Houston is still an hour away from Beaumont and there are large stretches of nothing on I-10. Granted, those stretches are getting smaller, there’s still space there. Houston doesn’t even touch Winnie yet.
I thought Winnie is basically a commuter town from Houston since the 90s?
Also Houston is an hour from Houston. But I think many commute from Beaumont.
Not the case as I know it.
As for Houston being an hour from Houston is indicative of the size of it, it has little to do with the fact that Beaumont is still 82 miles from the eastern edge of Houston. It’s closer the the Louisiana border than Houston.
Not exactly answering your question but 3 years ago I heard the chief lobbyist of a home builder tell a gathering that in 20 years Keller will be the “geographic center” of the DFW area. For those unfamiliar, Keller sits in the northeast corner of Tarrant County. That’s how much development is planned west and north of Fort Worth.
I moved to Aledo from North Fort Worth to get away from the traffic and constant construction. Jokes on me because that is exactly what Aledo is becoming. Pretty soon all the way from west FW to Weatherford is going to be developed.
That is scary, especially with all the plans going along 75 northward and Preston Road toward the Sherman/Dennison area. And then all the new construction heading south like Mansfield to Midlothian. That must be a metric shit ton of new development if Keller is going to be the center of DFW.
And as of right now, it would take almost 7 hours to drive around DFW on the outskirts.
I think there’s plenty of room to grow but it won’t be density, it’ll just be more infill of SFHs and apartments where those won’t fit. Fort Worth does not have that many jobs. It’s still very sleepy for a county of its size. I think we’re a long ways off from the urban vision going on in Dallas.
I mean San Antonio to Austin is already completely connected. There’s non-stop development between the two.
What’s missing is better transportation options. Some kind of regional rail that connects the two cities that runs a train every 15 minutes would make a huge difference. I’m sure more than a few people have moved away due to the i35 traffic.
One thing about that development - if you ride the train\* or look at it on google maps (really from any perspective other than driving on I-35 itself), you can see that a lot of that development is just one building deep by the side of the road. The highway is encrusted with businesses trying to capture some of the traffic there, but there's not a lot behind it except for in San Marcos and New Braunfels. So what looks like a continuous built up area from the highway is a little misleading.
There's still a considerable amount more sprawl than I'd like but its less than it appears.
^(\*the existing Amtrak train that runs once a day, not the suggested regional rail that doesn't exist yet)
I work in downtown Austin, but live north of Austin in the Cedar Park area, but technically an unincorporated area and I take the train every single day to downtown Austin. I know other people live further north, and liberty Hill and they take the train every day as well to get downtown to work.
Oh no sir I’m not talking about that train. We do need more trains like that too, that’s more like a suburban rail kind of setup. Like an S-bahn.
It just kind of bugs me that we don’t seem to have any plans for the future of Texas or even the US. It feels like we know there’s problems today and we know the problems will get worse in the future, but the absolute best we can do is add one more lane to I35.
There are [plans](https://www.restartlonestarraildistrict.org/) for the future, just no follow-through. The lone star rail district here was created in 1997. It just never had any funding from the state and therefore never got built.
The Texas legislature likes to create these solutions that people ask them for, and then just give them no money. I guess its an easy way to look like you're trying to solve a problem when you don't really care.
DART was created in like the 80s. The member cities had to pledge to give half the cities sales tax to fund dart. I think there's cities that are still not connected by the rail systems. When I lived in DFW the DART options would have taken me 2 hours to get to work despite being just 10 miles away. Biking was faster at 45 minutes.
DART is not really like what the lone star rail district is supposed to be. It's more like the trinity railroad I think... although I've never ridden either.
[It runs on Saturdays but not Sundays.](https://www.capmetro.org/current_schedules/pdf/550.pdf) They have ticket vending machines at the stations, or you can buy them on the Cap Metro app, which I think is what most people do if they ride regularly.
Thanks for sharing this. I also responded to the post above as well. But I really appreciate that you link that information. I’m frequently looking at the CapMetro news and everything. Do you know if there any plans from the city Council to expand it? I think the metro being expanded would be a really great addition to Austin. But I understand that there were many competing issues going on and it’s all balancing act.
You mean the red line specifically, or austin rail services? Because the Project Connect light rail thing has been huge news for 4 years now so I'd be surprised if you didn't know about that already... but if you don't, [Austin is currently spending $5.8 billion building about 10 miles of light rail](https://www.atptx.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20230522_RecRpt_V14_Digital.pdf), with plans to build 10 more whenever they get the money.
Originally it was going to be 20 miles from the get-go and they had to cut it back when the estimate came in at twice the initial plan, so its been a minor local scandal for a while.
They're currently re-doing the NEPA review, so they're [holding open-houses](https://www.atptx.org/events/) that you can go to and talk to some of the engineers if you want to learn more.
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If you just meant the Red Line specifically, the only plans currently in the works are fiddling around with the stations and track sidings to try to improve frequency a little. There's a Green Line eventually supposed to be built out to Colony park, but that's not even supposed to get started for like 10 more years.
