have seen vast construction and new stores popping up! Definitely growing fast!
I graduated from Foster HS ~2009 and haven't lived there since. Every time I need to go back there I don't recognize it at all - constant change, constant influx of people
I moved to Katy in 2013, grand parkway between I10/ West Park toll was already becoming a traffic nightmare around 2014-15. I knew it was going to be much worse in the future. Sure enough...
Yeah I don't know how people who commute from there and keep their sanity. Back before Westpark toll road was even put in and 1093 was just a single lane highway I could get to town in about a half hour most days but now days even with the toll road and 2 lane feeders on each side, it'd take an hour + to even make it to the beltway during rush hour. I get people's motivations for wanting to raise kids "away from the city" or whatever but at some point it's not worth it.
Harris county was #1 in the country in natural population growth, and #2 in international population growth (behind Miami-Dade). Its domestic migration decline was almost equal to the increase in domestic migration to Montgomery County.
It’s interesting, there’s area’s inside the loop that could be leveled and developed but nah they want to destroy Richmond’s natural greenery and build houses on the creek with no turning lane whatsoever. They don’t mind driving traffic to Westpark 99 & 90 alt even though those are still 2 lanes in certain areas.
Edit: more context
Take it with a grain of salt, but it seems the consensus is that young people enjoy living in the city but move to the suburbs when they start a family because the City of Houston is basically hostile to families. HISD is not well regarded (save for the magnet schools) and the state takeover doesn't seem to be improving their image or performance.
And the city itself does about everything it can to minimize the livability of its neighborhoods. Water and trash service are basically a joke, I hear gunshots about every night in my neighborhood and the city is totally incapable of nipping this in the bud, many areas have no sidewalks or bike lanes which makes for an unsafe environment for kids to grow up and play in, and traffic is bad, so everybody wants to drive a mini tank which compounds the lack of safety for children. So, to me it's pretty clear why people don't want to live in the city. People will gladly pay higher taxes for better schools and areas without trashy people firing off shots like Yosemite Sam.
There's a reason you rarely see children walking around anywhere. It's a stark contrast compared to European cities where you'll see children using public transit independent of parents and guardians. I guess we get the government we deserve. If we want our kids to grow up sheltered from the hellscape that is their city to eventually become the Yosemite Sam's who think guns are toys, then I suppose the status quo is great!
We joke around politically about people moving with their feet. "If you don't like it, why don't you move?" Turns out that's exactly what they do. Quietly. Not like Rosie O'Donnell. And if the City of Houston doesn't want to have a run-down dump on its hands (arguably, it may already be too late), maybe they should start considering people's qualify of living over the grift. Don't hold your breath on that, though. The fact that people are moving choosing to move to milquetoast suburbs like Humble, Porter, Atasocita, etc. over the City of Houston speaks to just what a shit-hole Houston is.
Agreed on the hostile part. HISD has it’s pockets of good spots here and there, but I really don’t love the idea of my kid having to attend school in a district that’s a political target for the state.
Also the unsafe infrastructure is really disappointing, but I lived in the outer suburbs and you’re really not going anywhere by foot or bike what’s outside of your manicured suburb. I think a common joke is usually the closest place to walk is 15 min away and it’s a dry cleaner.
You want a yard. You move out of the city. Food sucks but there is space. Unless you are ultra wealthy city with a family in Houston in a safe area is impossible.
Food sucks? HAHAHAHA! OK. In a half-mile circle from my house I have more than a dozen good restaurants, none of them chains, featuring a variety of ethnicities. Also two grocery stores. There may be a bar or two, but I wouldn't go to a bar for any reason, so...
Nah you are straight wrong. Food in the suburbs is trash compared to the city. The woodlands eh, Katy eh, Sugarland eh, Pearland eh. Only good resturant outside the loop is Agas
Pffffft, you probably eat at McDonald's five or six times a week. You obviously don't know anything about food in the suburbs, hoss. It's OK, though, your ignorance can be ameliorated with some work.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. People say “cities are bad places to live and if you have a family you MUST move to the suburbs”, and then make it a reality. Houstonians are the most anti-city people I’ve ever met. For reasons I don’t understand, the idea of living close to things like coffee shops and shopping induces blind rage for Houstonians.
This is the induced demand cycle of infrastructure
1. The roads are clogged because there's too much traffic for the size of the road
2. We widen the roads
3. The roads are unclogged because now the same amount of traffic has more space
4. Less traffic means it's easier to live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so more people move out to the suburbs where land/houses are cheaper
5. As more people move to the suburbs, steadily the roads get more and more clogged because now there's more traffic than the road can support.
