the.kgb

Probably talking about this one:

The distance between the I-10/I-45 split and the I-45/US 59/SH 288 interchange is 2.3 miles along I-45 or 3.8 miles along I-10 and US 59. Adding to the land requirements for such a large and complex freeway such as you propose, there aren't currently very many ramps along the east side of downtown, so adding those from such a complex freeway would probably require more than just a single block of width in many places. And in fact, because there are so few east-west streets in east downtown that aren't truncated by Toyota Center, the GRB convention center, or Minute Maid Park, the ramps would pretty much have to be for Leeland/Bell, Capitol/Rusk, and Congress/Franlkin (each of these being one-way pairs). Polk and Texas would both be messy connections due to bidirectionality on one and the full width of light rail crossing the other. There are a whole slew of buildings that would bite the dust for ramps, including all three buildings from Lofts at the Ballpark.

I'd imagine that land costs would probably weight out pretty close to the same figure, going east or west. Where the value of buildings are concerned, Lofts at the Ballpark is probably far more valuable than 2016 Main, considering how low the condo prices are (on account of the extremely high maintenance fees because the building is in such poor shape). The only thing that's at all valuable along the Pierce Elevated is the St. Joseph Professional Building.

However, if you're talking about a single super-wide/double deck/sunken freeway that's large enough to handle all of today's capacity as well as to remain functional for a few decades, then we're talking about a really big and complicated road. I'd think that the hard costs would eclipse the land acquisition costs...and you have to build this expensive road 65% further along the eastern route than you would if you came up along the west side of downtown. Then consider that of what's left of I-45, you'd probably want to keep a portion of it in place to serve a purpose similar to Spur 527, as a rapid accessway to the western side of downtown but from the north. So that also has to be reconstructed and costs additional money, and you don't get to reclaim that land.

And after all is said and done, the eastern path is a longer commute in terms of distance for most people, so that's just one more downside.

I didn't think about the access isssues. Pretty much anything that is done is going to be hugely expensive anyway, downtown freeways are rarely a 'cheap fix'. It'll be interesting to see what the txdot studies come up with.

What about removing the Pierce and routing all traffic along the east side of downtown on a widened 59?

From a land aquisition standpoint, all you have to do is buy all the blocks between Chartres and St. Emanuel and have a super wide/double deck/sunken freeway to handle the throughput. Much cheaper than trying to buy high-rises and you could probably make a few bucks selling the half blocks along where the Pierce is now.

Just my $0.02