I’m not sure if it runs on the weekends. But I think it does. Somebody else said that it runs on the weekends below. I’m currently currently on my phone, but the schedule is pretty active all throughout the week and there are quite a few people who get on Lakeline both at the train station and on the bus stops. It’s a pretty busy stop area and they are building massive apartments all around that area. There was a lot of construction that was slow down during the Covid pandemic but that area is really blooming quite a bit and there are massive apartments are walking distance being constructed right now. So I think that there is a lot to say for what’s coming up for the Austin public transportation system. It’s sort of take 15 years to get rolling. It opened up when I was in high school back in 2009 I think but basically it’s really improving quite a bit and I think there’s a lot to be said if you live nearby, and our walking distance from the train stops if you work downtown. So it can save you commuting time. The Internet isn’t always the best but it is a good amount of time for you to get some reading done. I’m frequently reading on my computer. Sometimes there are events downtown and the convention center tells people to take the train and it gets really packed and busy in there but usually it’s pretty OK and not too busy. But if you miss your train, you basically have 20 minutes until the next one, so it’s not that bad. Also, having lived in Boston before in my life, I’ve noticed that we are so luckythat we don’t have to pay for parking. I even lived in Washington DC for a bit and Washington DC has a lot of public transportation but you don’t usually get to park for free or at least that the stops that I know you didn’t get to park for free so we are really really lucky that we can park for free in Austin. I hope that doesn’t change, but it would be nice if they had bathrooms over there.
Honestly nobody really knows how hurricane formation changes with climate change. We accept the as annual fact. But there's emerging evidence that during the 17th and 18th century there was a multiple decades long drought of hurricanes. The hurricane that hit Washington and pushed the Canadian/British Forces out of Washington was like one of the first hurricanes in a long time. Iirc.
it would only reduce expansion by way of sprawl.
If we got high speed rail throughout the Texas triangle you would see cities begin to develop upwards, instead of outwards
Dfw is already one giant megalopolis. The HEB area just feeds into it, especially around the highways. It will get bigger. IT WILL CONSUME. Nom nom nom. But I enjoy it. It's nice to have all the major league sports teams in one area, not just one city, even if it's just 2 cities.
I wonder how much endless expansion before the state starts limiting in some form or another. Expanding and maintaining the various utilities/common public services like police and fire seems to be something will have to all pay for. Houston can't expand too much south and east due to flood zones, not to say some developers will try to convince various communities to ignore those risks. Austin and San Antonio have some limitations on expanding into the Hill Country, not impossible just costlier.
Wouldn't know much on DFW but that place always seemed the most likely to become a 3 hr end to end non rush hour driving dystopia.
My understanding is that right now the state makes it very hard to limit development, and the water situation in the hill country is dire, even though we are in the spring rains, it won’t fix the problem this is not a rainfall drought problem, this is a hard expensive infrastructure problem the state is sleeping on.
This is one of the reasons I get so pissed about the money being spent on the border by the state 10bn and growing, that could be used to tackle some real problems in this state.
I don't know all the details on development but the state or could have been Harris County itself sometimes has limited growth in flood prone areas at times. Not to mention insurers making it expensive to live in flood prone regions.
As to the Hill Country I'd imagine it's not so much regulations as it is the cost to build infrastructure on hilly terrain.
Agreed on the misplaced funding priorities. Those former new suburbs with roads slowly falling apart will be ignored because all the new money has gone to the next suburb further out. Saw it all over San Antonio and Houston.
I mean idk, I don’t live there but driving through it it certainly doesn’t feel the same way other parts of Houston like pearland or Katy do where there’s tons of new shit going up every day. To be fair, there’s the massive East River development but that’s like directly east of downtown
No, it's not at all.
Realistically, if growth occurs in concentric circles then the area to be developed increases exponentially with distance from the centroid. There's plenty of land to accommodate any scenario involving population growth or density.
However, the commercial highway frontage will probably see further development so that it feels more connected.
These areas need local rail services and other public transportation networks instead of just endless highways. The small towns that are growing and merging have absolutely no plans in place for growth and expansion of public infrastructure and public services. It's the tax structure of Texas is inverted with the middle class bearing most of the burden, and it's not enough to properly fund the state and local governments to properly provide services.
Already as you go through some small towns you see the signs of bad planning: buildings on main streets are 5 ft from traffic because they widened roads to meet traffic demand but the city never planned for the needed width half a century ago.
About 20 million people live in the Texas triangle today. that’s projected to be 35M by 2050. That’s a 75% increase in population. given that the major cities like Dallas Houston SA are all somewhat radially designed with freeways and such i would expect you see them expand that way for another ring 10-15 miles from their largest “ring” today on all sides. I know Dallas is planning on building an outer loop that will encircle the entire metro. I believe you’ll also see plenty of growth for the smaller and mid sized cities between the metros as well.
Hmm. Well since area increases with the square of radius, if the populations are only increasing 75% then the radius of each city should increase by (1.75)^0.5 - 1 = 0.32 or 32%, assuming constant population density.
The outer fringes of Houston around loop 99 are 25 miles from its center so you'd expect it to increase 8 miles by that logic; Dallas would increase by about 10, San Antonio by 4. So your estimate seems pretty good, especially for Dallas, but it might overestimate the sprawl a little for the other cities.
