NewUrbanStreets

During the eight years of street reconstruction in downtown Houston Texas we found many historic street bricks that paved the early streets of Houston in the mid-1800s. The City’s policy was to save the bricks for use in future projects. Two projects have been identified and so there was a need to sort the stored bricks and finally return some of them to service. Read the rest of this entry →

The Travis St. Portal to Buffalo Bayou was built by the Cotswold Project as a pedestrian connection from the street down to a future walkway along the bayou. The winding, tree lined and lighted walkway is on the west side of  the Travis St. bridge on the south side of the bayou across the street from the Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant. Read the rest of this entry →

Concrete unit pavers are getting a bad reputation in some circles as they have not provided a care-free pavement. But, there is no such thing as care-free pavement. Some just need more care than others and that is the case with concrete unit pavers–particularly in high traffic situations in a wet environment. Ironically loose sand is what holds them together. Read the rest of this entry →

One way to limit the extent of the multi-color painting of the public streets and sidewalks is a practice called “white lining”. That could reduce the damage caused by wide-area painting when only a small area will be excavated. How it works is that the contractor who knows the area to be excavated delineates that area with white chalk (preferably not white paint even when a water base) by marking small “L” shapes at the corners. Then the locate crew only adds their markings inside the “box”. But, it is not that simple. Read the rest of this entry →

State law in Texas requires someone digging in the public rights of way to call “One Call” who then notifies all utilities the area where digging may occur so the utility can mark the locations of their underground facilities. That is a good as it preserves the services expected by the utility’s customers and the utility does not have to make repairs thereby increasing the cost to the customers. It also protects the workers doing the excavation as, for example, hitting a high-voltage duct bank is not a healthy thing.

But the issue is in the application of the markings. There are published guidelines for the style and frequency of the markings as well as the color. The color indicates the business type of the utility, e.g. telecommunications, power transmission, natural  gas. The frequency of the marks can remove all doubt about the location as well as remove all value of the classy, upscale look paid for by the public. Read the rest of this entry →

Note – This is a followup article to Trees in the Parking Lane on Dallas St and Leaves Stamped in Concrete.

There is another thing we tried in the Dallas St. project to give it a special urban identity. The traffic engineers–correctly applying the requirements of the traffic control manual–said there had to be a continuous white line between the parking lane (with the trees) and the lane of moving traffic. We have enough of the unappealing look of chipped, ragged thermoplastic stripping and the fading painted stripes. Besides, that is so typical and this street needed to have its own character–like many others in downtown Houston–but with a limited budget. Read the rest of this entry →