230 or 180 units on Bissonnet there would be a nightmare for traffic. This is a terrible idea. I am, however, slightly amused at the distress of the snooty Southhampton residents, who are so snooty and exclusive that they have their own private park on Parkway Dr. (all the better to avoid the gangbangers a few blocks north in Ervin Chew Park).

I always find situations like this somewhat amusing having been a traffic engineer on both sides of the issue. I've represented the angry neighbors team and the developers team when evaluating the traffic impacts of high rise residential developments.

The residents always get their panties in a wad over the raw number of condos/apartments - it doesn't matter what the actual type of residence is, its just the notion of high density development that bothers them. In my experience, the residents of the affected areas almost always object vociferously to the residential components of the project, yet give the typical ground level retail and restaurant uses a pass because they somewhat see those as desirable uses. (This is not obviously always the case, but frequently is based on my experience)

The ground floor retail or restaurant space of the typical development like this usually will generate a very similar number, if not more trips, than all the residential dwelling units combined. Yet the residents complain about the traffic generated by the dwelling units.

Of course it depends on the type of retail or restaurant mix that goes in, and obviously the amount of residential.

Using the numbers in the news article, I used worst case of apartments instead of the condo designation and assuming some high turnover restaurants like applebees, chilis, chipotle, olive garden etc - franchise chains instead of say a fancy joint like Americas or Churrascos just to illustrate my point here

I'm not trying to belittle the neighborhood concerns in any way, I just saying careful what you wish for. I have seen residents bemoan 200 units of 400,000k condos because of their density that cheered when the developer offered to convert to restaurant and office uses, which in his case actually generated substantially more traffic which would be more detrimental to the surrounding area than the high-rise residential uses.

Kuff, you mention you'd like to see the levels of service info. Obviously there has been a traffic study if that terminology is being tossed around. If you can get your hands on it it would have a description of the impacts. One important point is to not get hung up on the actual designations of A-F for LOS, but to also look at the actual delay values for the analysis scenarios. A development can change an intersection from Level of Service D to Level Service E, which is easy to hang a hat on as an adverse impact, however, when you look at the delay values you see a change from say 53 seconds of average delay to 56 seconds of average delay. Depending on the reviewing agency involved, jumping across the threshold from LOS D to E may require mitigation in the form of roadway improvements, however the 3 second impact may not be deemed significant and thus doesn't result in any mitigation being required.

I'm rambling... oh well

That park is within Broadacres and not Southampton.

This project is outrageous! There are very few beautiful neighborhoods in Houston. This is one of them, and it is about to be ruined!

There may be nothing the City can do, but there is something concerned citizens can do. How about some good old-fashioned civil disobedience? For starters, how about a massive sign campaign like the residents of Afton Oaks successfully did to stop light rail in front of their homes? The signs could say things like "Don't Rape Our Neighborhood," etc.

Let's start an organization to organize this type of activity.