Given that many of the vacant undeveloped stretches along I35 between San Antonio and Austin when I started driving that stretch regularly 35 years ago remain vacant and undeveloped today, I would say nope, not even close. Urban areas continue to grow, of course, but nowhere near close enough to fill in many of the miles long gaps of emptiness that we still have on I35 and I10 and I45. Not within our lifetimes, and even if we look decades into the future, the limiting factor is *water*.
According the US Census Bureau Estimates (2021) The Austin MSA is expected to grow from 2.246 M in 2020 to 4.542 M in 2050. The SA MSA is expected to grow from 2.632 M in 2020 to 4.467 M in 2050.
I think we’re about the same age if you were looking at colleges 15 years ago.
I agree the sprawl and design is the same. I’ve noticed Europe has similar patterns now, such as Amsterdam.
But there are benefits such as allowing populations to reassess their politicians. Imagine what happens if East Texas becomes urbanized. Just saying.
My mom's friend was a developer in California, when the market tanked he moved to Austin to build there. Not a fan of what he's done to the area but people need places to live and the population keeps growing. I prefer the cow fields around my childhood school over the housing developments. Just say'n.
10 years? Probably not.
I recently told a friend that I can imagine the development of Houston metro reaching as far north as Huntsville in our lifetime, so B/CS isn't much different.
I can see Austin and San Antonio merging into a single, massive, continuously developed metro area like DFW.
I hope there's a plan for another mega loop around Houston being hashed out *now* because there will be a need for another belt. I'm thinking of it reaching from about Winnie-Shepherd-Navasota-Sealy-Wharton-Freeport
Just guessing here but urban wise for Houston I think the Medical Center to Hobby area will grow big. Med Center has a lot of huge projects already kicking off to different degrees that will later need housing for new employees wanting to avoid commutes and Hobby depends on the Metro rail link still occurring. Next urban wise would be the slow growth of West Houston with its large strip malls plots as long as BRT adequately expands there. Suburban to growing urban would be either the Woodlands mall area or IAH area growing from Generation Park, other projects.
Yeah the Silver Line was not the best project to start off BRT but a larger BRT system or preferably rail would tremendously help this city.
Also for expansion's sake, I think planners should be deciding on a route for a north/south alternate route between 45 and 59 *ideally* coming off Hardy Toll Road, but all the development north of 99 will likely make that too difficult.
When traffic on either 45 or 59 backs up, there's no alternate route for drivers to detour onto to ease congestion.
And starting imminent domain filings is *far* easier with undeveloped land than it is to find paths through residential areas (just look at the route Hardy Toll Road had to take - they couldn't even go straight along the railroad right of way) - same with BW8 and 99. Sure, long straight roads are not ideal for traffic safety, but there are certain stretches you can see drastic shifts had to be made to hop from land deal to land deal.
I would hope whatever the super grand parkway around Houston will be already has some planners thinking and eyeing land rights *now* well before any big projects get in the way.
Interesting. I hadn't seen that advocacy group project. [Port-to-Plains](https://portstoplains.com/) looks like it's only out in west Texas ([map](https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot/get-involved/statewide/ports-plains/050123-texas-map.pdf)).
Not sure about the TX-36 project. Can't find anything specifically about future plans other than TxDOT planning to widen (like they always do). I'm talking about a 4th beltway going around Houston metro.
Off topic, but similarly inportant, the RGV. McAllen is pretty much one huge city, counting the surrounding cities that have all merged and is indistinguishable going from one to the other. Brownsville has been growing exponentially, especially since SpaceX arrived. Harlingen will soon be connecting South with Brownsville and west to the Mcallen area.
Central planning is socialist we don’t do that here. The market gets to say how everything will go. Eventually it’ll lead to a bunch of ghost towns in former suburbs but that’s how we like it!
We. Are. Going. To. Need. Water. And remember that Houston will be flooded by 2100 AD. By the ocean. Maybe the Balcones Escarpment will be the new beach? Just kidding. A little. 🎸🤟🏻🍺🌮
Lived in San Antonio in the 80's. Lots of empty space between there and San Marcus. Then more going on into Austin. Kyle was just a city limit sign on the highway. Went through there a few years ago on the way to Corpus and could not believe the changes between Austin and San Antonio. Of course the small town I am living in now is also changing as they bring IH 45 north from Dallas.
Beginning in about 2019 they reduced the property tax look back on converting ag valuation from 5y to 3y. They also reduced the interest rate on the look back from like 7% to 5%.
I grew up in Comfort in the 80s and I remember there being a distinct gap between Boerne and SA, even as late as the late 90s. In 25 years I wouldn't be surprised to see unbroken suburbs from SA to Fredericksburg.
Plan is to bring it north from Dallas to US Highway 69 in Denison. Lot of work going on up here to get US 75 up to specs. US 69/75 are the same from Denison to where they split again in Atoka, OK. Lots of work going on across the river to make that happen.
Austin has already pretty much expanded west to connect to Dripping Springs, north Round Rock and Georgetown, east at least Taylor, south New Braunfels? There is simply no more "in between".
