“People coming together to say ‘enough is enough’ is something different.”The current expansion plans are dividing mayoral candidates on the Nov. 5 campaign trail.Mayor Sylvester Turner, up for a second term, has called the expansion the “biggest transportation project that most of us in Houston will see in our lifetime." It caught the attention of everybody. So far, TxDOT is looking at adding signs or gateway features to denote the neighborhood’s presence and role in Texas history.Texas spends far more on highway construction than it does on public transit or affordable housing programs. It is approximately 24 miles in length and will provide improved mobility along the entire route. Last: The Clayton Homes are one of two public housing complexes that might also be affected by the proposed expansion. Mass displacement, worsening air quality, wider segregation and more flooding are some of the outcomes experts are warning will result from the 25-mile […] For Segments 1 and 2 (from Downtown to Greenspoint), the Mayor is asking TxDOT to consider the following elements:
To ensure this project meets our goals, Mayor Turner asked City of Houston Planning and Development Department to lead a Facilitation Group to elevate the community’s concerns and recommend ways to improve the project.
The City believes that this alternative increases capacity for people and freight and increases safety on both the
Several years ago, the Katy Freeway in Houston was a major traffic bottleneck. HOUSTON — Joseph Lewis is 62, but has no trouble remembering the address where he spent the first years of his life: 1221 East 30th St. TxDOT let the project in May 2018 and later awarded construction, engineering and inspection services to RS&H and awarded the construction contract to Webber.
In its communications to TxDOT, the City of Houston has identified its goals for the project:
She would go from page to page, finding references to other communities, but not much about hers. But some Houstonians are ready to resist a new $7 billion expansion project. A new pot of money would help undo the sometimes-racist legacy of urban highway construction. There was a lot of energy,” Blair said.For more than four hours, residents either asked for the project to halt or slow down so neighborhood impacts could be addressed.The $100 million earmark was approved.
There, four shotgun houses sit amid the infinite noise of traffic.“I bought them in May 1995. But I fixed them. Decades of studies of the effect of induced demand show that highway expansions do not relieve congestion or stimulate meaningful economic development — facts of which Houston advocates have been reminding officials since The I-45 project has always been a massive boondoggle that perpetuates structural racism — and our national conversation over the last week (and the much longer-standing conversation among BIPOC activists over the past decades) only underscores how deeply misguided it has
Such hearings typically happen during work hours and don’t garner much attention.“But the room was full, and not of the usual engineers and lobbyists who come to watch and see where the money is going so they can plan what's next,” said Oni Blair, executive director of LINK Houston, a non-profit focused on transit and mobility issues.Many of the residents who showed up wore red stickers asking to delay the vote.“A lot of them were people of color. It’s estimated that it will take seven years to complete.“Many people have to say yes for a project to happen. "This is good for me, because I’m old and I can’t keep coming here taking care of the houses," he said.
On April 24, the City gave an update on the Facilitation Group process to the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Transportation Policy Council. Highway I-45 runs along the eastern border of the Independence Heights neighborhood in Houston on Sept. 16. Once again, that could impact communities of color, including historic black neighborhoods like Independence Heights and the Fifth Ward, as plans call for demolishing homes and businesses to accommodate more roadway space.The North Houston Highway Improvement Project is estimated to cost $7 billion and would add ramps, frontage roads and lanes for carpooling or transit, among other modifications. TxDOT begins accepting bids today for $132 million highway expansion between Humble, Atascocita Savannah Mehrtens July 8, 2020 Updated: July … Finally, a raised median will be constructed at the center of the road.Perez said the project will improve safety in addition to reducing congestion in the long term. Phase 1 Expansion (Red Bluff Rd to FM 518) State Highway 146 is a state owned highway and is maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation. “This is in part because sometimes they don't have a sophisticated idea of what their property is worth, but it's also because, even if they do, they don't have the financial resources to hire attorneys to fight.”“We want to keep those that are displaced by the project in the Independent Heights neighborhood,” said Carl Swonke, environmental affairs director for TxDOT. The construction of America’s downtown highways destroyed thousands of black neighborhoods during the height of the urban renewal era in the 1940s and ’50s — and a new impact study of a controversial highway project in Houston serves as a reminder that the racist policy never ended.The latest estimates of the human cost of the Interstate 45 project reveal that the highway expansion would require the destruction of “158 houses, 433 apartments or condos, 486 public housing units, 340 businesses, five churches and two schools,” BIPOC activists have long cited displacement and the destruction of black communities in their fight against the $7-billion megaproject, which would functionally rebuild most of the downtown freeway system in the process of expanding and re-routing the interstate. Highway Improvement Project. In response to comments received and further engineering evaluation, the Proposed Recommended Alternatives have been updated. At a time when newsroom resources and revenue across the country are declining, The Texas Tribune remains committed to sustaining our Historic black neighborhoods like Independence Heights and the Fifth Ward are in the crosshairs of Houston highway plans, decades after expressways separated communities from the rest of the city. Traffic light problems, potholes, and other concerns should be reported directly to TxDOT by calling (713) 802-5000.