I45 north to beltway 8 to be double or triple decker freeway with toll lanes

People will find their way around it. When the Pierce was reconstructed, it was bad at first, but drivers adjusted using the side streets and alternate routes.

 

45 to Bagby to 59. WINNER.

 

The Katy Freeway expansion spurred so much development in the energy corridor. I'd expect the expansion of 45 to do the same. It would be a massive benefit to the Houston area to expand that roadway.

 

Daily cars each way on the Katy Freeway: roughly 275,000. 550,000 both ways. Construction cost: $3 B

Daily ridership on metro rail: roughly 30,000. Construction cost: $325 M

Construction cost per person (assuming 1.5 people per car):
Katy Freeway: $3,600
MetroRail: $11,000

The freeway expansion was a bargain!

 

Most of that right of way was nothing. The old K-T railroad had been ripped up years before and there was a ton of space between the feeder and Old Katy Rd.

 

How to avoid traffic: IF YOU'RE NOT IN THE PASSING LANE, GTFO!


From left to right, it should go from the fastest lane to the slowest lane.

If you're not passing anyone, move to the right. If you're in the middle lane and you're not passing anyone on the right lane, move over to that lane!


Spread the word people!

 

the train saved 0 mins on commutes. It doesn't even go to where people live. Probably < 1% of Houstonians live along the line!

 

i'm all for tearing down the pierce elevated and reconnecting downtown to midtown. personally, i think all freeways should terminate into various streets/spurs in downtown areas. anybody passing through would use any of the loops anyway.

D.C. does it with 395, 66, and 50 all terminating downtown. Anybody passing through uses 95/495(loop) or 295 which is more of a parkway. Baltimore is the same with 95 going around the city and 395 spur ending downtown. Also 83 terminates downtown. Boston did something similar but instead of terminating the freeways they buried them downtown only. this connected the downtown area to the wharf area. There are countless examples of cities that use this method.

Even Houston uses Spur 527 which to me makes more sense instead of Freeways in a dense area. You could replace the Pierce elevated plus 45 on the west side of downtown and just build spurs dumping traffic into various downtown roads. This would connect the bayou parks to downtown city hall and parks.

 

One thing Houston (and Texas) could focus on is traffic management. The towing program that they instituted in Houston was a nice start but there's a lot more you can do. Texas just isn't very good at it.

 

today I saw street sweepers backing up traffic by closing down the left lane on 59S at 45

why do they do that in the middle of the day?

 

I live in Katy, should I evacuate?

 

Only if you admit to shooting the deputy......
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I don't understand why everyone doesn't go that way. There is always a big back-up at the I-45 exit but if you just move over to the right two lanes you slide right through it. The only hitch is that the 59 exit off 10 comes quick and looks insignificant.

But none of this will get done in our working lives.

 

Doesn't work for left exits like I-10 to I-45. Left exits and merging traffic into the left lane was a mistake in design from the 60's.

 

Shouldn't you subtract the daily cars from the old Katy Freeway from the daily cars of the new Katy Freeway to get the incremental increase?

Sure the old Katy was a traffic nightmare. Maybe that means comparing by cost per daily rider isn't a sound metric of comparison.

 

I think people wanting to get out of Houston to katy spurred the expansion.

 

there was quite a bit of bus service along the metro rail line previously...

my quickie analysis is nowhere near scientific. just some quick numbers. You'd want to take into account other things like operations & maintenance costs, development spurred by the construction, emergency vehicles' ability to serve Houston faster, etc into any kind of comprehensive analysis.