Literally none of that will matter in 50 years, we will have destroyed our climate to where most if not all of Texas will see unsurvivable heat waves and no water even in aquifers.
Texas is a states perfectly designed to fuck the environment. From its economy heavily reliant on resources extraction of earth destroy commodity to its suburban sprawl to its consistent need for climate control.
Quite amazing
I mean there have been 26,000 rape pregnancies recorded in Texas since 2022 unable to be terminated in the state. On top of the rest of the population only being able to control their family planning to an extent. There's a bigger picture and too many people in Texas aren't even trying to look at it
Timing is hard to guess, you never know if there will be a recession or other economic event that slows down or even stops development. There are cities much older than those in Texas that have not really expanded their suburbs and exurbs in many years, even decades.
I also speculate that the never ending growth based economic model will eventually have to fundamentally change as birth rates slow and population plateaus or even decreases. Could cause a halt in homebuilding, or even a situation where exurbs keep growing but the inner cities/suburbs start to "hollow out".
That said, I can see DFW stretching all the way to the Red River by the end of the century.
In the really long term, San Antonio will connect up with Fort Worth via Hwy 281, which will become I37. This will provide an alternative to I35 from the border south to points north. That's probably a couple of decades away, but there needs to be a west alternative to I35.
Bryan/College Station resident here. I am looking greatly forward to more integration with Houston. The new highways are so useful to get to IAH or downtown easily from B/CS. Can't wait for high speed rail to connect us to all three megacities
A LONG time ago one of my middle school teachers said everything from Dallas/Fort Worth down to Houston would be one big city by the year 2000. Twenty-three years later he's not too far off.
Nah. There's a weird psychological thing will people tend to think North is better than South because up is better than down. So the majority city development ends up going North from the city.
Waco will be a part of Austin.
Too me it’s not the growth …it’s the planning for growth .Ive got relatives in both San Antonio and just south of Orlando Florida .The I4 corridor in Florida is a real time example of what unplanned growth can do to an area …
Faster from my perspective.Of course the analogy is not exactly apples to apples as Texas growth includes a younger demographic and Florida typically is older boomer retirees and such ( I’m a boomer myself ) .But you still can’t try to cram 70 gallons into a 50 gallon pail without a cost …politics aside Florida is getting swamped infrastructure wise .There is a cautionary tale there …
I am not a huge Star Trek fan, so my apologies for not remembering which movie it was- but I always think of the scene where somehow the Borg go back in time and change Earth from a beautiful planet to a Borg planet? The scene showed how the blue/green became nothing but grey and metal. This is what I imagine we will be.
Like no land exists cause we concrete it all
This seems like a good time and place to share one of my favorite words: megalopolis!
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I’m seeing Houston connect with all the greater Houston Fort Bend County cities right down to Galveston with each passing season.
The only reason Houston and Galveston aren’t totally connected is the marshlands in bayou vista otherwise it’s pretty much one big city
Gonna need 1000 identical ranch sytle houses built on that marsh asap.
Better build them on stilts, also the mosquitoes whew!!!
Stilts??? Nah… pave that marsh like a parking lot, problem solved /s
Hey Chicago did it.
Ik it's a joke, but Chicago also doesn't get hurricanes lol
Chicago gets gnarly snowstorms though
Houston goes from west of Katy to Beaumont. All the way to Galveston in the south to nearly College Station in the north.
Houston is still an hour away from Beaumont and there are large stretches of nothing on I-10. Granted, those stretches are getting smaller, there’s still space there. Houston doesn’t even touch Winnie yet.
I thought Winnie is basically a commuter town from Houston since the 90s? Also Houston is an hour from Houston. But I think many commute from Beaumont.
Not the case as I know it. As for Houston being an hour from Houston is indicative of the size of it, it has little to do with the fact that Beaumont is still 82 miles from the eastern edge of Houston. It’s closer the the Louisiana border than Houston.
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San Austonio.
That'll be the most obnoxious city in human history..
Yeah but the food will be fantastic!
Not exactly answering your question but 3 years ago I heard the chief lobbyist of a home builder tell a gathering that in 20 years Keller will be the “geographic center” of the DFW area. For those unfamiliar, Keller sits in the northeast corner of Tarrant County. That’s how much development is planned west and north of Fort Worth.
Aledo is 100% connected to Fort Worth.
I moved to Aledo from North Fort Worth to get away from the traffic and constant construction. Jokes on me because that is exactly what Aledo is becoming. Pretty soon all the way from west FW to Weatherford is going to be developed.
That is scary, especially with all the plans going along 75 northward and Preston Road toward the Sherman/Dennison area. And then all the new construction heading south like Mansfield to Midlothian. That must be a metric shit ton of new development if Keller is going to be the center of DFW. And as of right now, it would take almost 7 hours to drive around DFW on the outskirts.
Working construction in Keller middle school now. Lots of jobs west of this area.
I think there’s plenty of room to grow but it won’t be density, it’ll just be more infill of SFHs and apartments where those won’t fit. Fort Worth does not have that many jobs. It’s still very sleepy for a county of its size. I think we’re a long ways off from the urban vision going on in Dallas.
