Last week, the Houston Business Journal reported that high speed rail is coming to Houston. At a speech at New York's Penn Station, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced that her office will soon begin "accepting expressions of interest to finance, design, build, operate and maintain high-speed trains on the Northeast Corridor and in 10 other federally-designated corridors around the nation."And wonder of wonders - Houston is on one of the corridors.Just think -
The Houston East End Chamber of Commerce, the Eastwood Civic Association, and some East End residents are up in arms over Metro's plans for a light rail overpass on Harrisburg Boulevard. So what's their problem, you say? Why would anyone have anything critical to say of Metro? Yeah, Hair Balls found it hard to believe, too. In a letter last month to Metro Executive V.P. John Sedlak, Eastwood Civic Association President Bryan Vezey wrote that his association "determined that an
Photo by Daniel KramerThe polluters who turned Somerville into the Toxic Town described in an award-winning Houston Press story may have had a good result in the first lawsuit they faced, but a second one -- beginning a week from today in the town of Caldwell in Burleson County -- may be different. Somerville residents have sued the BNSF Railway, which ran a tie-producing plant in town. Cancer rates were far higher there, and BNSF failed to install standard pollution controls.In January 2008, th
Photo by Daniel KramerDennis DavisIn 2007, our Todd Spivak did a feature on the "Toxic Town" of Somerville, 90 miles southnorthwest of Houston and home to a Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway plant.Residents there have much higher cancer rates than normal, a fact some traced to the arsenic, dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons used by the plant, which at one time was the nation's largest producer of railroad ties.One of the residents, and one of the key parts of the Spivak's stor
The Citizens Transportation Coalition is currently giddy with dreams of 90 MPH commuter trains speeding from Galveston and down 290 into the city...possibly by 2012, which sounds like the far future but is only three years away. There hasn't been much public movement on commuter rail since the HGAC's study was released a year ago. But quietly, gears are meshing, and we may have commuter rail to Galveston and Hempstead as early as 2012.On Thursday, the North Houston Association hosted a high-p
