Groups against I-45 project call for civil rights review
Critics of the plan to remake Interstate 45 north of downtown Houston filed a nearly 100-page complaint to federal officials Thursday, urging even greater scrutiny of the project’s effects on minority communities, an analysis they say state highway officials consistently have avoided.
In the complaint, filed with the Federal Highway Administration, opponents of the current project accuse the Texas Department of Transportation of spending years promoting and designing a project that residents consistently told them would tear the fabric of nearby neighborhoods. Many of those neighborhoods are majority Black and Latino communities, the complaint notes, which TxDOT failed to adequately consider.
“Throughout the … planning process, which has gone on for almost 20 years, less-discriminatory alternatives have been raised by multiple stakeholders, but TxDOT has repeatedly rejected those alternatives and clung to a project that imposes highly disproportionate and adverse effects on Black and Hispanic/Latinx neighborhoods, compounding its previous discriminatory actions and the disproportionate effects of bulldozing highways through these neighborhoods originally,” the complaint stated.
The complaint was filed by Air Alliance Houston, LINK Houston, Stop TxDOT I-45, Texas Housers and Texas Appleseed. All have been active with residents in opposing the I-45 project, estimated to cost at least $10 billion.
In a statement, TxDOT Chief Communications Officer Bob Kaufman said officials were “continuing to work with FHWA to resolve any areas of concern that they may
have.”
“That said,” Kaufman continued in an emailed statement, “most people who have been following this project know that the I-45 improvement project will create major safety and operational improvements to an old and congested corridor along with quality of life enhancements for residents, businesses and others.”
In addition to halting the project and asking for reconsideration of many of TxDOT’s findings and proposals to remedy the environmental effects of the project — including its effect on minority communities — the complaint asks for the Department of Justice to “play an active role in coordinating this federal investigation and any enforcement actions.”
The plan to widen I-45, the largest planned freeway rebuild in Houston, stretches from the central business district north to Beltway 8 in Greenspoint. North of downtown, officials are not proposing to add any free lanes, but widening the freeway to put two managed lanes in each direction — similar to the Katy Managed Lanes along Interstate 10 — in the center of I-45.
To add those lanes and make design changes necessary to improve safety on the freeway, officials said more than 1,000 homes and 300 businesses will be affected. Opponents said that is too high a price to pay in oft-ignored communities to continue years of freeway encroachment.
“The health impact of increased traffic air pollution will last for generations,” said Harrison Humphreys, transportation program manager with Air Alliance Houston, in an emailed statement.
State officials, since criticism of the project intensified in 2017, have said they are willing to make changes but cannot drastically change the project after 15 years of work and numerous rounds of public meetings. At many of those steps, local officials have vocally supported TxDOT’s plans, though new city and county officials elected since 2017 have taken a more critical stance.
At numerous spots, the complaint states TxDOT either ignored, failed to properly address or provided insufficient remedies to the harm the new freeway would do. Critics said the environmental effects of the project also were inadequate for many communities, far underestimating the effect of traffic by basing some assumptions on reduced idling, when competing evidence indicates the projects will lead to more traffic and eventually the same idling conditions — simply spread among more lanes.
“Children are particularly vulnerable to negative health effects like asthma, and the expansion of I-45 will increase the number of cars on the road while moving the highway closer to schools and day care centers,” Humphreys said.
The complaint comes as local and state officials attempt to resolve some of the stalemate that already has delayed the project by “a couple years,” according to TxDOT Executive Director Marc Williams. Harris County agreed to briefly pause its lawsuit against TxDOT in an attempt to negotiate some changes to the project. Federal officials also lifted a small portion of the pause they ordered in March, which TxDOT said was a sign of progress. Various agencies, including TxDOT, Houston’s planning and public works departments, Harris County and the Houston-Galveston Area Council, which acts as the metropolitan planning agency, are involved in smoothing out the differences with federal officials. The goal, participants said, is to find something that improves the freeway but does not come with as many of the issues communities have raised.
“We do hear you, and we do hear there are problems,” Carol Lewis, a member of H-GAC’s transportation council, told a roomful of project opponents during a Dec. 8 meeting with federal highway officials organized by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
The complication, Lewis said, is recognizing the freeway is “not safe” as currently built and changes are needed to make it safe.
She acknowledged the consensus in the community that the footprint for the planned rebuild is too wide. “It needs to be narrowed,” Lewis said.
While TxDOT repeatedly has said it has narrowed the project as far as practical without reducing its ability to address current and future demand, some elected leaders have said the project cannot move forward as proposed.
“There will be no decisions made without your voice being heard,” Jackson Lee assured critics at the session, held in Third Ward, which has been sliced in the past by both I-45 and I-69 expansions.
The majority of the pause remains in effect, as the highway administration continues its investigation into earlier concerns, similar to the newest complaint, that led to the pause.
Critics of the plan said the development of the freeway comes as many communities are rethinking the role of freeways in isolating minority and low-income communities and could be a model of modern freeway-building.
“What happens in Houston could be a model for the country,” said Ines Sigel, interim director of LINK Houston, in a statement. “Enforcing the civil rights of the most affected people can move us toward an equitable transportation system that improves mobility, health, and the environment for everyone.”