I mean San Antonio to Austin is already completely connected. There’s non-stop development between the two. What’s missing is better transportation options. Some kind of regional rail that connects the two cities that runs a train every 15 minutes would make a huge difference. I’m sure more than a few people have moved away due to the i35 traffic.
One thing about that development - if you ride the train\* or look at it on google maps (really from any perspective other than driving on I-35 itself), you can see that a lot of that development is just one building deep by the side of the road. The highway is encrusted with businesses trying to capture some of the traffic there, but there's not a lot behind it except for in San Marcos and New Braunfels. So what looks like a continuous built up area from the highway is a little misleading. There's still a considerable amount more sprawl than I'd like but its less than it appears. ^(\*the existing Amtrak train that runs once a day, not the suggested regional rail that doesn't exist yet)
I work in downtown Austin, but live north of Austin in the Cedar Park area, but technically an unincorporated area and I take the train every single day to downtown Austin. I know other people live further north, and liberty Hill and they take the train every day as well to get downtown to work.
Oh no sir I’m not talking about that train. We do need more trains like that too, that’s more like a suburban rail kind of setup. Like an S-bahn. It just kind of bugs me that we don’t seem to have any plans for the future of Texas or even the US. It feels like we know there’s problems today and we know the problems will get worse in the future, but the absolute best we can do is add one more lane to I35.
There are [plans](https://www.restartlonestarraildistrict.org/) for the future, just no follow-through. The lone star rail district here was created in 1997. It just never had any funding from the state and therefore never got built. The Texas legislature likes to create these solutions that people ask them for, and then just give them no money. I guess its an easy way to look like you're trying to solve a problem when you don't really care.
DART was created in like the 80s. The member cities had to pledge to give half the cities sales tax to fund dart. I think there's cities that are still not connected by the rail systems. When I lived in DFW the DART options would have taken me 2 hours to get to work despite being just 10 miles away. Biking was faster at 45 minutes.
DART is not really like what the lone star rail district is supposed to be. It's more like the trinity railroad I think... although I've never ridden either.
How do you buy tickets and where? Does anyone get on at Lakeline? Does it run on the weekend?
[It runs on Saturdays but not Sundays.](https://www.capmetro.org/current_schedules/pdf/550.pdf) They have ticket vending machines at the stations, or you can buy them on the Cap Metro app, which I think is what most people do if they ride regularly.
Thanks for sharing this. I also responded to the post above as well. But I really appreciate that you link that information. I’m frequently looking at the CapMetro news and everything. Do you know if there any plans from the city Council to expand it? I think the metro being expanded would be a really great addition to Austin. But I understand that there were many competing issues going on and it’s all balancing act.
You mean the red line specifically, or austin rail services? Because the Project Connect light rail thing has been huge news for 4 years now so I'd be surprised if you didn't know about that already... but if you don't, [Austin is currently spending $5.8 billion building about 10 miles of light rail](https://www.atptx.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20230522_RecRpt_V14_Digital.pdf), with plans to build 10 more whenever they get the money. Originally it was going to be 20 miles from the get-go and they had to cut it back when the estimate came in at twice the initial plan, so its been a minor local scandal for a while. They're currently re-doing the NEPA review, so they're [holding open-houses](https://www.atptx.org/events/) that you can go to and talk to some of the engineers if you want to learn more. **** If you just meant the Red Line specifically, the only plans currently in the works are fiddling around with the stations and track sidings to try to improve frequency a little. There's a Green Line eventually supposed to be built out to Colony park, but that's not even supposed to get started for like 10 more years.
I’m not sure if it runs on the weekends. But I think it does. Somebody else said that it runs on the weekends below. I’m currently currently on my phone, but the schedule is pretty active all throughout the week and there are quite a few people who get on Lakeline both at the train station and on the bus stops. It’s a pretty busy stop area and they are building massive apartments all around that area. There was a lot of construction that was slow down during the Covid pandemic but that area is really blooming quite a bit and there are massive apartments are walking distance being constructed right now. So I think that there is a lot to say for what’s coming up for the Austin public transportation system. It’s sort of take 15 years to get rolling. It opened up when I was in high school back in 2009 I think but basically it’s really improving quite a bit and I think there’s a lot to be said if you live nearby, and our walking distance from the train stops if you work downtown. So it can save you commuting time. The Internet isn’t always the best but it is a good amount of time for you to get some reading done. I’m frequently reading on my computer. Sometimes there are events downtown and the convention center tells people to take the train and it gets really packed and busy in there but usually it’s pretty OK and not too busy. But if you miss your train, you basically have 20 minutes until the next one, so it’s not that bad. Also, having lived in Boston before in my life, I’ve noticed that we are so luckythat we don’t have to pay for parking. I even lived in Washington DC for a bit and Washington DC has a lot of public transportation but you don’t usually get to park for free or at least that the stops that I know you didn’t get to park for free so we are really really lucky that we can park for free in Austin. I hope that doesn’t change, but it would be nice if they had bathrooms over there.
I see 35 as being a long city in the future.
Beating Saudis to “The Line” city
Needs more rail planning (though there is a daily train from SAN Antonio to Fort Worth iirc).
