Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Houston

“Elite Eight” Parking Madness: Louisville vs. Houston

3:01 PM EDT on April 2, 2013

NCAA basketball has nothing on the drama, the intrigue, the heartbreak of a competitive parking crater tournament. We're now into the "Elite Eight" round of Parking Madness, and today's winner will join Dallas in the Final Four. It's going to be a fierce competition between Louisville and Houston.

Louisville's downtown, you'll recall, looks like this:

This entry was submitted by Patrick Smith (@cityresearch on Twitter). Note that the grey boxes are buildings that haven't been uploaded yet to Google Earth. Local urbanists conservatively estimate that at least one-third of downtown Louisville's land area is occupied by parking.

Now southward to this anonymously-submitted Houston parking crater:

From what we can tell, spaces like this are the norm in Houston. Another submission from Houston was equally bad, but this one had a poetic twist: These particular parking lots surrounds an Exxon Mobil office building a building that houses Exxon Mobil employees. If that isn't poetic enough, there's also light rail running on Main Street, right down the middle of this parking crater.

So there you have it. Choose well. You have until 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday to decide the winner.

[poll id="39"]

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

‘Duped’: Blowing the Whistle on an Illegal Temporary License Plate Business

Temporary license plates exist so that people who buy cars can drive them before receiving metal plates. But drivers found another use for them during the pandemic: buy a temp tag on the black market and you can keep your car anonymous and off the books.

June 9, 2023

Another Cyclist Attacked in Oakland

A passing car’s passenger assaulted cyclist David Colburn on Wednesday while he was riding his bike on San Pablo in Oakland. The passenger “…leaned out a window to intentionally smack me in the head.”

June 8, 2023

How Auto-Centric Infrastructure Is Making Us Sick

Instead of endless promises to fix America's "crumbling roads and bridges," filmmaker Andy Boenau argues we need to talk about our crumbling minds and bodies — and how our autocentric infrastructure approach contributes to them.

June 8, 2023
See all posts