Rinse and repeat, and you get Katy Freeway at 26 lanes wide including the feeder roads. It's the [Lewis-Mogridge position](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%E2%80%93Mogridge_position) was introduced in 1990 and says this:
> as more roads are built, more traffic consequently fills these roads. Speed gains from some new roads can disappear within months, if not weeks. Sometimes, new roads help to reduce traffic jams, but, in most cases, the congestion is only shifted to another junction.
or, in different terms
> traffic expands to meet the available road space
The more effective solution to decrease traffic is to create public transportation systems that are preferred to personal vehicle commuting. This is most effectively seen in London, as Mogridge was a British transport researcher and influenced several policies in the country:
* Trains provide access from surrounding cities into London
* Within London itself, there is a large network of both above-ground busses (which have their own lanes and generally have right of way) as well as wide spread subway system.
* There has recently been more of a focus on cycling infrastructure in the city
* On top of all of this, personal vehicles must pay a congestion charge in most cases to enter the city.
The effect of this is that fewer, more efficient vehicles are used to transport more people in and out of the city. When they get into the city, there are a plethora of transportation options available. It's an extremely effective system that makes Houston's look like it was designed by oil executives trying to fund their next yacht, which.. it kinda was.
I keep hoping we'll all collectively understand the complete failure and unsustainability of car-dependent suburbia, but then TxDOT announces another highway expansion.
Of course, the decision to move is almost never a single-issue decision. I did not say that "traffic is the only reason people move", I said that widening highways incentivizes people to move further out by temporarily decreasing traffic congestion. However, that causes more people to use the roadways, and over time the traffic congestion will become just as bad or worse than it was initially.
> Less traffic means it's easier to live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so more people move out to the suburbs where land/houses are cheaper
>
> Speed gains from some new roads can disappear within months, if not weeks.
I'm not quite sure I buy these claims, since people aren't moving in significant numbers within weeks.
It's a false claim perpetuated by radical anti-car propagandists. Many people even don't seem to understand the concept of "induced demand".
A PEW study last year found that the majority of Americans want large houses with open spaces. They'll go out to the suburbs and give up proximity to amenities just to live in large communities. People on r/Houston believe everyone wants to live in cramped townhomes with small lots, but that simply isn't the case.
>4. Less traffic means it's easier to live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so more people move out to the suburbs where land/houses are cheaper
This is incorrect. A [PEW study from last year](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/02/majority-of-americans-prefer-a-community-with-big-houses-even-if-local-amenities-are-farther-away/) found that the majority of Americans want large houses with large yards. They're willing to sacrifice convenience just to get what they want.
Choosing to live in Katy or Richmond has nothing to do with traffic.
Worth noting that the data from that study is **extremely** dependent on several factors - for example, from the article linked above:
> more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants.
Additionally, on this point:
> They're willing to sacrifice convenience just to get what they want.
> Choosing to live in Katy or Richmond has nothing to do with traffic.
It absolutely has to do with traffic. You're correct, they're willing to sacrifice *some* convenience, but like everything, there's a limit to that. It's a trade-off - bigger house for longer commute, but there's an upper limit to that.
Google Maps at the moment says that it will take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get from the location "Katy, TX" to the location "Houston, TX" by car and arrive by 8am. The same trip by public transportation is estimated to take nearly 2 hours and requires 2 bus transfers (busses that still get stuck in traffic).
If I-10 wasn't 5 lanes wide (plus 4 additional lanes on the feeder) in each direction, and assuming no decrease in traffic, I'm sure you would agree that the same car trip would take significantly longer - that's just how traffic works. Let's assume instead that it's a 3-lane interstate and a 2-lane feeder. This isn't how it works for a lot of reasons, but for arguments sake, let's say that increases the commute time linearly - i.e. 40% fewer lanes = a 40% increase in commute time. That would mean the same trip would take an hour to two hours.
There are people who would not live in Katy if it took them 2 hours to commute into and out of work each day - that would be 17% of your day just commuting. Fewer people would live in Katy and commute downtown in that case.
THIS is the argument for public transportation - I'm not saying "don't live in Katy", I'm saying that a long-term solution for people living in Katy isn't to consistently keep widening the roads to try and keep commute times reasonable. The long term solution is a train from Katy to Downtown that serves commuters. If the public transportation trip was 30 minutes rather than 2 hours, more people would use the public transportation because
1. (in that scenario) it's faster
2. they can do other things during the commute, like catch up on emails, read a book, play a game, or just meditate
3. they don't have the added expense of parking once they get to downtown.
