North Freeway HOV lanes will extend to Conroe
Extending HOV lanes along Interstate 45 has taken officials much longer than anticipated, but the end is in sight and carpools and buses could be riding in the lanes before Labor Day, officials said. Crews are putting the finishing touches on the 16-mile extension of I-45 HOV lanes from Spring to Conroe, with transportation officials hopeful the lane in each direction will open by the end of August. The opening is about two months later than officials anticipated earlier this year, said Deidrea George, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation’s Houston office. Initially, officials planned to open the lanes by June 1. “There was a signage issue,” George said last week. Workers also still need to paint the lane markings and diamond symbol denoting an HOV lane, George said. Provided they can stripe 2 miles of the lanes each day, it will take eight or nine days to paint lines on each side of the freeway. Once one of the directions is striped, that side will open and crews will paint the other side. The department had said in mid2014 that it hoped to finish work by the end of the following year, and earlier plans to designate high occupancy vehicle lanes in the middle of an 18-mile-long stretch were delayed by funding and other issues. The extension, from FM 1960 to Loop 336, adds one HOV lane in each direction from the Spring area to Conroe, one of the busiest parts of the suburban freeway.