I-45 Rebuild (North Houston Highway Improvement Project)

[samagon]

On 10/17/2024 at 8:25 AM, hindesky said:

The $13 billion project to transform Houston's highways and downtown area won't be fully complete until at least 2038, but the first step is underway.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2024/10/16/txdot-i45-improvement-project-nhhip-breaks-ground.html

another view of the groundbreaking, don't have your volume up too loud:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBNBF0IpljX/?locale=es&img_index=2

[editor]

On 10/18/2024 at 11:32 AM, hbg.50 said:

I’m excited about the deck parks which will connect currently disconnected neighborhoods from downtown (EADO, Midtown, 4th Ward) and the demolition of the Pierce Elevated.

None of my business but don’t you have a young child?  Will you really be dead in 15 years?

I'm skeptical that the deck parks will get built.  2040-something is a long way away, and politics and money drift like sand in the wind.  Plus there's a 99.99999% chance this will go over time and over budget, and you know what always gets cut first when that happens.

I expect it will end up like Fort Washington Way in Cincinnati.  It was rebuilt in 2000:

 

Those four blocks with the trees on the left side were supposed to be decked over with parks, and office and residential buildings.  The pilings were sunk for it, but that's it.  Nothing else was ever built, for all the usual reasons.  In fact, a park was removed to make way for this project with the promise that it would be replaced by one of the highway decks.  That was a quarter of a century ago.  

As for children, no, I have no small children.  As for being dead, I'm already long past my freshness date.

 

[kennyc05]

I think it's a huge chance that they will get built Houston is a city with tons of money Cincinnati is on a whole different tier.

[004n063]

2 hours ago, editor said:

I'm skeptical that the deck parks will get built.  2040-something is a long way away, and politics and money drift like sand in the wind.  Plus there's a 99.99999% chance this will go over time and over budget, and you know what always gets cut first when that happens.

I expect it will end up like Fort Washington Way in Cincinnati.  It was rebuilt in 2000:

 

Those four blocks with the trees on the left side were supposed to be decked over with parks, and office and residential buildings.  The pilings were sunk for it, but that's it.  Nothing else was ever built, for all the usual reasons.  In fact, a park was removed to make way for this project with the promise that it would be replaced by one of the highway decks.  That was a quarter of a century ago.  

As for children, no, I have no small children.  As for being dead, I'm already long past my freshness date.

 

I have zero faith they will get built, and I think there's about a 95% chance that what we end up with is just a wider version of the Cincinnati picture.

[editor]

1 hour ago, kennyc05 said:

I think it's a huge chance that they will get built Houston is a city with tons of money Cincinnati is on a whole different tier.

You are correct that the two cities are different. But let's not pretend that today's Houston is the Houston of the last century. 
 

We can barely get a handful of bike lanes. Even very minor road modernizations get reversed on a whim.  We're not even allowed to paint bus lanes, or brand the trains anymore.  
 

 

[hindesky]

The responsibility will fall on the Downtown and Eado TIRZ to build the parks if Chaad allows them to spend their money the way they feel they should. Luckily he will be long gone when this is finished and hopefully more forward looking politicians will be completely for it.

Edited Saturday at 08:35 PM by hindesky

[kennyc05]

Just now, hindesky said:

The responsibility will fall on the Downtown and Eado TIRZ to build the parks if Chaad allows them to spend their money the way they feel they should.

Whitmire will be long gone by the time the decks are complete. 

[samagon]

6 hours ago, hindesky said:

The responsibility will fall on the Downtown and Eado TIRZ to build the parks if Chaad allows them to spend their money the way they feel they should. Luckily he will be long gone when this is finished and hopefully more forward looking politicians will be completely for it.

yep, and he'll have a crosswalk on Westcott named after him, and some future politician that really works to make the parks a thing may have the cap park named after them.

[hbg.50]

18 minutes ago, samagon said:

yep, and he'll have a crosswalk on Westcott named after him, and some future politician that really works to make the parks a thing may have the cap park named after them.

Not a politician.   A donor will have the cap park named after himself/herself.  See Dallas for how that works...or the Kinder Buffalo Bayou Park...

[editor]

19 hours ago, kennyc05 said:

Whitmire will be long gone by the time the decks are complete. 

Whitmire is not a one-off.  He is one in a succession of mayors who have allowed Houston's infrastructure to stagnate and crumble.  The last mayor to do something big was Brown, who even though he couldn't pronounce "library," got the light rail started.  But that's about all I can remember him doing for the city's built environment.

Whitemire will be out of office soon enough.  But there isn't exactly a passel of civic-minded can-do city-boosters lined up to take his place.  