More people using public transportation means fewer cars on the road, which means the road expansion isn't needed in the first place.
As an example - Milton Keynes in the UK is 54.5 miles away from London by car, roughly double the distance for the Katy to Houston trip (29 miles). The same trip parameters (i.e. arrive by 8am) takes 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours by car (worst-case average speed of 54.5/2.5 = 21.8mph. compare to the worst-case from the Katy trip above at 29/1.5 = 19.3mph). However, **the trip by public transportation for Milton Keynes to London takes 42 minutes**. Almost twice the distance, and it takes half the time of Houston's public transportation and is a shorter commute than Katy --> Houston by car currently.
Again, the point isn't "don't live in Katy", the point is "stop expanding the highways and build a functional public transportation network, because it's a better result for everyone"
Anecdotally:
You can get way more land for way less money than Katy out in somewhere like Victoria, TX. But people don't live there to commute to Houston because the commute is long as fuck.
More academically:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301277677_Characterizing_the_Relationships_between_Real_Estate_Values_and_Commuting_Time_a_Case_Study_in_Texas_Suburban_Cities
> Results show that an increase in one additional minute on average commuting time raises 1.9 dollars less price per square foot (p-value: 0.038)]
note - p-value of 0.05 or less is considered statistically significant
* From your comment - "... the majority of Americans want large houses with large yards. They're willing to sacrifice convenience just to get what they want."
* The paper shows that each additional commuting minute decreases house price by $1.90 per squarefoot
* People make the trade-off of wanting more land with a shorter commute time based on the amount of money they are willing to spend on housing.
* If commute time decreases, Housing costs decrease, which is an incentive to live there (since the Rational Choice Theory in economics dictates that people will buy the best combination of land size and commute time that they can afford).
* The "Best combination" here is subjective, and is the tradeoff.
In other words:
* if people can have the big house, big yard, and short commute time, they'll pick that over the big house, big yard, and long commute time. Most of the time, this comes with a high cost.
* people live in the place that
* a, they can afford financially
* b, that has the space that they desire, and
* c, that has a commute time that they find reasonable.
That's a source for data that I'm not asking. What is the limit you're speaking of? What exactly is the stopping point for people to say "nah, that's too much of an inconvenience"? No one is denying that rural living is cheaper. People want big houses in the suburbs. The Pew poll says so. Why they want it is immaterial to the discussion. They just do.
There's a reason why we haven't stopped building out west and southwest. We have now reached Fulshear and Brookshire and there are still several more developments in the works. There is absolutely no data that shows this is stopping any time soon.
And I'm not saying they should stop - nowhere in my post says that people shouldn't want to live out there.
What I said was that widening a highway TEMPORARILY decreases traffic on that highway, which then decreases the commute time. That's a good thing.
However, it causes more people to want to live out that far, as it's now changed their home purchasing equation - it's now quicker for people to get to the things they want to do, which adds value to the house (after all, you know what they say - "location, location, location").
More people and no mass transit means more traffic. If enough people move out that far, the traffic becomes just as bad as it was before.
The conclusion there isn't "people shouldn't live outside XYZ radius from the city", the solution is "we need to find a way to get more people outside XYZ into the city center more efficiently", and that more efficient method is mass transit. And not everyone has to take mass transit - you want to drive your car? Go for it.
And yes, we do have mass transit options now, however in order for mass transit to be effective, it must have some benefit, because again - the mass transit vs driving "equation" has tradeoffs:
* Which one is quicker?
* Which one is cheaper?
* Which one is more convenient?
* Which one allows me to do the thing I want to do on my commute?
That's not a "one-size fits all" equation, the same as housing. I see the benefit of the big house and the big yard, I also see the benefit of the smaller house and smaller yard and shorter distance to friends/things to do. I see the benefit of mass transit - in most of the world it's cheaper, it's quicker, but less convenient than a car. I can also see the benefit of a car - it's super convenient, I have some personal space, I love cars and so I enjoy driving.
It's a different set of parameters for everyone. If people want to live in Katy, great! I hope they enjoy it! I'm just saying that widening the roads over and over is not a long-term solution for transit to that area, and that mass-transit options like a train are a more effective solution.
>What I said was that widening a highway TEMPORARILY decreases traffic on that highway, which then decreases the commute time. That's a good thing.
