Houstonist has an active and amazing Flickr photo group. We receive many, many photos of Houston and the surrounding areas every day and unless you are an active visitor to our photo pool many of these photos go unnoticed. So in a weekly effort to bring you more amazing photos from Houstonist readers and photographers, we are going to feature a block of photos submitted to our Flickr photo group. The images will be dug......

According to Houston METRO's new fare system, today marks the end of free transfers for cash paying customers. METRO introduced the fare structure and the Q Card to the community on January 2nd. METRO touts the benefits of the Q Card system, as creating a simpler fare system by moving from 65 methods of payment to two - the Q and cold, hard cash. METRO is restructuring its fare system to simplify what has been......

Happy bissextile day, Houston. If you're reading this from jail — we're actually not even sure if you can use the Internet in jail — well, don't feel alone: According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, 1 of every 100 American adults are behind bars today. Good lord. The good news: Texas is one of the states that has tried to slow the growth of its inmate population through......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • HISD has canceled all area Saturday school events except for a basketball playoff game at 1pm between Westbury and Lamar High School. • METRO has announced that a train operator is at fault in the most recent accident involving Metro Rail and a cyclist. The accident occurred last week and left the cyclist hospitalized. • Part of US-59 near West Bellfort was......

Good morning, Houston. Remember the plans for the Dynamo stadium on the east side of downtown? And remember Metro's plans for two new light rail lines heading out from the east side of downtown? Turns out there's a question about whether the stadium will be in the way of the rail lines — and it's not clear yet whether the proposed stadium will have an effect on the rail alignments. "We are evaluating a......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • Metro complaints are up 28%. Rude bus operators, short schedules and unsafe driving tops the list of filed grievances. • Friends of 12 year old Traveon LeBlanc, who's mangled body was found on the Gulf Freeway, told a local news station that the boy and some friends would run across the freeway for fun. • A homeless man confessed to Conroe police......

Good morning, Houston. 'Tis the season for strange missing persons reports: In Tyler, the latest individual to go missing is a 42-foot-tall snowman. The inflatable snowman was last seen at a Tyler tree farm Friday night; the tree lot's owner, Royce Wisenbaker, told the AP that he believes it was hoisted over a fence and carted away. The snowman is worth about $10,000, and a $1,000 reward has been posted for information leading to......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A World War II era ship that Texas A&M-Galveston used as a classroom at sea has been sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to create an artificial reef. • HPD is cracking down on ID Theft. Here's a story that focuses on one recent bust. • Hey, what do you know...people like public transportation. • The U of H Cougars beat Marshall,......

Houstonist has an active and amazing Flickr photo group. We receive many, many photos of Houston and the surrounding areas every day and unless you are an active visitor to our photo pool many of these photos go unnoticed. So in a weekly effort to bring you more amazing photos from Houstonist readers and photographers, we are going to feature a block of photos submitted to our Flickr photo group. The images will be dug......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Keyboard Reviews Dwight Silverman over at The Chronicle has reviewed a couple of keyboards. One from Microsoft and another from Logitech. Check out his article for the lowdown on this new hardware. Raawwr! Leopard Unleashed The latest OS from Mac, Leopard 10.5 is on the loose. JKOnTheRun, Dwight Silverman and Dr. Mac have all recently run articles on this revolutionary new operating system from Apple. Metro......

Good morning, Houston. How better to end the week than with a little soul searching — and when better to do it than on Evaluate Your Life Day? Yeah, we know, it used to take hours (days, even) to find your true self, but the good news is that you can get things taken care of much more quickly these days: using online quizzes, you can figure out whether you're CEO material, which celebrity's......

In a fight trying to reinstate a fraction of what the city had miles of before 1940, the Metro Board has voted on the future placement of the controversial University Line - west: Richmond-Cummins-Westpark-Hillcroft transit center, and heading east on Richmond/Wheeler and terminating at the Eastwood transit center. The other main west contenders were Richmond-Greenway-Westpark, Richmond-Kirby-Westpark, or to can it altogether. There is still more work and fighting to do, though - Metro must still......

Good morning, Houston. There's a new weapon in the battle to make Houston the most beautiful city in America: Beginning next week, commercial property owners will have to hide their Dumpsters behind a building, wall, fence, berm or shrub. Officials said they hope the rule — which City Council approved six months ago — will help increase property values and make properties safer (and, of course, prettier). Anyone who violates the ordinance can be......

Good morning, Houston. We enjoy a good, quick breakfast as much as anyone, but seriously, there are limits — just ask the four people who were hurt Monday when a driver who was eating oatmeal at the wheel crashed into a Metro bus near downtown. Witnesses told KPRC that the driver ran a red light at Pierce and St. Charles and hit the front of the bus, which caused the driver's vehicle to spin......

