Public’s voice to be heard on road issues
Today is first session on regional transit plans through 2045
For anyone with an idea about how to fix traffic, Houston area officials are about to give you a chance to be heard.
The Houston-Galveston Area Council, the regional board tasked with doling out federal money and various planning functions in the 13-county area, is preparing its 2045 Regional Transportation Plan, a longterm look at highway, bus, rail, bike and pedestrian projects. If officials have a project they hope can get federal money and make a major change in how people get around, it’s in the plan.
The first meeting is Thursday, March 15 in Pearland, followed by 11 others around the Houston area.
The meetings are the first set of public sessions at which officials will gather the views of residents. The plan has yet to come together, with the coming sessions designed more to allow for a conversation rather than elicit reaction, said Meagan Coughlin, public outreach manger for the area council.
“It is not just us giving a presentation, or the public saying ‘Traffic is terrible, do something about it,’” Coughlin said.
Instead, the meetings will start with an explanation of the regional transportation planning process, then residents can tour stations where they can of-
fer broad comments on issues such as freeway expansion, local streets, transit improvements and other factors.
Officials update the regional plan every four years, a process that takes about 12 months and moves it five years into the future. The coming plan covers Houston-area projects to 2045.
By then, officials predict, Houston will be a very different place, based on estimates. About 10.8 million people will live in the eight-county region, up from 6.7 million last year. Employment will grow by 50 percent to 4.8 million, while officials expect 8.8 million to roam local streets, up from 5.5 million in 2017.
Huge leaps in the estimated population and workforce are nothing new for the Houston area. The plans for 2025 and 2035 — developed in 2004 and 2009, respectively — also envisioned increases in both jobs and people in the region.
Those plans also prepared for improvements that have failed to gain traction. In 2004, planners included all of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s voter-approved 2003 plans, which called for 72.8 miles of rail transit by 2025, including commuter rail. Metro has built about 15 miles of light rail since.
Other projects have fared better, notably the Grand Parkway. Since 2004, the Texas Department of Transportation has built about 52 miles of the 180-mile loop, from Interstate 10 in Katy, north and west to Interstate 69 near Kingwood. Construction is to start later this year on another 37 miles of the tollway.
The 2045 plan, however, differs from past iterations because it is the first forward-looking plan developed entirely after three years of flooding, notably the rains that followed Hurricane Harvey’s path across Texas.
“I believe it has to be different,” Houston Planning Director Patrick Walsh said of the regional transportation plan. “The tie between land use decisions and outcomes has to be considered.”
With officials focused on flood management, there is growing appreciation that transportation precedes development, and officials must build flood protection into those considerations of where they add roads and steer transit investments.
“I think there needs to be something in these criteria that informs decision makers about the effects,” Walsh said of the process by which projects are chosen.