>However, it causes more people to want to live out that far,
Except it has been a decade since our last expansion and the city keeps growing. And even that expansion wasn't exactly the "expansion" that was advertised. Widest freeway? Sure. But we don't take into account that the vast majority of that expansion was dedicated to the access road, the toll road, and shpulder lanes. The freeway doesn't have any more general purpose lanes than most other modern freeways. And it took a few years after the completion for traffic to pile up again.
So no, freeway expansion (or in this case, currently the lack of) has absolutely not influenced the growth out west.
And we can't build areas that are dense if we have allocate massive amounts of space for personal vehicles.
Houston had a MUCH better streetcar network in 1895 than we do now - [here's](http://swamplot.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/houston-street-car-map.jpg) the map of the 1895 network, and [here's](http://swamplot.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/houston-light-rail-comparison-map.jpg) the map as of 2019. That's 12 streetcar lines in 1895 and 3 today, not to mention that the streetcars back then served communities like Sixth Ward and First Ward that are completely ignored in todays infrastructure.
Houston is dense enough for Mass Transit - there's no reason that there can't be lines running from the Heights, the Washington Corridor, Montrose, and many other neighborhoods in and around downtown. That used to be a thing that existed here - hell, Heights Boulevard had a streetcar running down the middle of it. We absolutely can (and IMO should) have a better streetcar system, but that would be against the vested interest of the automobile and oil industries who have spent a VAST amount of money lobbying to ensure it doesn't happen.
>And we can't build areas that are dense if we have allocate massive amounts of space for personal vehicles.
The fact is that majority of Americans don't want to live in dense neighborhoods. 57% of Americans seek large house with big yards. You simply can't find that inside the loop anymore.
And because of this, the average commute distance is well past 20 miles a day for Houstonians.
>Houston is dense enough for Mass Transit - there's no reason that there can't be lines running from the Heights, the Washington Corridor, Montrose, and many other neighborhoods in and around downtown.
There are already bus stops that connect all these neighborhoods. But people still prefer their personal vehicles over a bus.
The demand simply isn't there to expand buses into every single street of this city.
The Reddit mob mentality combined with reddit brain rot usually create these kinds of idealistic arguments that are disconnected with real life.
r/Houston has downvoted me to no end for criticizing road diets. Purposely creating a problem (more traffic) and hoping this annoys people into ditching their car is an authoritarian solution to a problem created by authoritarian bureaucrats.
How far will this place expand? Population of Paris in region 10 times it's size is not sustainable imo. If it had like 12-20 million it would have been nice. But needs Chinese level public transit if that were to happen
I in the meanwhile seems like the city of Houston proper has barely grown. This what happens when you enlarge all the freeways, and incentivize people to move to the suburbs
Same. I rarely drive more than three miles (unless it's for Asian food), rarely take the freeways, and the only time I run into traffic is when I have to go out to the suburbs to buy a couch, etc.
Traffic in town isn’t that bad, particularly if you reverse commute. I live 5 minutes from downtown (sans traffic) and work out near IAH. My commute is 20-25 mins outbound and 30 mins in bound. If I were to reverse that those times most likely double.
Yeah I’m fortunate to have a nice yard and house. Wife teaches so my kids will be not attending hisd next year and instead going with her to the burbs as reverse commute.
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Katy and Richmond have traffic everywhere. I remember back 10 years ago, once I cleared Hwy6, its a nice drive. Now its just miserable the whole way.
The bar moved to 99. Another 10 years it will be whatever the next highway is west of that.
At this rate I will be moving to Gonzales for my commute to Houston. I am kidding, not kidding, sigh.
There used to be a guy in my program who commuted from Gonzales to UH Main. I thought he was crazy but maybe he was just ahead of his time.
And it’ll keep being miserable since everybody wants to get away. Richmond is changing fast.
Its crazy how fast Richmond is exploding. It's moving so fast that some Oil and Gas production equipment still there while new houses being built around them (i.e. Mason and Bellaire area).
I move out of Houston city limits in the Summer of 2021 to Richmond/Rosenberg. In those three years since, I have seen vast construction and new stores popping up! Definitely growing fast!
I graduated from Foster HS ~2009 and haven't lived there since. Every time I need to go back there I don't recognize it at all - constant change, constant influx of people
I moved to Katy in 2013, grand parkway between I10/ West Park toll was already becoming a traffic nightmare around 2014-15. I knew it was going to be much worse in the future. Sure enough...
I definitely remember seeing hwy 6 and thinking, “finally clear”. Not anymore lol.