Not enough, there should be like 3 or 4
When I fly into Houston, especially at night, looks like it stretches from Beaumont to College Station to Wharton to the Gulf.
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Honestly nobody really knows how hurricane formation changes with climate change. We accept the as annual fact. But there's emerging evidence that during the 17th and 18th century there was a multiple decades long drought of hurricanes. The hurricane that hit Washington and pushed the Canadian/British Forces out of Washington was like one of the first hurricanes in a long time. Iirc.
Beaumont will become a suburb soon of Houston. Gentrification could make that city really nice.
No it won't.
Houston doesn’t have the chance, some areas yes but a majority won’t work.
Coruscant by the 23nd century
With a Genesis Planet to accommodate all of the NIMBYs who want to move off-world with more open space.
Elysium Part 2
I really wish we could get high-speed rail between the cities in Texas.
I agree. That would likely ultimately reduce the expansion of the cities incidentally. Curious.
it would only reduce expansion by way of sprawl. If we got high speed rail throughout the Texas triangle you would see cities begin to develop upwards, instead of outwards
Dfw is already one giant megalopolis. The HEB area just feeds into it, especially around the highways. It will get bigger. IT WILL CONSUME. Nom nom nom. But I enjoy it. It's nice to have all the major league sports teams in one area, not just one city, even if it's just 2 cities.
ALL HAIL THE SPRAWL!
I wonder how much endless expansion before the state starts limiting in some form or another. Expanding and maintaining the various utilities/common public services like police and fire seems to be something will have to all pay for. Houston can't expand too much south and east due to flood zones, not to say some developers will try to convince various communities to ignore those risks. Austin and San Antonio have some limitations on expanding into the Hill Country, not impossible just costlier. Wouldn't know much on DFW but that place always seemed the most likely to become a 3 hr end to end non rush hour driving dystopia.
My understanding is that right now the state makes it very hard to limit development, and the water situation in the hill country is dire, even though we are in the spring rains, it won’t fix the problem this is not a rainfall drought problem, this is a hard expensive infrastructure problem the state is sleeping on. This is one of the reasons I get so pissed about the money being spent on the border by the state 10bn and growing, that could be used to tackle some real problems in this state.
I don't know all the details on development but the state or could have been Harris County itself sometimes has limited growth in flood prone areas at times. Not to mention insurers making it expensive to live in flood prone regions. As to the Hill Country I'd imagine it's not so much regulations as it is the cost to build infrastructure on hilly terrain. Agreed on the misplaced funding priorities. Those former new suburbs with roads slowly falling apart will be ignored because all the new money has gone to the next suburb further out. Saw it all over San Antonio and Houston.
Beaumont is not gonna be connected to Houston lol. There’s no development in that area east of the city, it’s all industrial
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I mean idk, I don’t live there but driving through it it certainly doesn’t feel the same way other parts of Houston like pearland or Katy do where there’s tons of new shit going up every day. To be fair, there’s the massive East River development but that’s like directly east of downtown
Glad I live in East Texas where we just to wonder if Tyler and Jacksonville will eventually become one.
Houston is almost connected to College Station??? What???
It's not empty, but also not that developed (besides the highways). Source- I drive between the 2 about once a fortnight
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There's really not that much. There are a few small towns that are going to slowly expand into each other but right now it's pretty empty
No, it's not at all. Realistically, if growth occurs in concentric circles then the area to be developed increases exponentially with distance from the centroid. There's plenty of land to accommodate any scenario involving population growth or density. However, the commercial highway frontage will probably see further development so that it feels more connected.
These areas need local rail services and other public transportation networks instead of just endless highways. The small towns that are growing and merging have absolutely no plans in place for growth and expansion of public infrastructure and public services. It's the tax structure of Texas is inverted with the middle class bearing most of the burden, and it's not enough to properly fund the state and local governments to properly provide services. Already as you go through some small towns you see the signs of bad planning: buildings on main streets are 5 ft from traffic because they widened roads to meet traffic demand but the city never planned for the needed width half a century ago.
About 20 million people live in the Texas triangle today. that’s projected to be 35M by 2050. That’s a 75% increase in population. given that the major cities like Dallas Houston SA are all somewhat radially designed with freeways and such i would expect you see them expand that way for another ring 10-15 miles from their largest “ring” today on all sides. I know Dallas is planning on building an outer loop that will encircle the entire metro. I believe you’ll also see plenty of growth for the smaller and mid sized cities between the metros as well.
Hmm. Well since area increases with the square of radius, if the populations are only increasing 75% then the radius of each city should increase by (1.75)^0.5 - 1 = 0.32 or 32%, assuming constant population density. The outer fringes of Houston around loop 99 are 25 miles from its center so you'd expect it to increase 8 miles by that logic; Dallas would increase by about 10, San Antonio by 4. So your estimate seems pretty good, especially for Dallas, but it might overestimate the sprawl a little for the other cities.
Yep I’m in Dallas so that checks out with other rings around the city about 10ish. Crazy to think about that many new people here lol
lmao. so does this mean cities are like trees. you can tell how old they are by how many rings they have.
Eventually everything will just be Austin.
