NewUrbanStreets

Downtown Houston since 1998 has rebuilt, revitalized, rehabilitated and reshaped over half its streets at no small cost in dollars and some inconvenience to the businesses and residents. There was occasionally great outcries and regularly grumbling and whining. There was also those who urged us to keep going and get it done quickly. This article is to relate the things that I believe helped get us through the process and those that made it worse for everyone.

I think the most frequently asked question was “why did they dig up that part of the street last week, filled it in, then dig it up again and again and again. Wouldn’t it be faster to dig it one time, do all the work then put the street back?”

Situations that made the extensive work harder for some people were:

• multiple streets being rebuilt at the same time;
• replacement of the public utilities under those streets and the outages and leaks that would occur due to pipe lines not in the location recorded many years ago;
• a wet climate with regular rains that turned a little dirt on the sidewalk into mud and trying to have a low-bid contractor perform work are “housekeeping” to a downtown urban standard when the same spec was in the bid documents as used in less dense areas;
• frequent overlapping job sites led to mixed responsibilities for care of the adjacent public space and services. i.e. much “finger pointing”;
• projects were being managed with different criteria by different agencies;
• private use of the right of way for new installation or relocation of their existing facilities;
• City design and construction standards that had been developed for work in areas that were not urban with the dense pedestrian and vehicular traffic trying to reach adjacent major destination points of employment and business.

What I would do differently?

• polish the crystal ball to accurately see what the future holds. But if you do not have one then;
• prior to the contracting for the design evaluate if the standards contain requirements appropriate for the work and the public use of the rights of way and adjacent property;
• evaluate any existing restrictions or standards including federal protections for telecommunications that address private use of the rights of way such that the public maintains control of the space while not infringing on whatever rights the private utility is granted;
• if multiple agencies are managing projects at the same time then form a joint task force or some sort of oversight authority that considers and approves such things as proposals for street and sidewalk closures, re-routing of traffic, closure of lanes that impact ingress and egress particularly to highway ramps and other needs of the projects that must be coordinated so the impact at one point in time is minimized without great damage to the project schedule or cost.

More Parts to this topic will be offered soon. One will answer the lament shared in the opening to this post. Watch for them as there are many bad assumptions out there by designers that begin with  “that is how it is done [implying there is no other way]” and the one I hate the most; “we cannot tell them how to do it as that is their means and methods”. You can control your destiny, at least to some extent, as the designers, plan reviewers, contractors and standards administrators are not always right.  I will relate what we experienced, special purpose ordinances passed, a special mobility task force created and criteria developed so that the later projects in the ten-year process impacted the public less.

In closing this post I acknowledge the issues created by the extensive construction of 1998-2008 years in downtown Houston. But, now everyone is very pleased and change the subject when I asked them if they really would like for us to have slowed down and today still have some streets under construction like in these photos. They like the new downtown in the last photo.