Westchase seeks waterway connection
Biking, walking trail will be the first to link Brays, Buffalo bayous
MaryAnne Monroe, 26, moved into a spacious two-bedroom apartment off Richmond with her two young sons in 2016 when the boys still were in diapers.
At first, she did not venture out much, except by car when she could pack Aaron, 6, and Martin, 5, into their seats. Now, after finding a trail by the library, she walks outside nearly every day.
“It’s nice,” Monroe said, adding that the trail is safer than the sidewalk with “all that traffic whizzing by.”
As much as Aaron and Martin have grown up in four short years, Westchase has spent the last 35 growing into a car-centric oasis of office towers straddling some of the most clogged streets and freeways in the area. The Westchase District, with boundaries shaped like a squat cross with the Sam Houston Tollway and Westheimer as the arms, is packed with office parks, restaurants, retail and
apartments priced low to high. Neighborhoods of single family homes, some affordable, others affluent, surround it.
Now, planners with the Westchase District are taking some of the first steps to help the suburban area evolve into a place where shorter trips can be made more easily on foot or by bike via wider sidewalks, dedicated bike paths and off-street trails.
When the various improvements are completed in about 18 months, Westchase will have something no other Houston area can claim: an uninterrupted, high-comfort bicycle and running route from Buffalo Bayou to Brays Bayou.
Downtown comes close with the MKT Trail from BBVA Compass Stadium south to Brays Bayou, but trips between the two still require a few blocks of competing with cars.
The Westchase connection, meanwhile, will meander from Art Storey Park south of Bellaire Boulevard along a drainage canal using the existing Brays Bayou Connector Trail opened in 2017, which ties closely to Westchase’s original Library Loop Trail between Rogerdale and Wilcrest.
From there, the district plans a series of projects to either widen sidewalks or give some of the space to bicyclists with raised rubber humps separating riders from automobile traffic.
“We’re trying to make this into a place people want to ride, for whatever reason,” said Irma Sanchez,
vice president of projects for the district.
Walking and biking in the district already occur for a number of reasons. Apartment dwellers often amble to catch buses along the busy Route 82 or walk to stores. Area offices have organized walking clubs during lunch and after work, Sanchez said.
On Wednesday, when many were working from home because of the COVID-19 crisis, Brett Geringer ducked out of his office for a midday run.
“I see people all the time,” Geringer said, catching his breath with 20 minutes to change and return to his desk. “On bikes or running. Or carrying grocery bags.”
Children are a much more common sight around the district than what planners envisioned when green fields first began sprouting office parks 40 years ago and oil and gas workers rented the first units, said Jim Murphy, general manager of the district and a state representative who has worked within Westchase for decades.
“It was for swinging singles,” Murphy joked. “I was one of them.”
The district’s plan is to retrofit the area in many respects to a more traditional neighborhood with small parks every few blocks and sidewalks and trails connecting them so families can get out and about without piling in the
car.
“This work is hugely important because there are places with no sidewalks,” Murphy said.
There also are plenty of places with sidewalks, just not very good ones. Along Westheimer, officials are widening and remaking sidewalks with the goal of luring businesses to the street and easing access along and across the major thoroughfare.
The work on the sidewalk side of the curb comes with a Texas Department of Transportation project to resurface the road.
To complement Westheimer, Walnut Bend, an oft-used shortcut for Wilcrest between Richmond and Westheimer, is undergoing a $20 million remake that will widen sidewalks to 8 feet and narrow vehicle lanes to 11 feet in some key spots to slow down traffic and give cyclists more space.
With the new emphasis on foot traffic, shade is a priority. Workers will remove 49 trees along Walnut Bend, but saved 300 others. Plans call for an additional 200 along slightly more than a mile of the street.
Working with a combination of federal funds, Houston’s capital spending plans and revenue generated in the district by capturing some of the local property taxes, Sanchez said the Walnut Bend work will link with a planned bikeway through a residential neighborhood, also named Walnut Bend, just west of the Sam Houston Tollway. Though the route has some turns, it mostly follows Blue Willow, a quiet residential street of steep-roofed, single-story brick homes.
“We get a lot of cyclists,” said Ricardo
Torres, who rents a home nearby. “It’s a quiet place to ride, away from Westheimer.”
Dedicating part of the road to cyclists via a separated trail allows for safer riding, something that could lure riders off nearby streets that may not be as safe, Torres said.
At the northern tip of the neighborhood, meanwhile, snaking around a luxury apartment complex, Sanchez said planners stitched together the final piece linking the two bayous by using a maintenance access path for the tollway.
For runners and bicyclists, the lane is a good access point to Buffalo Bayou, via a lengthy metal pedestrian bridge spanning the bayou beneath by the tollway. A large parking lot off Beltway 8, which is the frontage road for the tollway, acts as a trailhead so riders can park and use the trail system.
Potential users for the improvements, however, come from everywhere with or without a car trip involved — the single family homes that surround the district, apartment buildings that dot the area, emanating from transit trips along the Metro routes that crisscross Westchase.
Still, this is Houston and the car is king. So pedestrians even in the new Westchase will have their ups and downs along sidewalk ramps across dozens of vehicles entrances.
“Property owners just do not want to get rid of their curb cuts, unfortunately,” Sanchez said of the Westheimer improvements.