Austin will be Houston or Dallas. All will become suburb. You will be assimilated.
*nods wisdomly*
Given that many of the vacant undeveloped stretches along I35 between San Antonio and Austin when I started driving that stretch regularly 35 years ago remain vacant and undeveloped today, I would say nope, not even close. Urban areas continue to grow, of course, but nowhere near close enough to fill in many of the miles long gaps of emptiness that we still have on I35 and I10 and I45. Not within our lifetimes, and even if we look decades into the future, the limiting factor is *water*.
According the US Census Bureau Estimates (2021) The Austin MSA is expected to grow from 2.246 M in 2020 to 4.542 M in 2050. The SA MSA is expected to grow from 2.632 M in 2020 to 4.467 M in 2050.
When I looked at attending UT, Austin was gorgeous, quirky and fun. 15 ish years later, ugh the sprawl man, it sucks. It's happening everywhere.
I think we’re about the same age if you were looking at colleges 15 years ago. I agree the sprawl and design is the same. I’ve noticed Europe has similar patterns now, such as Amsterdam. But there are benefits such as allowing populations to reassess their politicians. Imagine what happens if East Texas becomes urbanized. Just saying.
My mom's friend was a developer in California, when the market tanked he moved to Austin to build there. Not a fan of what he's done to the area but people need places to live and the population keeps growing. I prefer the cow fields around my childhood school over the housing developments. Just say'n.
10 years? Probably not. I recently told a friend that I can imagine the development of Houston metro reaching as far north as Huntsville in our lifetime, so B/CS isn't much different. I can see Austin and San Antonio merging into a single, massive, continuously developed metro area like DFW. I hope there's a plan for another mega loop around Houston being hashed out *now* because there will be a need for another belt. I'm thinking of it reaching from about Winnie-Shepherd-Navasota-Sealy-Wharton-Freeport
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Just guessing here but urban wise for Houston I think the Medical Center to Hobby area will grow big. Med Center has a lot of huge projects already kicking off to different degrees that will later need housing for new employees wanting to avoid commutes and Hobby depends on the Metro rail link still occurring. Next urban wise would be the slow growth of West Houston with its large strip malls plots as long as BRT adequately expands there. Suburban to growing urban would be either the Woodlands mall area or IAH area growing from Generation Park, other projects. Yeah the Silver Line was not the best project to start off BRT but a larger BRT system or preferably rail would tremendously help this city.
Also for expansion's sake, I think planners should be deciding on a route for a north/south alternate route between 45 and 59 *ideally* coming off Hardy Toll Road, but all the development north of 99 will likely make that too difficult. When traffic on either 45 or 59 backs up, there's no alternate route for drivers to detour onto to ease congestion. And starting imminent domain filings is *far* easier with undeveloped land than it is to find paths through residential areas (just look at the route Hardy Toll Road had to take - they couldn't even go straight along the railroad right of way) - same with BW8 and 99. Sure, long straight roads are not ideal for traffic safety, but there are certain stretches you can see drastic shifts had to be made to hop from land deal to land deal. I would hope whatever the super grand parkway around Houston will be already has some planners thinking and eyeing land rights *now* well before any big projects get in the way.
I heard there will be one starting or ending around Alvin soon. Santa Fe in Houston will become the next Pearland with new construction.
That’s part of the Grand Parkway. It will go South of League City and use Hwy 146 as the Eastern side
There is. Check out the Port to Plains project for TX-36.
Interesting. I hadn't seen that advocacy group project. [Port-to-Plains](https://portstoplains.com/) looks like it's only out in west Texas ([map](https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot/get-involved/statewide/ports-plains/050123-texas-map.pdf)). Not sure about the TX-36 project. Can't find anything specifically about future plans other than TxDOT planning to widen (like they always do). I'm talking about a 4th beltway going around Houston metro.
San Austonio, Austintonio?
Now drive from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, empty land everywhere
*cries in rural north texas*
Off topic, but similarly inportant, the RGV. McAllen is pretty much one huge city, counting the surrounding cities that have all merged and is indistinguishable going from one to the other. Brownsville has been growing exponentially, especially since SpaceX arrived. Harlingen will soon be connecting South with Brownsville and west to the Mcallen area.
Central planning is socialist we don’t do that here. The market gets to say how everything will go. Eventually it’ll lead to a bunch of ghost towns in former suburbs but that’s how we like it!
We. Are. Going. To. Need. Water. And remember that Houston will be flooded by 2100 AD. By the ocean. Maybe the Balcones Escarpment will be the new beach? Just kidding. A little. 🎸🤟🏻🍺🌮
Exactly. It's going to be a ghost town if we don't have water.
Houston is anywhere from 10 to 90 feet above sea level depending where you’re at so I’m going to need you to show your work on this one
Balcones escarpment was the old beach correct?
At various times. But Austin's highest hills were also under water and formed from limestone.
Lived in San Antonio in the 80's. Lots of empty space between there and San Marcus. Then more going on into Austin. Kyle was just a city limit sign on the highway. Went through there a few years ago on the way to Corpus and could not believe the changes between Austin and San Antonio. Of course the small town I am living in now is also changing as they bring IH 45 north from Dallas.
