There are three above grade rail lines for the entire metro area, which is a little over 7 million people. Busses are regularly up to 2 hours late. There are over 200 accidents in the city per day. Everything is pointlessly far apart and connected with crisscrossing highways which are always under construction. There's highway going from south Houston to League City that's just a spahetthi jumble of overlapping concrete and steel I'm surprised more cars just don't fall off during rain or ice.
Also, you know the worst part about this place? It is so difficult finding anyone who cares about changing it. Car culture is so endemic to Houston that all the transportation problems are placed on other drivers and/or poor people. Every time I bring up how shit the busses and rails are, the inevitable response is they're only used by poor people, homeless people live in them, they smell bad, they're slow, etc.
All the roadway problems are entirely blamed on all other people being shitty drivers except the person in question. Every time I bring up that the city could be organized better or less focus could be put on cars, I'm looked at like I'm an alien.
It's also really bad if you live in the surrounding cities and commute to Houston for work. There are literally no public transportation options in Pearland except for the school busses. The options in Baytown, Webster, Spring, etc are so threadbare they mighr as well not exist and probably only exist due to federal or state mandates.
I'm losing my mind.
Its still somewhat possible to get around with walking, but good luck. I've been hit as a pedestrian twice, plus you might have to illegally cross a highway or walk through someone's front yard to get where you're going.
People give Los Angeles and Las Vegas a lot of shit for being uninhabitable wastelands, but Houston is 1000x worse. The entire city is built on a paved over swamp that tries to reassert itself everytime there's a heavy rain (i.e. multiple times a year). Too little water is a much easier technical challenge to solve than too much water. Not to mention that the sprawl makes LA look like Tokyo.
Can’t get houstonians to care about shit. Same thing with the flooding. Every time someone proposes doing anything about it it dies out
. There’s a Japanese city that floods really bad and they built this awesome drainage system that Houston talked about learning from and that was like half a decade ago now probably?
This city is just gonna go under water at some point with all the problems we’ve had the last 20 years and more still perfectly In tact lol
The Houston mentality is that if things are bad you suffer though it. And if they're really bad, you buy something to fix it. And if they're really, really bad you move.
No community in this town. Everyone's just passing through.
This is what I hit into head first every time I've tried unionizing or organizing in this place. There's no solidarity at all. If you hate your job, get a new one. Hate that one? Get another. Everyone I know changes jobs once a year and if they still can't figure it out they move.
Something I discovered entirely too late in life was to change jobs every three years rather than ask for a raise.
Nobody knows what anything is actually worth and they'll pay a contractor $300/hr to do a job staff was doing for $50, because that gets the staffer off their books.
That’s Texas in general for the most part. Just hunker down and get through it, and definitely don’t go to an organization bigger than you and your immediate neighbors/family to deal with it
Americans straight cannot even fathom the idea of anything being better. You don't like all this car stuff? Guess the problem must be you 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️
There are three above grade rail lines for the entire metro area, which is a little over 7 million people. Busses are regularly up to 2 hours late. There are over 200 accidents in the city per day. Everything is pointlessly far apart and connected with crisscrossing highways which are always under construction. There's highway going from south Houston to League City that's just a spahetthi jumble of overlapping concrete and steel I'm surprised more cars just don't fall off during rain or ice.
Also, you know the worst part about this place? It is so difficult finding anyone who cares about changing it. Car culture is so endemic to Houston that all the transportation problems are placed on other drivers and/or poor people. Every time I bring up how shit the busses and rails are, the inevitable response is they're only used by poor people, homeless people live in them, they smell bad, they're slow, etc.
All the roadway problems are entirely blamed on all other people being shitty drivers except the person in question. Every time I bring up that the city could be organized better or less focus could be put on cars, I'm looked at like I'm an alien.
It's also really bad if you live in the surrounding cities and commute to Houston for work. There are literally no public transportation options in Pearland except for the school busses. The options in Baytown, Webster, Spring, etc are so threadbare they mighr as well not exist and probably only exist due to federal or state mandates.
I'm losing my mind.
Its still somewhat possible to get around with walking, but good luck. I've been hit as a pedestrian twice, plus you might have to illegally cross a highway or walk through someone's front yard to get where you're going.
People give Los Angeles and Las Vegas a lot of shit for being uninhabitable wastelands, but Houston is 1000x worse. The entire city is built on a paved over swamp that tries to reassert itself everytime there's a heavy rain (i.e. multiple times a year). Too little water is a much easier technical challenge to solve than too much water. Not to mention that the sprawl makes LA look like Tokyo.
We exist, but there is damned near zero community solidarity. Everyone is atomized and impotently fuming.
Can’t get houstonians to care about shit. Same thing with the flooding. Every time someone proposes doing anything about it it dies out
. There’s a Japanese city that floods really bad and they built this awesome drainage system that Houston talked about learning from and that was like half a decade ago now probably?
This city is just gonna go under water at some point with all the problems we’ve had the last 20 years and more still perfectly In tact lol
The Houston mentality is that if things are bad you suffer though it. And if they're really bad, you buy something to fix it. And if they're really, really bad you move.
No community in this town. Everyone's just passing through.
This is what I hit into head first every time I've tried unionizing or organizing in this place. There's no solidarity at all. If you hate your job, get a new one. Hate that one? Get another. Everyone I know changes jobs once a year and if they still can't figure it out they move.
Something I discovered entirely too late in life was to change jobs every three years rather than ask for a raise.
Nobody knows what anything is actually worth and they'll pay a contractor $300/hr to do a job staff was doing for $50, because that gets the staffer off their books.
That’s Texas in general for the most part. Just hunker down and get through it, and definitely don’t go to an organization bigger than you and your immediate neighbors/family to deal with it
Americans straight cannot even fathom the idea of anything being better. You don't like all this car stuff? Guess the problem must be you 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️