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Comment by saryant | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely fall into this category. Grew up in suburbs of LA, San Francisco, Houston and the outskirts of Cheyenne, WY. Now I'm about to move into the Montrose area of Houston.

I hate driving and now I'll be taking metro rail to downtown and I'll be close to great restaurants, grocery stores and cafes. Even if I do need to drive, I'll be smack in the middle of what I consider the "good" parts of Houston so I won't have far to go nor will I need to bother with highways too often.

Okay, so Houston isn't a paradise of car-independence but I think the Montrose, Washington Heights and Rice Village areas of Houston definitely fit this article well.

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As a former Houstonian (and Montrose denizen), the one problem here is that there is a very good chance your job will not be in Lower Westheimer or Downtown. Which means you could very well be spending an hour on I-10 headed out to the energy corridor to work for one of the Big Oil companies.

Houston is a great 'secret city' that few know about, but the effects of its lack of public transport (insane traffic on the freeways) can be seen daily.

But you are correct, If I was to move back down there I would immediately try to get a place in the Heights or Montrose.

> As a former Houstonian (and Montrose denizen), the one problem here is that there is a very good chance your job will not be in Lower Westheimer or Downtown. Which means you could very well be spending an hour on I-10 headed out to the energy corridor to work for one of the Big Oil companies.

Absolutely. Fortunately my new employer is in the middle of downtown but the fact that the big employers in Houston are leaving the 610 loop does skew the population distribution.

I've read elsewhere that the statistical center of the Houston region by population is almost at Highway 6 and I-10 now, largely due to growth in Katy.

Given that Katy ISD is opening five new high schools in the next few years at 3.5k students each, it's not really surprising.

I dream of a post-car America. But wouldn't that require places like Houston to build massive amounts of public transport?

Yes, of course. And I don't really expect that to happen.

Right now Houston has one light rail line running from Reliant Stadium, through the med center and Rice University/Museum District into downtown. They are building several new lines right now but still aren't reaching into the suburbs.

I don't expect Houston to become a post-car city in the reasonable future.

There's occasional talk of running commuter rail on the I-45 corridor from Houston to Galveston, through Clear Lake and other SE suburbs, on the existing (little-used) freight line. If Los Angeles can do it with Metrolink (which similarly runs on existing track), Houston should be able to do it, but I'm not holding my breath. I believe there's substantial demand; the park-n-ride lots for the downtown express buses from Clear Lake have been completely overflowing for the past few years, as driving on I-45 has gotten less appealing with the ever-increasing traffic.

I do see more construction nearer to the center, at least. There are condos and townhomes in the Medical Center area that were abandoned and/or slums 10 years ago.

It would require a lot of capital investment, but building and maintaining highways and automobiles already requires a lot of capital investment. It's just a reallocation.

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