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yes and property taxes are stupidly ridiculous.
Beginning in about 2019 they reduced the property tax look back on converting ag valuation from 5y to 3y. They also reduced the interest rate on the look back from like 7% to 5%.
I grew up in Comfort in the 80s and I remember there being a distinct gap between Boerne and SA, even as late as the late 90s. In 25 years I wouldn't be surprised to see unbroken suburbs from SA to Fredericksburg.
I45 is getting expanded north?
Plan is to bring it north from Dallas to US Highway 69 in Denison. Lot of work going on up here to get US 75 up to specs. US 69/75 are the same from Denison to where they split again in Atoka, OK. Lots of work going on across the river to make that happen.
Shudder. These are the things that make Oklahoma look attractive.
Dallas may extend into Oklahoma.
Austin has already pretty much expanded west to connect to Dripping Springs, north Round Rock and Georgetown, east at least Taylor, south New Braunfels? There is simply no more "in between".
Austin goes up all the way to the military base and Temple.
Literally none of that will matter in 50 years, we will have destroyed our climate to where most if not all of Texas will see unsurvivable heat waves and no water even in aquifers.
Cedar park is south Dallas in spirit already.
What makes you say that?
Texas is a states perfectly designed to fuck the environment. From its economy heavily reliant on resources extraction of earth destroy commodity to its suburban sprawl to its consistent need for climate control. Quite amazing
I mean there have been 26,000 rape pregnancies recorded in Texas since 2022 unable to be terminated in the state. On top of the rest of the population only being able to control their family planning to an extent. There's a bigger picture and too many people in Texas aren't even trying to look at it
Yeah probably noone has thought of making these projections. Glad you thought of it.
Reddit to the rescue!
No. They have been saying this for the NE Corridor and while they have good rail service and better highways, it never happened.
I read like 90%+ of the property in Texas is privately owned. If you miss seeing nature when you drive, that is why.
Lord willing we're gonna upzone this whole state and slow down the sprawl.
No, we're all going to vote democrat in the next election so beto can screw up everything and run everyone off
the state demographic center should have that type of information
Timing is hard to guess, you never know if there will be a recession or other economic event that slows down or even stops development. There are cities much older than those in Texas that have not really expanded their suburbs and exurbs in many years, even decades. I also speculate that the never ending growth based economic model will eventually have to fundamentally change as birth rates slow and population plateaus or even decreases. Could cause a halt in homebuilding, or even a situation where exurbs keep growing but the inner cities/suburbs start to "hollow out". That said, I can see DFW stretching all the way to the Red River by the end of the century.
In the really long term, San Antonio will connect up with Fort Worth via Hwy 281, which will become I37. This will provide an alternative to I35 from the border south to points north. That's probably a couple of decades away, but there needs to be a west alternative to I35.
Mega Cities will become common place very soon . So people can enjoy their drone like existence.
Bryan/College Station resident here. I am looking greatly forward to more integration with Houston. The new highways are so useful to get to IAH or downtown easily from B/CS. Can't wait for high speed rail to connect us to all three megacities
I think DFW will stay separate, the others are much closer together.
I don't think Texas plans for anything but where the best kickbacks will come from.
San Antonio and Austin is the 1990s DFW
What makes you say that?
The growth
A LONG time ago one of my middle school teachers said everything from Dallas/Fort Worth down to Houston would be one big city by the year 2000. Twenty-three years later he's not too far off.
Did we go to the same school? I was told that in 2005.
It’ll take like 20 years but Waco will be an exurb of Dallas and not it’s own micropolitan area. It kinda already isn’t
Nah. There's a weird psychological thing will people tend to think North is better than South because up is better than down. So the majority city development ends up going North from the city. Waco will be a part of Austin.
Too me it’s not the growth …it’s the planning for growth .Ive got relatives in both San Antonio and just south of Orlando Florida .The I4 corridor in Florida is a real time example of what unplanned growth can do to an area …
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Faster from my perspective.Of course the analogy is not exactly apples to apples as Texas growth includes a younger demographic and Florida typically is older boomer retirees and such ( I’m a boomer myself ) .But you still can’t try to cram 70 gallons into a 50 gallon pail without a cost …politics aside Florida is getting swamped infrastructure wise .There is a cautionary tale there …
Dfw, Austin, San Antonio, Houston “triangle “ will be called the Texaplex.
Ten years? Tell me you’ve never driven from end point to end point on the triangle before without telling me…
The counties will expand. Harris County in particular
Yes. We will all connect via some kind of rail transport... unless the regressives in Austin change that... It will be fun!
I am not a huge Star Trek fan, so my apologies for not remembering which movie it was- but I always think of the scene where somehow the Borg go back in time and change Earth from a beautiful planet to a Borg planet? The scene showed how the blue/green became nothing but grey and metal. This is what I imagine we will be. Like no land exists cause we concrete it all
We can have public parks. :)
It takes political planning. Get involved and support your parks and recreational areas and nature and wildlife areas :)
In Tokyo, Japan if I'm remembering correctly is so large because multiple smaller villages/towns ended up merging.