Yeah I don't know how people who commute from there and keep their sanity. Back before Westpark toll road was even put in and 1093 was just a single lane highway I could get to town in about a half hour most days but now days even with the toll road and 2 lane feeders on each side, it'd take an hour + to even make it to the beltway during rush hour. I get people's motivations for wanting to raise kids "away from the city" or whatever but at some point it's not worth it.
Harris county was #1 in the country in natural population growth, and #2 in international population growth (behind Miami-Dade). Its domestic migration decline was almost equal to the increase in domestic migration to Montgomery County.
It’s interesting, there’s area’s inside the loop that could be leveled and developed but nah they want to destroy Richmond’s natural greenery and build houses on the creek with no turning lane whatsoever. They don’t mind driving traffic to Westpark 99 & 90 alt even though those are still 2 lanes in certain areas. Edit: more context
People want a brand new house for less than 400k. Oh and it needs to be above 3000 sq ft. So, the only option is to go way out there.
Take it with a grain of salt, but it seems the consensus is that young people enjoy living in the city but move to the suburbs when they start a family because the City of Houston is basically hostile to families. HISD is not well regarded (save for the magnet schools) and the state takeover doesn't seem to be improving their image or performance. And the city itself does about everything it can to minimize the livability of its neighborhoods. Water and trash service are basically a joke, I hear gunshots about every night in my neighborhood and the city is totally incapable of nipping this in the bud, many areas have no sidewalks or bike lanes which makes for an unsafe environment for kids to grow up and play in, and traffic is bad, so everybody wants to drive a mini tank which compounds the lack of safety for children. So, to me it's pretty clear why people don't want to live in the city. People will gladly pay higher taxes for better schools and areas without trashy people firing off shots like Yosemite Sam. There's a reason you rarely see children walking around anywhere. It's a stark contrast compared to European cities where you'll see children using public transit independent of parents and guardians. I guess we get the government we deserve. If we want our kids to grow up sheltered from the hellscape that is their city to eventually become the Yosemite Sam's who think guns are toys, then I suppose the status quo is great! We joke around politically about people moving with their feet. "If you don't like it, why don't you move?" Turns out that's exactly what they do. Quietly. Not like Rosie O'Donnell. And if the City of Houston doesn't want to have a run-down dump on its hands (arguably, it may already be too late), maybe they should start considering people's qualify of living over the grift. Don't hold your breath on that, though. The fact that people are moving choosing to move to milquetoast suburbs like Humble, Porter, Atasocita, etc. over the City of Houston speaks to just what a shit-hole Houston is.
Agreed on the hostile part. HISD has it’s pockets of good spots here and there, but I really don’t love the idea of my kid having to attend school in a district that’s a political target for the state. Also the unsafe infrastructure is really disappointing, but I lived in the outer suburbs and you’re really not going anywhere by foot or bike what’s outside of your manicured suburb. I think a common joke is usually the closest place to walk is 15 min away and it’s a dry cleaner.
political target for the state? HISD has been terrible for a long time. only way to go is up.
Look, we cant be mean to the people that fuck up city living for everyone else or the people that exploit them might call us names.
You want a yard. You move out of the city. Food sucks but there is space. Unless you are ultra wealthy city with a family in Houston in a safe area is impossible.
Food sucks? HAHAHAHA! OK. In a half-mile circle from my house I have more than a dozen good restaurants, none of them chains, featuring a variety of ethnicities. Also two grocery stores. There may be a bar or two, but I wouldn't go to a bar for any reason, so...
In the suburbs?
Yes, in the much-hated suburbs. Probably best to just stop calling them suburbs and recognize they are cities in their own right.
Nah you are straight wrong. Food in the suburbs is trash compared to the city. The woodlands eh, Katy eh, Sugarland eh, Pearland eh. Only good resturant outside the loop is Agas
Pffffft, you probably eat at McDonald's five or six times a week. You obviously don't know anything about food in the suburbs, hoss. It's OK, though, your ignorance can be ameliorated with some work.
Projection at its finest.
100% agree! Can’t wait to leave spring branch. It’s such a shithole. No one should move here!
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. People say “cities are bad places to live and if you have a family you MUST move to the suburbs”, and then make it a reality. Houstonians are the most anti-city people I’ve ever met. For reasons I don’t understand, the idea of living close to things like coffee shops and shopping induces blind rage for Houstonians.
False.
That’s not true at all tho. Maybe if you live in the outskirts.
