I started writing this in response to Bob Yancy on another thread but figured it was better for another thread. Housing is a major issue, and we're in the midst of fighting over how to develop affordable neighborhoods while dealing with issues with existing neighborhoods like the number of unrelated people who can live together.
As long as the city grows, we have to address the other issue of growth--infrastructure. It's easy to have armchair discussions about city density and stealth dorms, but when the topic of new and improved roads comes up, that's when the knives come out and people get defensive. We've seen it with the East Loop crowd and recently Bob Yancy came out swinging against improvements to Pebble Creek Parkway.
A large part of our traffic issues can be attributed only a few major thoroughfares and several more mostly-useless two lane+bike lane streets that peter out and go nowhere. The city's Major Thoroughfare Plan looks pretty solid but between the attacks on anything planned, the fact that they cheaped out on the Rock Prairie Road West improvement and didn't widen it to four lanes (also creating a potentially dangerous situation where cars merge just after the General Parkway turnoff), and a mess of multiple missed opportunities I'm not particularly optimistic.
I understand a lot of these plans were canned due to neigborhood resistance--at various points, Dexter Drive was to be widened to four lanes or Munson to six, but even when a window of opportunity comes open the City doesn't grasp it. For instance, a plan decades ago to connect Houston Street to Welsh was killed, and instead of the two lanes + turn lane + bike path all the way to campus (which would be a great relief point for Wellborn and Texas Avenue) Welsh Avenue peters out two blocks away from George Bush Drive.
However, about 10-15 years ago most of the rental homes on Welsh north of Holleman were being torn down and rebuilt, the City of College Station missed a golden opportunity to go ahead and widen Welsh all the way to campus and provide a relief outlet for Wellborn and Texas Avenue...or when Rock Prairie Elementary School was up for renovation there should have at least been an alternative to completely rebuild the school to allow for a re-routing of Welsh Avenue and eliminating the stoplight while completely re-imagining the ingress/egress of the school.
There needs to be a complete four-lane avenue on the east side of the city--Highway 6 grinds to a halt during rush hour because it is forced to do double-duty as a local avenue and an inter-city highway. There's just no other alternatives, not even Dartmouth, which lost its extra lanes around 2015-2016 (and a planned connection to Brothers still waits).
As a whole, there isn't an easy solution--but we need to at least plan for the future instead of kicking the can down the road.
As long as the city grows, we have to address the other issue of growth--infrastructure. It's easy to have armchair discussions about city density and stealth dorms, but when the topic of new and improved roads comes up, that's when the knives come out and people get defensive. We've seen it with the East Loop crowd and recently Bob Yancy came out swinging against improvements to Pebble Creek Parkway.
A large part of our traffic issues can be attributed only a few major thoroughfares and several more mostly-useless two lane+bike lane streets that peter out and go nowhere. The city's Major Thoroughfare Plan looks pretty solid but between the attacks on anything planned, the fact that they cheaped out on the Rock Prairie Road West improvement and didn't widen it to four lanes (also creating a potentially dangerous situation where cars merge just after the General Parkway turnoff), and a mess of multiple missed opportunities I'm not particularly optimistic.
I understand a lot of these plans were canned due to neigborhood resistance--at various points, Dexter Drive was to be widened to four lanes or Munson to six, but even when a window of opportunity comes open the City doesn't grasp it. For instance, a plan decades ago to connect Houston Street to Welsh was killed, and instead of the two lanes + turn lane + bike path all the way to campus (which would be a great relief point for Wellborn and Texas Avenue) Welsh Avenue peters out two blocks away from George Bush Drive.
However, about 10-15 years ago most of the rental homes on Welsh north of Holleman were being torn down and rebuilt, the City of College Station missed a golden opportunity to go ahead and widen Welsh all the way to campus and provide a relief outlet for Wellborn and Texas Avenue...or when Rock Prairie Elementary School was up for renovation there should have at least been an alternative to completely rebuild the school to allow for a re-routing of Welsh Avenue and eliminating the stoplight while completely re-imagining the ingress/egress of the school.
There needs to be a complete four-lane avenue on the east side of the city--Highway 6 grinds to a halt during rush hour because it is forced to do double-duty as a local avenue and an inter-city highway. There's just no other alternatives, not even Dartmouth, which lost its extra lanes around 2015-2016 (and a planned connection to Brothers still waits).
As a whole, there isn't an easy solution--but we need to at least plan for the future instead of kicking the can down the road.