Long-delayed Kirkwood redo is on track
Neighbors tired of flooding, potholes welcome project
are rejoicing a longdelayed rebuild of Kirkwood in western Houston that appears cleared for construction by the city, offering them relief from road flooding and a break on their brakes — though it still will be slowgoing to get all the promised projects completed.
By summer, crews are scheduled to start installing larger box culverts and remaking the street south of Buffalo Bayou to Briar Forest. That is the center portion of the work once planned from Memorial to Westheimer along Kirkwood, which along with Dairy Ashford and Willcrest carries most northsouth traffic between Westheimer and Interstate 10.
“It’s terrible,” Marie Skees, 50, said of Kirkwood’s pocked condition. “Glad they are finally getting around to it 10 years later.”
Though a residential area from the bayou south in most spots, the area sees heavy truck traffic from the freeway to businesses on Houston’s west side. Between 16,000 and 18,000 vehicles use the street daily in the stretch south of I-10 to Westheimer.
District G Councilman Greg TraResidents vis — who entered politics partly because a bumpy part of Kirkwood damaged his car, leading him to look into the sorry state of streets — said starting in the middle will allow crews to tackle the most pressing area where the street is a muddle of broken panels and asphalt repairs while designers figure out specifics on the ends.
“It’s not as bad on the north and south,” Travis said during a recent tour. “A lot of people here were fine with waiting on them.”
Starting in the center also means scarce city street dollars go to the worst parts, Travis said, noting the city always hurts for road money and must prioritize projects.
The first segment, expected to cost $16.1 million, will take the road from two 10-foot lanes and a fourfoot strip marked for bikes in each direction with intermittent sidewalks to two 11-foot vehicle lanes and a 10-foot shared-use path on the east side for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Once that work is complete, estimated for mid-2022, work will shift south of Briar Forest to Westheimer, which still is being designed. If the designs are ready, the $10.6 million second phase work can start in mid-2022, and be fully open to traffic by mid-2024.
“The north part, it could be seven years before anything happens,” Travis said, noting a lot of residents between Memorial and Buffalo Bayou are in no hurry for the hassle of construction.
Along the entire route, crews will install 11-by-10-foot box culverts, increasing the amount of stormwater the system can hold beneath the street on its way to the bayou. Travis said that 18 additional acre-feet of drainage — 5.3 million gallons — should help homeowners and Kirkwood stay dry during heavy storms.
“It is a street and drainage project, but I think most everyone is focused on the street,” he said. “Nobody thinks about drainage until it rains.”
The rebuild has been a long time coming, with some improvements on city plans for as long as two decades, slowly inching their way up the priority list but never quite getting on the list of next year. Kirkwood finally became a joint drainage/street project as part of the ReBuild Houston program, with work initially planned for 2014, then pushed back.
By 2016 plans for the rebuild were ready, but neighbors revolted when the city’s designs took most of the room for sidewalks and bike lanes on each side from the 30-foot medians lined with mature trees in the center of Kirkwood. In early plans, the medians were thinned to 18 feet, leaving only one side of trees south of Briar Forest.
“We love the trees,” said Amy
Sheehan, 34, as she walked along Kirkwood near Briar Forest near her apartment on Mondaywith her 14-year-old son Abel. “It would not look the same without them.”
Given the choice between bike space and shade, residents preferred the trees, pressing Houston Public Works to rethink the proposal. Travis took office in January 2016 promising to make Kirkwood a priority and protect the trees, even if it meant scaling back bike lanes.
“I don’t think this is a street to have bicycles on,” the councilman said, adding Kirkwood remains a major thoroughfare and cyclists would be better served with amenities along smaller residential streets.
The project has come with some concessions residents struggled to accept, including a focal point on turn lanes at openings in the median. To keep traffic flowing, city transportation officials insisted on turn lanes at openings, which will mean narrower medians. Residents sought to keep the crossings, but without the turn lanes, which was not an option.
“I was trying to explain to them median cuts get you turn lanes,” Travis said, noting he worked with city designers to reduce the length of some turn lanes to preserve more of the wider medians.
Despite years of delay, Travis said it was critical to get things right, even if that meant more months driving a potholed-plagued street to preserve the median.
“We went from 30 feet to 18 back to 27,” Travis said. “I think that’s a win or close to it.”