I-45 Rebuild (North Houston Highway Improvement Project)

[hindesky]

This what I'm hoping we get with the topping of the midtown area and the GRB area with IH69/59.

[Some one]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the cap parks being built and implemented. I think they should also look into capping 59 between Elgin and McGowen and  I-10/(and future I-45) between McKnee and the rail line, but I'll take what we can get. 

 

Also, might be an unpopular opinion, but am I the only one who doesn't see the point of the I-10 express lane continuing past downtown, especially when all of the other HOV/express lanes end downtown? I feel like they'd have less ROW to take if they had I-45 run where the express lanes should be, and just have the I-10 express lanes intertwine with 45's express lanes.

Edited January 12 by Some one

[hindesky]

Every time I've gone by the old Clayton Homes lately, I see several vehicles here from TXDOT and others. I assume they are doing core drilling.

IH69 feeder northbound at Runnels St.

 

 

[Triton]

On 1/9/2024 at 10:43 AM, hindesky said:

This what I'm hoping we get with the topping of the midtown area and the GRB area with IH69/59.

 

 

 

Wow I had to do a double take. This looks super similar to our N Main area.

[Some one]

19 hours ago, Triton said:

Wow I had to do a double take. This looks super similar to our N Main area.

Funnily enough, there are also plans to cap 45 under N Main too. I think once it's done, it's gonna look similar to this.

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

They have the first a permit from the state.

 

Engineers - http://www.idcus.com

Edited February 14 by hindesky

[hindesky]

Saw this at Cleburne St. bounded by La branch St and Eagle St. Looks like a TXDOT construction offices. It's been fenced off for a long time to move out the homeless in preparation of the Super Bowl Houston had several years ago. It has two gates, one on Cleburne St and the other on La Branch.

[hindesky]

Multiple plumbing demo permits along the right of way on the future sunken portion IH69/59.

[hindesky]

I found 2 of the buildings that will be demolished for the sunken portion of IH69. Plumbing demo was done.

The first building is the old Alexander the Great Chapter 29 Order of AHEPA.

https://www.ahepa29.org

 

The second building was the old Nurses Night and Day.

https://carelistings.com/home-health-agencies/houston-tx/nurses-night-and-day-inc/5ace894493efd2372f995d58

 

 

 

 

Edited March 28 by hindesky

[Triton]

Kind of an interesting aside....

Was in Austin this past weekend for the eclipse and it donned on me that the massive I-35 rebuild will start in Austin along the same timeline that the Houston I-45 rebuild will start. It's sort of wild to think two major cities not that far apart will have complete makeovers at the same time. 

Also driving through Austin, it is wild to see just have fast that city is transforming. So many new skyscrapers under construction.

[004n063]

14 hours ago, Triton said:

Kind of an interesting aside....

Was in Austin this past weekend for the eclipse and it donned on me that the massive I-35 rebuild will start in Austin along the same timeline that the Houston I-45 rebuild will start. It's sort of wild to think two major cities not that far apart will have complete makeovers at the same time. 

Also driving through Austin, it is wild to see just have fast that city is transforming. So many new skyscrapers under construction.

Austin has the highest multifamily construction pace in the country by quite a wide margin.

Absolutely insane that they're widening the moat between downtown and the east side, but that's TXDoT for you.

[samagon]

and there was even more hate towards the i35 experiment than our experiment.

[Amlaham]

I read that the cap parks in Austin will be paid by the city of Austin but mostly UT. If all goes accordingly, their cap park will be about 17 acres. I know we're in a similar boat, but I feel like we have a lot of big donors in this city (think memorial park). So I really hope some of them will step in and help foot the bill to make our little cap parks outstanding.

In terms of the potential cap parks themselves, this would be a huge opportunity to create something completely unique to Houston on potential thee most prime lot in all of Houston. 

Very wishful thinking, but imagine if the convention center could eventually make a connection from discovery green to the potential cap park. 

Extremely wishful thinking, the park could look like this. In a city that gets this hot, we definitely need more interactive water features (the one in discovery green is way way too small for how packed it gets). 

[Big E]

17 hours ago, 004n063 said:

Absolutely insane that they're widening the moat between downtown and the east side

They pretty much have to. I-35 is an undrivable mess most of the day, and hasn't had any work done in well over 30 years, when they double decked the freeway in 1975, other than removing some of the exits for the lower deck because traffic made it too dangerous to keep them. It's a freeway built to 60s standards handling 2020s traffic.

[Houston19514]

9 hours ago, Big E said:

They pretty much have to. I-35 is an undrivable mess most of the day, and hasn't had any work done in well over 30 years, when they double decked the freeway in 1975, other than removing some of the exits for the lower deck because traffic made it too dangerous to keep them. It's a freeway built to 60s standards handling 2020s traffic.

Kinda like I-45 in central Houston...

[004n063]

Just so we're clear: we're talking about two already-ultra-massive highways that cut right through city centers. And we'll probably have the same conversation 30 years after they're done with these projects.

