U.S. 290 carpool lanes weighed
TxDOT still plans a center HOV path but is working with Metro to ease way for buses
A compromise allowing for bidirectional bus and carpool use of U.S. 290 appears likely, transit and transportation officials said last week, solving what had been a contentious change in plans for U.S. 290.
The Texas Department of Transportation still plans to build a single reversible HOV lane in the center of the widened freeway from Loop 610 to Mason Road. The change would come by dedicating the inner-most lane during off-peak times to carpools and to Metropolitan Transit Authority buses during peak travel periods.
In other words, when the HOV lane is inbound in the morning, the fast lane of westbound U.S. 290 would be restricted to buses and carpools when outbound use is lighter. During the evening, the HOV lane would move outbound while the bus and carpool lane would shift to the eastbound lanes.
“I think the opportunity to speed our buses back is important to us,” Metro CEO Tom Lambert said.
TxDOT is also committed to finding a way to “try and solve congestion issues for transit operations along U.S. 290,” project spokeswoman Karen Othon said.
She said TxDOT and Metro will continue discussions of the idea, which would need final clearance from local engineers and designers.
Despite the apparent benefits, Lambert was cautious to call it a long-term solution or that it will deliver real results from the outset.
“I am not going to mislead the (Metro) board, I think there
are some challenges with this,” Lambert said. “It is going to be very difficult to enforce.”
Because the lanes would not be separated from general-use lanes like most HOV lanes in Texas, drivers can just hop into them. Enforcement, Lambert said, will be challenging.
Typically in other states where there are few barriers to entry into HOV lanes, large fines deter solo drivers, but Lambert and others noted that still takes vigilant enforcement.
Ultimately, the current plans for U.S. 290 are not a dramatic change from similar freeway expansions.
“I think we still believe in the longer term that we need bidirectional HOV facilities,” Lambert said.
But, he said, off-peak HOVlanes could also demonstrate more is needed along the U.S. 290 corridor, resurrecting the more long-term plans of using the Hempstead corridor for a tollway and commuter rail system that officials suggested previously.
Simply getting that conversation going might be an important step, Metro board members said, adding they were eager to play a role.
“I think it is about people-moving rather than car-moving,” Metro board member Sanjay Ramabhadran said.
That change, which Mayor Sylvester Turner has called a “paradigm shift,” will require acceptance from commuters, Metro board member Jim Robinson said.
“The problem is getting Houstonians to convert to mass transit,” he said during a Thursday meeting where the U.S. 290 lanes were discussed.
Traffic congestion, however, might be helping to change minds. Former Katy Mayor Don Elder said $2 billion and numerous lanes added to Interstate 10 have left many more people in heavy traffic but haven’t solved congestion. Growth has simply gobbled up whatever additional capacity widening has provided, he said.
“We even (expanded) the feeder areas, too, and it still can’t move it,” Elder said of the I-10 widening.
Designers on U.S. 290 anticipated a similar traffic nightmare. After revising its agreement with Harris County in 2014, TxDOT opted to build a single reversible HOV lane rather than the three initially planned when construction began in 2012. That gave the freeway a fifth general-use lane in each direction, which officials said would help with expected traffic volumes.
But the decision for one lane was criticized by some commuters, who said adding general use lanes only encouraged more solo drivers and penalized carpool and transit users.
In the interim, Metro officials aggressively lobbied for changes to the U.S. 290 project.
Transit officials at first tried to persuade TxDOT to rethink the plan and put one HOV lane in each direction into the right of way, said Nader Mirjamali, a traffic engineer with Metro who discussed the project with TxDOT.
TxDOT, citing concerns with changes to the plans that could disrupt construction and require additional approvals, declined Metro’s plan, as well as another proposal by Metro to make the HOV lanes around the clock, as opposed to just during peak periods.
The latter proposal, according to a Texas A&M Transportation Institute analysis, would “significantly reduce the capacity in the main lanes,” and was unacceptable to TxDOT, Mirjamali said.
For the off-peak HOV lanes, Mirjamali said the plan is to have signs and pavement markings clearly denoting the HOV lanes and their effective times.
Officials said it will possibly take drivers some adjustment, but could help loosen concerns many have to doing things differently.
“There’ll be some growing pains,” Lambert said. “But working with our regional partners, I think — and I think the (Metro) board would agree with me — we’re willing to try new things.”