Impacts of I-45 work face fork in the road
Supporters say halt on rebuild plan stalls flooding projects, too
Jill Rafferty proudly acknowledges she bothers a lot of people. Better to rub them the wrong way, she reasons, than let a lack of attention wash her Independence Heights neighborhood away.
Flood control efforts, mostly overseen by Harris County, have failed over the past dozen years to keep rain out of people’s homes in heavy storms. Houston workers hardly clean up nearby land the city owns, part of which is a park set on a former water treatment plant , and trash and debris clog the slim channels along 40½ Street, Rafferty said.
What worries her, she said, is the very entities she has been pleading with are holding up potential relief by challenging a $7 billion rebuild
“We want to make sure this freeway represents the people of Houston. … There is a bigger conversation that needs to happen.”
Tanya Debose, executive director of the Independence Heights Redevelopment Council
of I-45 that, at least on paper, will give the area better drainage. The Texas Department of Transportation, she said, laid out a better case to control flooding than city and county officials have.
“Number one, they listened to me,” Rafferty said of TxDOT officials. “Number two, they had a plan to do something.”
The increasing divide over the fate of the I-45 rebuild — notably the plan to add two managed lanes in the center of the freeway from downtown Houston north to Beltway 8 that requires seizing properties and displacing low-income residents — also is putting the brakes on improvements in some of those same communities. For all the concerns of what is wrong about the project, supporters say, there also
is a lot to like, such as better drainage, potential for parkland in key spots and more predictable travel times to downtown for commuters.
“I am concerned some of the citizens, some of the community and some of the people are not aware of the commitments we have made,” said Texas Transportation Commissioner Laura Ryan of Houston, a member of a four-person board that has the largest role in approving the project.
Through four years of refining the project, TxDOT has made many changes to reduce the amount of property needed to spare loss of some locations, including American Statesman Park — aka Mount Rush Hour with its large presidential busts — and Woodland Park near I-45 and Quitman. Various bicycling amenities and improvements to major intersections, such as Little York and I-45, also are planned.
So are some devastating community losses, critics and city and county elected officials say. More than 1,000 homes and 300 businesses will be displaced, particularly in low-income and minority communities. Opponents call the idea of widening a freeway antithetical to future travel needs.
“This is an insidious failure of transportation policy,” said Indrani Maitra, a high school junior active with Stop TxDOT I-45, during an I-45 discussion with elected officials last month. “It is incumbent on you to develop a better project.”
Those against the project believe TxDOT simply is plowing ahead with its current plans.
“TxDOT has made it clear they will not listen to community concerns,” said Harrison Humphreys, transportation policy advocate for Air Alliance Houston.
Benefits vs. ‘negatives’
Concerns over whether TxDOT properly considered the project’s scope now are a matter for federal officials and the courts. The Federal Highway Administration, citing concerns raised about the project’s impact on minority communities, asked TxDOT on March 8 to pause activities, just days before Harris County filed a lawsuit saying transportation officials ignored the county’s comments on the project.
Supporters do not dispute the seismic changes the project will have on nearby residents, or even the historic levels of displacement caused by the project. The question, they said, is whether the improvements are worth it.
“These benefits vastly exceed the negatives,” said Oscar Slotboom, an advocate of adding managed lanes to I-45 and a northwest Houston resident.
Others bristle at the concerns voiced by critics who say they are representing minority and low-income groups, when many Black and Latino groups, businesses and residents want the project. Local NAACP officials and others cheered TxDOT for going to unprecedented lengths to include communities, who are not in total agreement with those who argue the project is racist or unfair to struggling families.
“There are people that come on the line that say they speak for the poor, but they have not spoken to them,” community activist and urban planner Abdul Muhammad told the Texas Transportation Commission.
For suburban drivers, the benefits are clear, supporters said, and the months of fighting leaves them further from relief.
“If the state wants to do something to make the freeway better for the entire area, why shouldn’t the city welcome that,” said Ben Darby, 48, of Spring. “If they are going to make it so people sit in less traffic, who wouldn’t celebrate that? Everything comes with tradeoffs.”
Those who worry the project is in jeopardy fear the Houston area is not ready for the changes opponents want. The region needs transit, but freeways will continue to
need upgrades and expansions, said Marlisa Briggs, president of the North Houston Association. Demand for buses and trains “as the only solution” is not there yet, she said.
Interests of all
Meanwhile, Slotboom said, critics are ignoring the significant upgrade to transit along the corridor when they call it a car-centric project. Two managed lanes in each direction, similar to those along Interstate 10, will improve commuter bus service significantly and serve as the backbone of planned bus rapid transit to Bush Intercontinental Airport.
“If we do not move with this project now, we could get nothing,” Slotboom said.
Not only would the project modernize many parts of the aging freeway and remove some problem spots, such as the Loop 610 interchange that forces drivers to make abrupt lane changes, it could produce neighborhood benefits, such as better intersections at the freeways additional park space.
Some of that green space could be atop the freeway. If developed by the city, a local management district or other civic group, a trio of depressed segments of I-45 could be capped with a park or open
space, essentially creating a tunnel for traffic and useful space for the community. The three potential locations are at Wheeler and Interstate 69 in Midtown, to the east of the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown and near North Main in the Northside. Various other spots used for drainage, such as a truck stop near Patton that will be replaced with detention, also offer some chance of adding green space in some of the city’s most densely developed communities.
It also could fix flooding in some spots, including Rafferty’s neighborhood near Airline and 40th Street.
The echo of freeway traffic is a daily undercurrent of the neighborhood, where a mix of old, weathered homes abut new construction behind warehouses and hotels lining the frontage road.
When it rains, however, the little neighborhood becomes at best a tiny island as water pools into the street and cuts it off from Airline. At worst, it is a disaster area where relief is slow to come.
Opponents still outnumber supporters in public comment sessions before agencies with some control of the project, the Texas Transportation Commission and Houston-Galveston Area Council.
Defenders of the project, however, are increasing their participation, including some early skeptics who worked with TxDOT.
“We know what is happening and we have done what we can to lessen the impacts,” said Tanya Debose, executive director of the Independence Heights Redevelopment Council.
Independence Heights, the first city incorporated by Blacks in Texas in 1915, was sliced by the creation of both I-45 and Loop 610 and faces further erosion by the widening project. Despite the losses, Debose and others have focused less on saying no to the project and more on getting TxDOT to say yes to changes. In comments to H-GAC’s Transportation Policy Council, which doles out locally controlled federal highway money, she said it is necessary to consider the interests of all those affected, not just the loudest interested groups.
“We want to make sure this freeway represents the people of Houston and not just the people who want to bring bike lanes and walkways and use flooding and all of that to destroy our communities,” Debose told regional transportation officials. “There is a bigger conversation that needs to happen.”