A 10-lane Interstate 10 to Waller County and a new $100 million express bus line along Westheimer are among $9.8 billion in upcoming highway and transit projects around the Houston area, part of road map of projects regional planners will detail later this week.
As part of the months-long process for the area’s transportation improvement plan, the Houston-Galveston Area Council will hold two meetings Thursday to solicit public comment on the upcoming projects, said Adam Beckom, who oversees the plan for H-GAC.
To satisfy federal funding requirements, metro regions must have an approved transportation improvement program, or TIP, that lays out the next four years of projects. The plan is updated annually, with the proposed plan up for comment covering every major road project from 2021 through 2014, across the eight-county Houston region.
“By themselves, they may not seem like much,” Beckom said of the projects, “but overall, they have the potential to impact hundreds of thousands of people.”
Some of the most notable additions from previous years would widen freeways farther from Houston’s core. Among them:
three projects totaling $265 million to create an eight-lane freeway along an alternate route of Texas 35, south from Interstate 45 to Bellfort, set to start construction in 2022.
two additional managed lanes and two general-use lanes in each direction along I-10 from Mason Road to Waller County, costing $571 million across three projects scheduled for late 2022.
The plan also includes $3.6 billion across six projects for the first phases of the total rebuild of Interstate 45 and the downtown freeway system. The first projects of that rebuild, which remains controversial, tentatively are set for late 2021. Another $3.1 billion of the upcoming work is not included in the TIP, but could be added if future funding is found.
As is typical for Houston-area transportation plans, highway spending dwarfs planned investment in transit. Of the $9.76 billion in spending planned, $1.15 billion, or 11.8 percent, is specifically earmarked for transit. Some of the highway money, however, is used for transit purposes, such as vanpool programs and hike and bike trails, though that represents a small fraction of the total.
The largest transit-focused items are plans by Metropolitan Transit Authority to spend $100 million on enhanced bus service along Westheimer from Hayes Road to Edloe Street, and express buses from Edloe along Interstate 69.
The TIP is not the final word on the projects, which must undergo their own environmental reviews and require local, state and federal funds to be available when they are ready to begin construction. Still, inclusion in the list often is viewed local approval for a project, and a sign it is a priority for regional elected officials.
After the meetings on Thursday, people have until March 29 to submit comments by mail, online or via email. H-GAC’s Transportation Policy Council is scheduled to approve the final plan in May, which also requires approval from the state’s transportation commission and federal transportation officials.
dug.begley@chron.com
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1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Wednesday
Houston-Galveston Area Council
3555 Timmons Lane
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