Grand Parkway branded in honor of former mayor
Bob Lanier left his mark on Houston as mayor, but the road now bearing his name eventually will stretch across seven counties.
More than two years after securing approval from the state and officials across the Houston area, signs denoting the Grand Parkway as the Mayor Bob Lanier Memorial Parkway have sprung up along completed sections of the tollway, with signs ready to go on the future segments.
“I think this is something that is very fitting and he would love it,” said Elyse Lanier, who spearheaded private fundraising to honor her husband, who died in 2014. “He is probably loving it, with his boots up on the desk and (holding) his cigar.”
Even skeptics of the still-controversial tollway admit it is a fitting honor for Lanier, who championed Houston’s third ring freeway as a developer, transportation official and mayor. As growth pushed Houston westward, Lanier — who
also owned 1,700 acres in the Katy Prairie and was close with other developers who later dotted the landscape with subdivisions — revived plans for an outer ring road.
“He saw things regionally,” said Billy Burge III, a longtime Lanier friend and fellow developer who served on the Grand Parkway Association as the tollway was created.
The tollway remains a work in progress, with about half its 180 miles open to drivers, most in western and northern Harris County. Another 38 miles of the tollway from Interstate 69 near New Caney to Interstate 10 north of Baytown is under construction.
The remaining portions, mostly in Fort Bend, Brazoria and Galveston counties, are in the planning stages.
Even as segments opened in 2013 and 2016, the road remains divisive. Opponents say their predictions of rampant and unchecked development have come true as subdivisions and shopping centers sprouted in once-unspoiled fields. During a speech last May, Mayor Sylvester Turner — who lost a 1991 mayoral race to Lanier — noted 50,000 acres of land within 3 miles of the Grand Parkway were developed in the previous five years.
Many suspect those developed spaces contributed to the flooding downstream in the Buffalo Bayou, Braes Bayou and Cypress Creek watersheds during Hurricane Harvey.
“The strategy of building new freeways through vacant lands as a means to open land for development, it has serious consequences,” Turner said during his annual State of Mobility address last May, advocating for infill development. “It requires serious regional planning. Urban sprawl comes with a cost.”
The road, however, is paying off for the Texas Department of Transportation, which borrowed money to build it, repaid by the tolls it generates. For the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, the Grand Parkway logged 164.3 million transactions, with a transaction being every time a vehicle passes a toll station. That was a 23 percent increase from the 133.4 million transactions in fiscal 2017.
A budget of up to $100,000 was set for fundraising for a dozen signs marking Lanier’s contribution to the development of the tollway as both Houston’s mayor and before that as head of the Texas Highway Commission. The brown signs typically are installed near major interchanges.
Highway signs are color-coded based on federal standards, with brown denoting places of interest or honorariums. The naming will not extend to the green directional signs that are most common along freeways, at least for now. Those along the tollway and directing people to the tollway will continue to refer to it as Texas 99/ Grand Parkway. TxDOT, which classifies all the state-maintained roads, will continue to use Texas 99 as the official title.
Still, state officials are supportive of the efforts to rebrand the tollway for Lanier, who led the Texas Highway Commission from 1983 to 1987, said Raquelle Lewis, spokeswoman for TxDOT in Houston. In the Houston TranStar system, which helps dictate directions and traffic conditions, the road now is referred to as “Lanier Parkway” rather than Grand Parkway.
Burge said the hope is the name catches on with drivers, as everyone calls Interstate 635, which circles Dallas, the LBJ Freeway.
“I think it is appropriate for the man who dedicated so much to make it happen,” Burge said.
Elyse Lanier agreed a roadway was a fitting tribute.
“He read everything about Robert Moses in New York and loved transportation,” she said of her husband, referring to the New York power broker who developed highways over public transit.
Lanier’s designation along the Grand Parkway joins others in the Houston area, though few have taken on status as the primary name used by drivers for the freeway. Interstate 69 in Houston is named for former U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, who secured funding for the freeway. Texas 288 from the Harris County line to Freeport is the Nolan Ryan Expressway, named for the Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher who grew up in Alvin. U.S. 290 is the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, named for the former president.