Is houston a bully? (McKinney, Allen: transplants, school, contractors)

[Malvie]

Personally, I find Atlanta (and the entire East, for that matter) suffocating.

Atlanta's roads and infrastructure are a complete joke. The city is hemmed in and surrounded by suburbs big and small, and exists in 3 or 4 separate counties. Aside from interstates 75 and 85, the Perimeter, and the GA 400, travel within the city is crushing due to tiny roads, 10,000,000 red lights, cops from every little organization trying to generate revenue---

The areas around Lenox/Buckhead and Dunwoody must make sense to the locals, but they certainly don't to anyone else.

Marta is useful to a certain extent (as long as you're going somewhere it goes).

About the only thing Atlanta got right was the airport; contrary to almost everybody else, I LOVE the Atlanta airport as opposed to IAH, DFW, JFK, NWK, or the ever-popular ORD. Even with the good terminal design, they're still exceedingly limited in number of runways, and the traffic stacks up pretty badly.

I find an Atlantan lecturing Houstonians quite humorous.

[Trae713]

Yeah, Atlanta has a pretty bad arterial road system. Its freeways may be wide, but that's to make up for the secondary road system. Some of the worst traffic I've been in, while in Atlanta, was on the secondary roads, and not the freeways. I know a lot of Atlantans are proud of themselves that they didn't get a few freeways built, but that has also lead to more congestion. Atlanta is a lot like Austin, but at least Austin has better secondary roads. The neglect for infrastructure improvements (roads, freeways, and mass transit) is what has really crippled Atlanta. I think Houston and DFW did a better job during the boom, and are doing a better job today.

[Spade]

Originally Posted by amberazeneth

you know, eclipsing chicago in population.

lol:d

[Malvie]

Originally Posted by Scarface713

Yeah, Atlanta has a pretty bad arterial road system. Its freeways may be wide, but that's to make up for the secondary road system. Some of the worst traffic I've been in, while in Atlanta, was on the secondary roads, and not the freeways. I know a lot of Atlantans are proud of themselves that they didn't get a few freeways built, but that has also lead to more congestion. Atlanta is a lot like Austin, but at least Austin has better secondary roads. The neglect for infrastructure improvements (roads, freeways, and mass transit) is what has really crippled Atlanta. I think Houston and DFW did a better job during the boom, and are doing a better job today.

Agree completely. And part of the reason that Houston was able to get its secondary roads in (in many cases pre-construction) is the fact that big, bad, mean old Houston is ONE municipality dealing with ONE county, instead of 200 little outfits trying to agree on something.

A friend of mine works for Dallas County (which is not nearly as big as Harris) and they have all these little cities. Any time they want to do a project (say, Garland Road), they have to get all those little towns to work with them to do it.

Houston's way is better.

[DrLizardo]

Originally Posted by HtownLove

lol, so you are saying that ATLnSAV /newsboy have been lying to us?

I don't know about that, but perhaps it's caused by the strain of multiple online personalities.

[skidisk]

I was one of the first 50 families to move into Clear Lake City in 1964. We built a strong community and NASA and were proud of both. We wanted to incorporate as a city and fought hard for the right to do so.

But Houston refused to let us incorporate, and they used ETJ to stop it. We fought all the way until Houston annexed, and so we lost. We then fought to have annexation overturned. We lost. Houston wanted the rich tax base and got it (Pasadena had ETJ rights to the eastern part of Clear Lake and took it).

btw, 1963 ETJ law applies to anything within 5 miles of a 100,000 person city, not just one mile. And for those who claim Houston didn't grow by stealing land via ETJ, they're flat wrong. From 1963 to 1978, Houston increased its land ownership by over 50% using ETJ annexation. That's a fact, and you can look it up.

ETJ stinks, and it destroyed the Clear Lake area, which is now a complete mess. If you'd been there in 1977 and compare it to today, you'd understand.

[usc619]

Houston's metro EJT is a joke, DFW got it right.

[Texyn]

Originally Posted by skidisk

I was one of the first 50 families to move into Clear Lake City in 1964. We built a strong community and NASA and were proud of both. We wanted to incorporate as a city and fought hard for the right to do so.

But Houston refused to let us incorporate, and they used ETJ to stop it. We fought all the way until Houston annexed, and so we lost. We then fought to have annexation overturned. We lost. Houston wanted the rich tax base and got it (Pasadena had ETJ rights to the eastern part of Clear Lake and took it).

btw, 1963 ETJ law applies to anything within 5 miles of a 100,000 person city, not just one mile. And for those who claim Houston didn't grow by stealing land via ETJ, they're flat wrong. From 1963 to 1978, Houston increased its land ownership by over 50% using ETJ annexation. That's a fact, and you can look it up.

ETJ stinks, and it destroyed the Clear Lake area, which is now a complete mess. If you'd been there in 1977 and compare it to today, you'd understand.

If Houston (or rather, its founders) were smart, they would have focused the city around the TX-255 and TX-146 junctions: an urban mass with multiple waterways, covering much of the area Clear Lake now sits.

[detachable arm]

Originally Posted by skidisk

I was one of the first 50 families to move into Clear Lake City in 1964. We built a strong community and NASA and were proud of both. We wanted to incorporate as a city and fought hard for the right to do so.

But Houston refused to let us incorporate, and they used ETJ to stop it. We fought all the way until Houston annexed, and so we lost. We then fought to have annexation overturned. We lost. Houston wanted the rich tax base and got it (Pasadena had ETJ rights to the eastern part of Clear Lake and took it).

btw, 1963 ETJ law applies to anything within 5 miles of a 100,000 person city, not just one mile. And for those who claim Houston didn't grow by stealing land via ETJ, they're flat wrong. From 1963 to 1978, Houston increased its land ownership by over 50% using ETJ annexation. That's a fact, and you can look it up.

ETJ stinks, and it destroyed the Clear Lake area, which is now a complete mess. If you'd been there in 1977 and compare it to today, you'd understand.

Pining for "the way things were" 40 years ago in any part of the US is just asinine. Get help.

[Newsboy]

Revisiting a thread I created 7 (!!!) years ago ... I’ll never understand how things work in Texas. I’m comfortable and fine with the way municipal and county governments function in Georgia, for and against each other, and most especially how Georgia’s county-defined school districts operate. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the concept of Texas ISDs. It’s mind-boggling to me how anybody understands it. I’ve got Georgia friends who live in McKinney and they don’t even get it ... just send their kids to whatever school district the local authorities say they’re assigned to, despite city or county boundaries.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

McKinney is served primarily by the McKinney Independent School District, however significant parts of the western side of the city are part of nearby Frisco Independent School District and Prosper Independent School District. Other smaller areas along the outer edges of the city are zoned to Celina Independent School District, Allen Independent School District, Melissa Independent School District, and Lovejoy Independent School District.

WHAT IN THE HELL?!