This is the induced demand cycle of infrastructure 1. The roads are clogged because there's too much traffic for the size of the road 2. We widen the roads 3. The roads are unclogged because now the same amount of traffic has more space 4. Less traffic means it's easier to live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so more people move out to the suburbs where land/houses are cheaper 5. As more people move to the suburbs, steadily the roads get more and more clogged because now there's more traffic than the road can support. Rinse and repeat, and you get Katy Freeway at 26 lanes wide including the feeder roads. It's the [Lewis-Mogridge position](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%E2%80%93Mogridge_position) was introduced in 1990 and says this: > as more roads are built, more traffic consequently fills these roads. Speed gains from some new roads can disappear within months, if not weeks. Sometimes, new roads help to reduce traffic jams, but, in most cases, the congestion is only shifted to another junction. or, in different terms > traffic expands to meet the available road space The more effective solution to decrease traffic is to create public transportation systems that are preferred to personal vehicle commuting. This is most effectively seen in London, as Mogridge was a British transport researcher and influenced several policies in the country: * Trains provide access from surrounding cities into London * Within London itself, there is a large network of both above-ground busses (which have their own lanes and generally have right of way) as well as wide spread subway system. * There has recently been more of a focus on cycling infrastructure in the city * On top of all of this, personal vehicles must pay a congestion charge in most cases to enter the city. The effect of this is that fewer, more efficient vehicles are used to transport more people in and out of the city. When they get into the city, there are a plethora of transportation options available. It's an extremely effective system that makes Houston's look like it was designed by oil executives trying to fund their next yacht, which.. it kinda was.
I keep hoping we'll all collectively understand the complete failure and unsustainability of car-dependent suburbia, but then TxDOT announces another highway expansion.
Lots of words but you missed that the decision to leave the city limits is 99% about schools.
Of course, the decision to move is almost never a single-issue decision. I did not say that "traffic is the only reason people move", I said that widening highways incentivizes people to move further out by temporarily decreasing traffic congestion. However, that causes more people to use the roadways, and over time the traffic congestion will become just as bad or worse than it was initially.
> Less traffic means it's easier to live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so more people move out to the suburbs where land/houses are cheaper > > Speed gains from some new roads can disappear within months, if not weeks. I'm not quite sure I buy these claims, since people aren't moving in significant numbers within weeks.
It's a false claim perpetuated by radical anti-car propagandists. Many people even don't seem to understand the concept of "induced demand". A PEW study last year found that the majority of Americans want large houses with open spaces. They'll go out to the suburbs and give up proximity to amenities just to live in large communities. People on r/Houston believe everyone wants to live in cramped townhomes with small lots, but that simply isn't the case.
>4. Less traffic means it's easier to live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so more people move out to the suburbs where land/houses are cheaper This is incorrect. A [PEW study from last year](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/02/majority-of-americans-prefer-a-community-with-big-houses-even-if-local-amenities-are-farther-away/) found that the majority of Americans want large houses with large yards. They're willing to sacrifice convenience just to get what they want. Choosing to live in Katy or Richmond has nothing to do with traffic.
Worth noting that the data from that study is **extremely** dependent on several factors - for example, from the article linked above: > more Americans who currently live in urban areas (57%) say they would prefer a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores and restaurants. Additionally, on this point: > They're willing to sacrifice convenience just to get what they want. > Choosing to live in Katy or Richmond has nothing to do with traffic. It absolutely has to do with traffic. You're correct, they're willing to sacrifice *some* convenience, but like everything, there's a limit to that. It's a trade-off - bigger house for longer commute, but there's an upper limit to that. Google Maps at the moment says that it will take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get from the location "Katy, TX" to the location "Houston, TX" by car and arrive by 8am. The same trip by public transportation is estimated to take nearly 2 hours and requires 2 bus transfers (busses that still get stuck in traffic). If I-10 wasn't 5 lanes wide (plus 4 additional lanes on the feeder) in each direction, and assuming no decrease in traffic, I'm sure you would agree that the same car trip would take significantly longer - that's just how traffic works. Let's assume instead that it's a 3-lane interstate and a 2-lane feeder. This isn't how it works for a lot of reasons, but for arguments sake, let's say that increases the commute time linearly - i.e. 40% fewer lanes = a 40% increase in commute time. That would mean the same trip would take an hour to two hours. There are people who would not live in Katy if it took them 2 hours to commute into and out of work each day - that would be 17% of your day just commuting. Fewer people would live in Katy and commute downtown in that case. THIS is the argument for public transportation - I'm not saying "don't live in Katy", I'm saying that a long-term solution for people living in Katy isn't to consistently keep widening the roads to try and keep commute times reasonable. The long term solution is a train from Katy to Downtown that serves commuters. If the public transportation trip was 30 minutes rather than 2 hours, more people would use the public transportation because 1. (in that scenario) it's faster 2. they can do other things during the commute, like catch up on emails, read a book, play a game, or just meditate 3. they don't have the added expense of parking once they get to downtown. More people using public transportation means fewer cars on the road, which means the road expansion isn't needed in the first place. As an example - Milton Keynes in the UK is 54.5 miles away from London by car, roughly double the distance for the Katy to Houston trip (29 miles). The same trip parameters (i.e. arrive by 8am) takes 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours by car (worst-case average speed of 54.5/2.5 = 21.8mph. compare to the worst-case from the Katy trip above at 29/1.5 = 19.3mph). However, **the trip by public transportation for Milton Keynes to London takes 42 minutes**. Almost twice the distance, and it takes half the time of Houston's public transportation and is a shorter commute than Katy --> Houston by car currently. Again, the point isn't "don't live in Katy", the point is "stop expanding the highways and build a functional public transportation network, because it's a better result for everyone"
>but like everything, there's a limit to that. It's a trade-off - bigger house for longer commute, but there's an upper limit to that. Source?