It's been called many things. The Danger Train. The Death Train. A Streetcar Named Disaster. But it is our only rail line and it does get us from downtown to beyond Reliant Stadium. So, in this video, we give you it's greatest hits. Just smashing! Thanks to Mike McGuff and brentabousko for turning us on to this video.......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor deji_01. Believe it or not, these wonderful colors come from one of Metro's trains. It's a shame we don't have more rail lines with varying colors. Maybe one day. If you have a passion for Houston and photography, consider joining over 400 of Houston's best photographers in the Houstonist Flickr Photo Group. If Houstonist uses your photo for Photo Of The......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever thought that Halloween needed a little more, uh, spice, you might want to check out HauntXXX, "Houston's most titillating haunted house." The titillating part apparently has to do with nearly naked women wearing neon body paint — and as for the haunted part, well, we're not so sure (maybe these are some super-scary sexpots we're talking about). The haunted house isn't sitting well with some of its neighbors,......

Good morning, Houston. In the mood for a really, really bad promotional video? It's your lucky day: May we introduce you to "The Metro Report", a quasi-Colbert Report-style production in which a host, Elliot Roberts, "interviews people on the street" about why they love riding public transportation. Which makes us wonder: Where'd Metro find all these people? Oh, right, they're actually actors — and, according to KTRK's Wayne Dolcefino, this bit of self-promotion cost......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

So the Draft Environmental Impact Study for Metro's proposed University light rail line has been released — a lot of information that a lot of people will be poring over. Fortunately, Christof at Intermodality has a summary of the DEIS for the line's western segment already, and here's what he found: There are three alignment options for the Main-to-Hillcroft segment of the University Line: Richmond to Cummins to Westpark, Richmond to Greenway to Westpark, and......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor deji_01. We love the industrial look of this well composed black and white image at one of Houston's many Metro transit centers. If you have a passion for Houston and photography, consider joining over 335 of Houston's best photographers in the Houstonist Flickr Photo Group. If Houstonist uses your photo for Photo Of The Day, submit it here. For more great......

We're starting to reconsider our plan to apply for a job as a Metro bus driver: On Tuesday, two men attacked a bus driver after arguing with her over the fare, marking the second assault on a Metro driver this week. According to the Chronicle, the men — who appeared inebriated — got into a dispute over fares with the driver and made a threat against her, then walked back into the bus. About 10......

Here's a tip: If you ever fall into a life of crime, make sure you don't fall into a bayou when the cops catch up with you. It's a lesson one man probably should have learned before he jumped into White Oak Bayou downtown during a chase Wednesday. According to Harris County sheriff's deputies, the man was posing as a parking attendant in a parking lot on Travis Street near Franklin, collecting $5 from......

You may remember that we talked last fall about the Texas Medical Center testing its buildings for the effects of stray current from the MetroRail line — electricity leaks that Metro says are inconsequential, but that observers worry could be weakening the foundations of nearby buildings, bridges, roads and other structures. Well, the preliminary results of those tests are back, and they show worrisome levels of current at three sites. Does that mean buildings are......

Discovery Green, the unfortunately named park under construction in downtown Houston, has gained its first high-profile piece of artwork: Jean Dubuffet's Monument au Fantôme, which has stood in front of 1100 Louisiana for 25 years. Dan Duncan, the pipeline tycoon who owns the skyscraper, has donated the sculpture to the park, where it will sit along Avenida de las Americas across from the George R. Brown Convention Center. "It's a fantastic piece of art," park......

Well, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone who's been in Houston for a while: The Chronicle reports that a draft agreement for the operation of the toll lanes on the new, super-wide Katy Freeway doesn't include a provision for rail transit. Instead, we'll have four toll lanes running down the middle of the freeway, which will take the place of Metro's HOV lanes — but will be accessible for free to......

Google recently announced two exciting new features. One is street view, a new feature of Google Maps, which allows you to see street-side views of locations in many major cities. Right now, the feature is available only in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver, and there are plenty of interesting things to be seen, aside from the feature being helpful if you're traveling to a new location. Google has also started incorporating......

More on Garrett William Mallot, the man who shot a fellow passenger to death aboard a Metro bus back in March: A grand jury decided Friday not to indict Mallot for the shooting because jurors determined it was done in self defense. Details were in short supply when the shooting took place — all that was reported was that Mallot was walking along the center aisle when he brushed up against the victim, Otis James......

Good morning, Houston. If you haven't gotten a speeding ticket in the city lately, consider yourself lucky — a lot of your fellow Houston drivers have. According to a report from the National Motorists Association, Houston is the third worst speed trap in the nation (up from fifth place last year). The ranking was based on the number of Houston-related posts to the NMA's Speed Trap Exchange — which, by the way, is definitely......