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Lots of men live with the challenge of carrying on their family’s legacy. Tony Gregory’s just weighs 27,000 tons, is nearly two football fields long and could — but probably won’t — sink into Galveston Bay on Wednesday.

Gregory, president of the Battleship Texas Foundation, will watch from land as the warship his grandfather helped the state acquire, and where generations of schoolchildren have learned a little about the sea, military service and Texas history, eases back into the deep.

What happens after that is what Gregory has spent three years planning with an army of assistants, advocates, volunteers and veterans. Either the only dreadnought battleship still in existence will creak and crack as tugboat chains tighten, her stern slides across some silt, her riveted hull holds true and the big girl leaves La Porte in her wake; or somewhere along 40 miles of Texas coast the Battleship Texas will list into the brackish waters and become a lost relic.

Source: Will Battleship Texas make it to Galveston, or become a lost relic?

Dust kicking up from his heels, Roger Adamson said he would be perfectly content if this pristine piece of land south of Richmond owned by The George Foundation stayed mostly untouched, dirt road and all.

Growth in Fort Bend County and the rest of the region is coming, however, and somewhere along this flat stretch of farmland the Grand Parkway eventually will cross the Fort Bend Tollway.

Where county leaders eventually decide to put that intersection will have an impact far beyond the typical road, with potential ripple effects on the cost to build the toll roads, the types of development that will replace that tranquil farmland and how much philanthropic money comes to Fort Bend County. The land closest to the intersection is expected to have a future worth of $500 million.

Source: Fort Bend intersection prompts fight with millions of dollars at stake

Temporary tags are, it seems, a permanent fixture around Houston.

Everyone sees them, many flapping in the wind on the backs of cars in front of them on the freeway. They are on BMWs parked in the back of Sharpstown apartment complexes and Audis idling outside the Westin Galleria.

Often, even the untrained eye can spot an obvious fake. Those are easy for police to spot: the entire month is written out — Texas only uses three letters — or the font is not the block style the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles uses.

Other forgeries take a more trained eye like those of Travis County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office Sgt. Jose Escribano, who runs one of the few task forces ferreting out fake tags.

More alarmingly, Escribano said, many are not forgeries at all. They are legit temporary tags in the Texas system put there by illegitimate businesses, via a loophole so big they are driving cars and trucks through it and onto the streets.

Escribano and a handful of other investigators estimate as many as 2 million bogus Texas tags are on vehicles across the country, in part because it is so easy to gain access to the state’s online tag printing portal — and so tough to shut criminals down when they do.

Source: Houston is home to countless fake temporary license tags, and a Texas loophole is to blame

Cody Foster knows how tough it can be to cross Westcott on Blossom, just steps from Memorial Park.

Driving south on Westcott once, Foster recalls having to slam the brakes to avoid hitting a boy on a bicycle who darted in front of his car.

On Wednesday it was Foster, out on a run near his apartment, carefully looking both ways before venturing onto Westcott toward Memorial Park.“

This is the only entrance that is somewhat safe, but yeah, it could be better,” he said.

A $200 million-plus plan to improve the park is aimed at making it a signature destination for all Houstonians. With that success, though, will come the same challenges anything popular in Houston faces: How will people get there, where will they park and what can be done to give them an option other than driving?

A variety of projects are planned or proposed to offer safer or additional options, including new bike paths, wider sidewalks, even a possible Metropolitan Transit Authority hub to rapid buses. All of the ideas, however, are years away and still face some public scrutiny that could alter the plans.

Source: Memorial Park improvements prompt look for safe access routes for runners, cyclists

Lockwood Drive looked like a parking lot — and a disorganized one at that — south of Harrisburg Tuesday afternoon. Drivers idled in their cars, some stepping out to stretch or use the phone. Delivery drivers, even a Metro bus turned away, taking their chances on a detour through the East End rather than wait on the stopped freight train blocking the intersection.“

There’s no excuse why a train should be blocking the street,” said Cecilia Cortez, 44, who just wanted to get home after picking her two kids up from school. “Look at all the people, just waiting.”

The situation was the same on the other side of the tracks, as drivers and pedestrians waited about 45 minutes before the train finally lurched eastward.

Source: Stopped trains take toll on East End traffic, drawing ire of Houston residents and leaders

The coronavirus pandemic sparked a surge in bike sales and bike riding across the Houston region at a time when pedaling — and driving — area streets is deadlier than ever.

A sharp drop in driving could not stop road fatalities from reaching a record high based on data compiled by the Texas Department of Transportation.

That lack of safety was especially true in 2020 for bicyclists, who represent a fraction of road users but 5 percent of those killed. Last year 31 men and three women died on area roads. The annual total of 34 exceeds that of 2019, which also was a record at 27 for the region in a single year.

Based on a preliminary analysis — reports can take weeks to enter the state’s crash database maintained by TxDOT — crashes involving bicycles are down 15 percent while deaths are up 26 percent from 2019.