[rechlin]

23 hours ago, editor said:

I'm skeptical that the deck parks will get built.  2040-something is a long way away, and politics and money drift like sand in the wind.  Plus there's a 99.99999% chance this will go over time and over budget, and you know what always gets cut first when that happens.

I expect it will end up like Fort Washington Way in Cincinnati. 

 

Funding for the caps is already included for this project.  So it won't end up like Cincinnati.  It's only the parks to be built on the caps that still need funding.  But I have a hard time believing it will just sit as empty land for long.

The caps are scheduled for completion in 2037, so only 13 years away.  Let's say 15 years, so 2039, since things are often delayed.  The part of IH-45 from 610 to the beltway won't start until the 2030s so that's expected to be the last part of this project to be finished.

[editor]

1 hour ago, rechlin said:

Funding for the caps is already included for this project.  So it won't end up like Cincinnati.  It's only the parks to be built on the caps that still need funding.  But I have a hard time believing it will just sit as empty land for long.

The caps are scheduled for completion in 2037, so only 13 years away.  Let's say 15 years, so 2039, since things are often delayed.  The part of IH-45 from 610 to the beltway won't start until the 2030s so that's expected to be the last part of this project to be finished.

I'm not sure it matters if the funding for the caps is included. When the rest of the project runs over budget — and it will — that's where they'll find the money. It's not like they're going to build fewer lanes. 
 

[Houston19514]

The EADO cap and park/development will happen.  You can take it to the bank.

[JLWM8609]

14 hours ago, editor said:

The last mayor to do something big was Brown, who even though he couldn't pronounce "library," got the light rail started.  But that's about all I can remember him doing for the city's built environment.

I was going to say that the rebuilding of streets in Downtown and Midtown was a major undertaking that happened under his administration, but it was initially supposed to start under Lanier in 1996 after he squashed our monorail plans and made METRO use the money to fix streets to free up city money to fund HPD. The start date was pushed to 1998 after a lawsuit. Then once in office, Brown decided too many streets were torn up at one time, and the contractors had issues with the first few streets in the project, so two more years were tacked on. They didn't finish until 2005, after he'd left office. 

[samagon]

22 hours ago, rechlin said:

Funding for the caps is already included for this project.  So it won't end up like Cincinnati.  It's only the parks to be built on the caps that still need funding.  But I have a hard time believing it will just sit as empty land for long.

The caps are scheduled for completion in 2037, so only 13 years away.  Let's say 15 years, so 2039, since things are often delayed.  The part of IH-45 from 610 to the beltway won't start until the 2030s so that's expected to be the last part of this project to be finished.

https://www.txdot.gov/content/dam/project-sites/nhhip/docs/i45-nhhip-construction-phasing-timeline.pdf

conceivably, the 3A caps could happen earlier than that, but yeah, from the above, the section of freeway near the stadiums is labeled as 3D, and will start in 2030, and complete in 2037. 7 years for a few miles seems excessive, but then, the whole project is that, so par for the course I guess.

[Big E]

On 10/19/2024 at 3:26 PM, editor said:

You are correct that the two cities are different. But let's not pretend that today's Houston is the Houston of the last century. 
 

We can barely get a handful of bike lanes. Even very minor road modernizations get reversed on a whim.  We're not even allowed to paint bus lanes, or brand the trains anymore.  
 

 

On 10/19/2024 at 2:49 PM, 004n063 said:

I have zero faith they will get built, and I think there's about a 95% chance that what we end up with is just a wider version of the Cincinnati picture.

The freeway decks WILL BE BUILT. They are funded as part of this project, so that's not changing. The parks (or whatever else will be built on the decks, as they will be able to support buildings) is not under TxDOT's purview, and will be built by other entities and stakeholders, such as the downtown TIRZ. Something will be built there, we just don't know what.

[Big E]

1 hour ago, samagon said:

https://www.txdot.gov/content/dam/project-sites/nhhip/docs/i45-nhhip-construction-phasing-timeline.pdf

conceivably, the 3A caps could happen earlier than that, but yeah, from the above, the section of freeway near the stadiums is labeled as 3D, and will start in 2030, and complete in 2037. 7 years for a few miles seems excessive, but then, the whole project is that, so par for the course I guess.

One should remember that they are trying to do this will being as nondisruptive to existing traffic as possible, which slows down the timeline.

[tigereye]

The decks will be built, but I don’t think we’ll see a lot of parks. They will develop over the decks, selling those land rights like they want to do for Pierce Elevated land. I think in the end, it will naturally stitch Downtown to EaDo, Midtown and Fourth Ward, which wouldn’t be bad thing.

Edited 2 hours ago by tigereye