[Valhalla]

On 4/12/2024 at 7:29 AM, 004n063 said:

 

Absolutely insane that they're widening the moat between downtown and the east side, but that's TXDoT for you.

They're going to cap the park through most of downtown, so in effect they're not widening the highway.. they're getting rid of it

[samagon]

22 hours ago, Valhalla said:

They're going to cap the park through most of downtown, so in effect they're not widening the highway.. they're getting rid of it

it'd be good to split out the i35 discussion from the i45 discussion. someone might mistake a statement like this about the i35 cap park with the Houston project, which the cap park isn't guaranteed, and it won't be capped through most of downtown.

[hbg.50]

For the anti-car activists 😂 from The DMN...

New book argues for removal of I-345 in Dallas

In ‘City Limits,’ author Megan Kimble examines the costs of urban highways — and what to do about them.

That highways don’t belong in cities may be news in Texas, but it is hardly a new idea. Back in 1963, in his book The Highway and the City, the critic and historian Lewis Mumford wrote that “arteries must not be thrust into the delicate tissue of our cities; the blood they circulate must rather enter through an elaborate network of minor blood vessels and capillaries.” Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, the president who signed the 1956 legislation that funded the postwar American highway boom, didn’t think those roads belonged in cities.

And yet, our cities are crossed and encircled by highways that divide neighborhoods, privilege driving over other means of transit and have been linked to other ill effects, from asthma to climate change. Downtown Dallas, for instance, is choked by a noose of urban highways. The impacts of those roads — and what we can do about them — is the subject of a new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, by Austin-based journalist Megan Kimble.

Over email, Kimble talked about the policies that led to this situation, the targeting of minority communities and the plans to tear down Interstate 345. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

You spend a great deal of time writing about those displaced by highway building and the impact that construction had on minority communities. In what ways has race shaped the building of urban highways?

In the 1950s and 1960s, city planners and highway engineers intentionally routed urban highways through Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. That’s very clear in the historical record, the idea that highways could help clear so-called blighted areas. I found a study that showed that redlined neighborhoods — communities that had been denied access to credit and government-backed mortgages simply because Black and Hispanic people lived there — were more than three times as likely as the best-rated neighborhoods to have an interstate highway routed through them.

Highways not only displaced and demolished communities of color, they also helped segregate cities. In Austin, for example, I-35 was built along East Avenue. Two decades earlier, the city’s first comprehensive plan had prohibited Black people from living west of East Avenue. The highway only cemented this segregation, creating a wall between a Black neighborhood and the heart of the city.

Highways not only displaced and demolished communities of color, they also helped segregate cities. In Austin, for example, I-35 was built along East Avenue. Two decades earlier, the city’s first comprehensive plan had prohibited Black people from living west of East Avenue. The highway only cemented this segregation, creating a wall between a Black neighborhood and the heart of the city.

This brings us back to I-345, the dilapidated elevated highway that divides downtown Dallas from historically Black Deep Ellum. Back in 2013, when I began writing about the plan to tear it down, I was told it was a fool’s errand. Today, a teardown is a reality, though the city is planning something of a half measure — trenching it instead of removing it. What would be the best outcome, and what do you say to those who believe removing it will lead to traffic Armageddon?

I think TxDOT’s “hybrid option” for I-345 — the trench you mentioned — is a clever bit of branding, implying that the state has somehow found a compromise between a highway and a highway removal. But a trenched highway is still fundamentally a highway, and it offers none of the benefits of full removal, namely freeing up or otherwise enhancing dozens of acres of land to build on and restore to Dallas’ property tax rolls. When TxDOT presented the full removal option to Dallas, it presented a vision of carmageddon — 19,000 hours of travel delay! But those traffic models don’t account for how people’s travel behavior changes according to ease of access. Anytime I get in the car, I look at Google maps to find the quickest route to where I’m going. If that’s not on a highway, I won’t take a highway. People are rational consumers of goods, and roads are a good like any other.

In every city that has removed an urban highway or otherwise reduced car capacity, traffic volumes go down, even on parallel routes. People simply drive less. The corollary to induced demand — which says that as you add car capacity, cars fill up that capacity — is reduced demand. If Dallas wants to build a less car-centric city (and I think it’s an open question as to whether it does), then removing I-345 is the best place to begin.

Edited Friday at 03:45 PM by hbg.50

[Amlaham]

Atlanta gets federal funding for deck over their downtown highway. Just more reassurance that we will for sure land something! https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/economic-development/downtown-stitch-gets-massive-federal-funding-for-first-phaase-123297

[Big E]

On 4/26/2024 at 8:16 AM, samagon said:

it'd be good to split out the i35 discussion from the i45 discussion. someone might mistake a statement like this about the i35 cap park with the Houston project, which the cap park isn't guaranteed, and it won't be capped through most of downtown.

This is not completely correct. The cap for the NHHIP is guaranteed and is part of the project. What's going to be built on it, whether its a park or some other development, hasn't been finalized yet. But there will almost certainly be something built on it. And the cap will in fact cover most of I-45 and I-69 through downtown, with only the approach to the bridge over the bayou and the interchange where the highways split not being capped.