Business is bustling in neighborhoods near and along Westheimer toward Post Oak Boulevard. A lot of people work and shop in the Uptown/Galleria area, River Oaks, and surrounding communities. That also means a lot of traffic. A variety of ideas have been floated over the years to address such traffic snarls, including the idea of a light rail line along nearby Richmond Avenue toward Post Oak, but to date, funding and political will for such a project has not coalesced.
Shafik Rifaat, a tenured Professor of Architecture at the University of Houston has another idea – he’d like to see a monorail built along Westheimer to Post Oak. Rifaat, who lectures on urban development and sustainable communities, explains why a monorail might be the way to go, on this edition of Houston Matters.
Also this hour: A group that reports on health care in the state is calling for the creation of a plan that would cover an estimated one million low-income, uninsured Texans. That's one of several recommendations the Code Red Task Force published in a report earlier this month. Houston Matters’ Maggie Martin finds out more from task force chair Steve Murdock, former state demographer, and Director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University.
Plus: A lot can happen in a week – some good, some bad, some ugly. When faced with intriguing developments in the week’s news, we turn to our panel of “non-experts” to parse The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of it all. Joining us today: Off the Kuff political blogger Charles Kuffner, BusinessMakers Show and Energy Makers Show founder and host Russ Capper, and Houston Chronicle columnist and Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me panelist Kyrie O’Connor.
And: A conversation about social media and mental health with John O'Neill, who coordinates Addictions Services at the Houston-based Menninger Clinic.
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(Image Courtesy: Houston Chronicle)
