Changing streets

Lower Westheimer study shows a city keeping up with development.

Houston, let’s take a walk. But first, you’ll probably have to hop in the car.

That’s the city we’ve built — 20thcentury Sun Belt sprawl crisscrossed by freeways. A design oriented around automobiles made sense as Houston’s suburban neighborhoods grew farther outward. It doesn’t work as well when the city starts to grow upwards. Nowhere is that change more apparent than the Montrose area. Bungalows have been replaced by six-pack townhouse developments. Massive apartment complexes dominate entire city blocks. The city even created new, flexible parking regulations to reflect the growing density.

While the neighborhood may have changed, the streets have stayed the same.

So we’re glad to see the city keeping up with all this new development with proposed improvements to lower Westheimer Road.

The plan, as documented in the lower Westheimer corridor study, would transform large stretches of the four-lane road between Shepherd Drive and Main Street into a two-lane road with expanded sidewalks and dedicated spaces for turn lanes, bus stops and parallel parking.

Narrow lanes and potholes already force cars to treat significant stretches of lower Westheimer like a two-lane road. This plan would just make it official. It is about time. For too long, the city has lagged behind private developers in building cityscapes at the scale of a person. New mixed-use complexes, such as the River Oaks District and CityCentre, aggressively promote walkability in their design. That’s what plenty of homeowners, renters and retailers want today.

That walkable infrastructure also helps address the growing danger of Houston’s streets as more people try to get around without cars. Crashes involving vehicles and pedestrians were up 46 percent last year, according to the Houston-Galveston Area County’s annual mobility report. Collisions involving vehicles and bicycles were up 34 percent. In comparison, vehicle-only crashes were up only 14 percent.

A zoning-free city doesn’t have many tools at its disposal to encourage denser design, nor is this kind of development appropriate in every corner of Houston. “Houston is a driving city. It is going to stay principally a driving city,” Jeff Speck, author of The Walkable City, said during a meeting with the editorial board. So what can we do? Speck pointed to “identifying those parts of the city that offer opportunities to have a walkable lifestyle and helping that happen, principally with what the city controls, which is the rights of way.”

That’s exactly what’s happens in the Westheimer plan.

Of course, no plan is perfect. Bicycle infrastructure is notably lacking, and we’re waiting for the promised bike lanes on nearby West Alabama Street.

Houstonians living in Gulfton-area apartment complexes — a neighborhood that’s 185 times more dense than the national average — probably wonder when they’ll get a similar study. Walkable infrastructure shouldn’t be reserved exclusively for the hip or wealthy.

But like a pedestrian waiting at a busy intersection, we’re willing to be patient. We hope this project will be the first of many that ensure Houston’s streets and sidewalks keep up with the needs of our changing neighborhoods.

For too long, the city has lagged behind private developers in building cityscapes at the scale of a person. New mixed-use complexes, such as the River Oaks District and CityCentre, aggressively promote walkability in their design. That’s what plenty of homeowners, renters and retailers want today.