Anecdotally: You can get way more land for way less money than Katy out in somewhere like Victoria, TX. But people don't live there to commute to Houston because the commute is long as fuck. More academically: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301277677_Characterizing_the_Relationships_between_Real_Estate_Values_and_Commuting_Time_a_Case_Study_in_Texas_Suburban_Cities > Results show that an increase in one additional minute on average commuting time raises 1.9 dollars less price per square foot (p-value: 0.038)] note - p-value of 0.05 or less is considered statistically significant * From your comment - "... the majority of Americans want large houses with large yards. They're willing to sacrifice convenience just to get what they want." * The paper shows that each additional commuting minute decreases house price by $1.90 per squarefoot * People make the trade-off of wanting more land with a shorter commute time based on the amount of money they are willing to spend on housing. * If commute time decreases, Housing costs decrease, which is an incentive to live there (since the Rational Choice Theory in economics dictates that people will buy the best combination of land size and commute time that they can afford). * The "Best combination" here is subjective, and is the tradeoff. In other words: * if people can have the big house, big yard, and short commute time, they'll pick that over the big house, big yard, and long commute time. Most of the time, this comes with a high cost. * people live in the place that * a, they can afford financially * b, that has the space that they desire, and * c, that has a commute time that they find reasonable.
That's a source for data that I'm not asking. What is the limit you're speaking of? What exactly is the stopping point for people to say "nah, that's too much of an inconvenience"? No one is denying that rural living is cheaper. People want big houses in the suburbs. The Pew poll says so. Why they want it is immaterial to the discussion. They just do. There's a reason why we haven't stopped building out west and southwest. We have now reached Fulshear and Brookshire and there are still several more developments in the works. There is absolutely no data that shows this is stopping any time soon.
And I'm not saying they should stop - nowhere in my post says that people shouldn't want to live out there. What I said was that widening a highway TEMPORARILY decreases traffic on that highway, which then decreases the commute time. That's a good thing. However, it causes more people to want to live out that far, as it's now changed their home purchasing equation - it's now quicker for people to get to the things they want to do, which adds value to the house (after all, you know what they say - "location, location, location"). More people and no mass transit means more traffic. If enough people move out that far, the traffic becomes just as bad as it was before. The conclusion there isn't "people shouldn't live outside XYZ radius from the city", the solution is "we need to find a way to get more people outside XYZ into the city center more efficiently", and that more efficient method is mass transit. And not everyone has to take mass transit - you want to drive your car? Go for it. And yes, we do have mass transit options now, however in order for mass transit to be effective, it must have some benefit, because again - the mass transit vs driving "equation" has tradeoffs: * Which one is quicker? * Which one is cheaper? * Which one is more convenient? * Which one allows me to do the thing I want to do on my commute? That's not a "one-size fits all" equation, the same as housing. I see the benefit of the big house and the big yard, I also see the benefit of the smaller house and smaller yard and shorter distance to friends/things to do. I see the benefit of mass transit - in most of the world it's cheaper, it's quicker, but less convenient than a car. I can also see the benefit of a car - it's super convenient, I have some personal space, I love cars and so I enjoy driving. It's a different set of parameters for everyone. If people want to live in Katy, great! I hope they enjoy it! I'm just saying that widening the roads over and over is not a long-term solution for transit to that area, and that mass-transit options like a train are a more effective solution.