Safety researchers and cycling advocates, however, were reluctant to draw too many conclusions from the early numbers or begin laying blame for the jump on any single cause. In fact, where crashes occurred and who died does not align with the noticeable increase in recreational cycling but, rather, the same factors present before the pandemic: a lack of safe space for bicycles, inadequate or absent lighting, and street design choices that enable drivers to speed.

“These aren’t accidents,” said Joe Cutrufo, executive director of BikeHouston, a local advocacy group. “Our streets were intentionally designed to accommodate one mode and only one mode.”

Source: 2020 was the year Houstonians stayed out of their cars and grabbed a bike. A record 34 of them died.

Names add faces, but it’s the details that put the true horror to the reality on Texas’ roads. One day it’s two or three people, killed in a head-on crash on Interstate 45 in Buffalo and a city street in Sugar Land.

The following Friday it is 15, mostly drunken-driving solo crashes. A couple in Houston and Dallas on freeways and others outside Luling and Midland on rod-straight farm-to-market roads.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into years and it keeps going, until two decades go by and more than 70,000 people are dead.

Saturday marked 20 years of at least one death a day on Texas roads, a bleak milestone in a long-simmering safety crisis lawmakers and local agencies have pledged to stop but have barely slowed in the past two years.

“The numbers don’t reflect it yet, to be frank,” state Transportation Commissioner Laura Ryan said of efforts to eliminate roadway deaths by 2050.

Source: The Streak: 20 years, 70K deaths and unfulfilled plans for zero road fatalities in Texas – HoustonChronicle.com

The story of Houston’s growth and its roads has always been about bigger. More people has meant more concrete, farther into the suburbs and wider in the dense core.

Now, state transportation officials are starting to re-write that, planning major projects focused on managed lanes along key freeways that encourage transit and carpool use, while potentially providing places to test new types of transportation.

For some commuters, it is long past time transit and carpool options were provided, while others long for even more open road for solo cars.

Texas Department of Transportation officials simply recognize they are running out of room, cannot rely on toll lanes to curb congestion and need support from across the region to accelerate projects they are planning.

“This is about transportation real estate,” said James Koch, TxDOT Houston district planning director. “It’s just real estate out there. We are obviously not going to double the size of the facilities we have, so what do we do with the space we have.”

Source: TxDOT trading tolls for managed lanes as it lays out long-term plans – HoustonChronicle.com

A Baytown-based Mexican restaurant group thought it had come up with a catchy, perfectly cheesy phrase for its newest billboard: Don’t Mess with Tex-Mex.

El Toro’s corporate leaders were so taken with it, they applied for a trademark on the phrase.

Nacho fast, the Texas Department of Transportation said.

TxDOT lawyers on Tuesday filed a claim with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office opposing El Toro’s application, saying the restaurant’s slogan is too close to the highway agency’s well-known anti-litter campaign.

“Any confusing misuse of the phrasing infringes on our trademark in violation of federal law,” TxDOT spokeswoman Veronica Beyer said.

In other words, you could find yourself enchilada trouble.

Source: TxDOT leaves a tip for restaurant chain: Don’t mess with our trademark – HoustonChronicle.com

Wherever Armando Litchenberger looks around Urbana Recording Studio, there are memories. The stool Jose Feliciano sat on to record a couple tracks. Goldie Hawn used the studio to mix the soundtrack for a TV movie she directed. Duran Duran re-cut a guitar track that didn’t test well while on a world tour.

“There are memories here that are not replaceable,” Litchenberger said as he showed off the Near Northside performance room where the neighborhood’s de facto house band, La Mafia, recorded the songs that won four Grammys, which now sit a glass trophy case a few feet from the soundboard.

Beatles memorabilia and signed posters from hundreds of musicians and celebrities line the walls, but it is a pin in the parking lot that draws Litchenberger’s attention these days. Driven in by a surveyor, the pin marks the property line for a wider Interstate 45.

The I-45 project’s toll on local property owners would be unprecedented for TxDOT in Houston, potentially relocating hundreds of families and businesses. Estimated to cost at least $7 billion, the project will rebuild I-45 from downtown Houston north to Beltway 8, and change how it connects with other downtown freeways.

That means rebuilding — by removing — pieces of Fifth Ward, the Northside, Acres Homes and Aldine. Spots south of North Main where third-generation Latino residents help neighbors work on cars in their driveway. Or Tidwell, which bustles with activity as the commercial center and is the only place within walking distance of her apartment where Shondrae McBride, 26, can get her nails done, pick up marinated carne asada and drop off her husband’s cell phone for repair across from a Pho restaurant.

“Not everybody has a car to get around,” McBride said.

Source: TxDOT’s $7 billion plan to shorten your I-45 commute may displace hundreds of families – HoustonChronicle.com