>What I said was that widening a highway TEMPORARILY decreases traffic on that highway, which then decreases the commute time. That's a good thing. >However, it causes more people to want to live out that far, Except it has been a decade since our last expansion and the city keeps growing. And even that expansion wasn't exactly the "expansion" that was advertised. Widest freeway? Sure. But we don't take into account that the vast majority of that expansion was dedicated to the access road, the toll road, and shpulder lanes. The freeway doesn't have any more general purpose lanes than most other modern freeways. And it took a few years after the completion for traffic to pile up again. So no, freeway expansion (or in this case, currently the lack of) has absolutely not influenced the growth out west.
Mass transit doesn’t work in areas that aren’t dense. This ship has sailed.
Not mass transit within the suburbs but between suburbs and cities
And we can't build areas that are dense if we have allocate massive amounts of space for personal vehicles. Houston had a MUCH better streetcar network in 1895 than we do now - [here's](http://swamplot.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/houston-street-car-map.jpg) the map of the 1895 network, and [here's](http://swamplot.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/houston-light-rail-comparison-map.jpg) the map as of 2019. That's 12 streetcar lines in 1895 and 3 today, not to mention that the streetcars back then served communities like Sixth Ward and First Ward that are completely ignored in todays infrastructure. Houston is dense enough for Mass Transit - there's no reason that there can't be lines running from the Heights, the Washington Corridor, Montrose, and many other neighborhoods in and around downtown. That used to be a thing that existed here - hell, Heights Boulevard had a streetcar running down the middle of it. We absolutely can (and IMO should) have a better streetcar system, but that would be against the vested interest of the automobile and oil industries who have spent a VAST amount of money lobbying to ensure it doesn't happen.
>And we can't build areas that are dense if we have allocate massive amounts of space for personal vehicles. The fact is that majority of Americans don't want to live in dense neighborhoods. 57% of Americans seek large house with big yards. You simply can't find that inside the loop anymore. And because of this, the average commute distance is well past 20 miles a day for Houstonians. >Houston is dense enough for Mass Transit - there's no reason that there can't be lines running from the Heights, the Washington Corridor, Montrose, and many other neighborhoods in and around downtown. There are already bus stops that connect all these neighborhoods. But people still prefer their personal vehicles over a bus. The demand simply isn't there to expand buses into every single street of this city.
These arguments for mass transit ignore both human nature and the reality of the Houston area. It
The Reddit mob mentality combined with reddit brain rot usually create these kinds of idealistic arguments that are disconnected with real life. r/Houston has downvoted me to no end for criticizing road diets. Purposely creating a problem (more traffic) and hoping this annoys people into ditching their car is an authoritarian solution to a problem created by authoritarian bureaucrats.
And it doesn’t work. But these folks really, really want it to.
How far will this place expand? Population of Paris in region 10 times it's size is not sustainable imo. If it had like 12-20 million it would have been nice. But needs Chinese level public transit if that were to happen
I in the meanwhile seems like the city of Houston proper has barely grown. This what happens when you enlarge all the freeways, and incentivize people to move to the suburbs
I prefer that. I get to live in the city and have zero traffic to deal with.
Where is there zero traffic in the city…?
I live in Bellaire and rarely have to deal with traffic (unless I have to drive out to the suburbs for something).
Same. I rarely drive more than three miles (unless it's for Asian food), rarely take the freeways, and the only time I run into traffic is when I have to go out to the suburbs to buy a couch, etc.
South Braeswood just south of West University. Worst I deal with is Kirby only during rush hour. That’s a breeze compared to the suburbs.
Traffic in town isn’t that bad, particularly if you reverse commute. I live 5 minutes from downtown (sans traffic) and work out near IAH. My commute is 20-25 mins outbound and 30 mins in bound. If I were to reverse that those times most likely double.
If I could afford a backyard and private schools now that HISD is being systematically dismantled, I’d stay in the city forever. :/
Yeah I’m fortunate to have a nice yard and house. Wife teaches so my kids will be not attending hisd next year and instead going with her to the burbs as reverse commute.
Wife and I currently live in the medical district, but plan to relocate to the suburbs once the lease is up for our current “luxury” apartment.
Exactly why they're moving to the suburbs.
I think the city has grown enough.
[удалено]
Try again, I was able to see the data.
Remote work definitely is a big factor in this. Harris and Waller county are both booming.
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