By Dug Begley STAFF WRITER
Residents have a final chance to help Houston area planners decide which highway, transit and toll projects to place on the region’s long-term to-do list — in the hopes future travel does not devolve into endless gridlock.
Houston-Galveston Area Council, which oversees regional planning and air quality mitigation efforts, will host a final public hearing on the 2045 Regional Transportation Plan on Wednesday at its Houston office. All comments on the final plan are due May 10, after which it is expected to be approved by the region’s Transportation Policy Council.
Every upcoming major transportation project in Houston is included in the plan, which by federal rules must estimate how much money the eight-county metro region will have for projects and how officials intend to spend it. Though area transportation officials amend the blueprint and often shuffle project start dates, the long-range plan acts as a guidepost for most of the region’s efforts to ease traffic, increase bus and train offerings and expand roads to satisfy regional development.
The long-range plan is a lengthy list of some of the most sought-after and controversial projects. Among them:
• Totally rebuilding Interstate 45 in the downtown area, including removal of the Pierce Elevated, with managed lanes along I-45 from north of downtown to the Sam Houston Tollway. The project is estimated to cost $8.47 billion.
• Various additions and widenings of the Grand Parkway, the 180-mile tollway planned as a third ring road around the Houston region. Officials plan to spend more than $3.9 billion on future segments or widening the existing portions.
• Widening or rebuilding Interstate 10 east and west of Houston, such as in Chambers County where officials want to spend $409 million on bridge and overpass improvements to allow large trucks to navigate the area more easily. Expansion also is planned to the western edge of the metro region, the Colorado County line.
Often, officials are expanding roads choked by the traffic caused by previous expansions to accommodate development. Alan Clark, manager of transportation and air quality programs for HGAC, told officials earlier this month that is what is happening along I-10 west of downtown Houston.
“If folks would stop moving their business out to Katy, we would be done,” Clark joked.
The total plan, estimated at $132 billion in current dollars, is paid for with federal highway and transit funds, state money given to the Texas Department of Transportation and local agencies, and local money such as the 1 percent sales tax collected by Metropolitan Transit Authority within Harris County, Houston and 14 other cities.
Though rare, private investment also is calculated in the regional plan. Texas Central Partners, which plans to build a bullet train between Houston and Dallas, is listed in the plan, though the project is not receiving local funds. Officials estimate the investment in the Houston area is $3.3 billion worth of construction, though the entire line — which deeply divides rural and urban residents and faces steep opposition from state lawmakers this session — is projected to cost up to $18 billion.
The projects are a reflection of what planners believe will be steady, strong population growth in the region. Another 4.2 million people are expected to call the Houston area home in the coming years, taking the region’s population to 11 million people by 2045.
Because of that massive growth, there is some belief the long-range plan does not go far enough to look at the region’s changing travel patterns.
“We need way more investment in high-capacity transit,” said Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, a member of the transportation council and head of the committee’s high-capacity transit task force.
The long-range plan includes many projects proposed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, including light rail expansion to Hobby Airport and bus rapid transit from West-chase through downtown, along with improved bus service to Bush Intercontinental Airport.
The task force, which released its report earlier this month, found the Houston area’s long-term future increasingly will rely more on transit that can carry high volumes of people, via rail or other technologies. As the region gets more dense in terms of housing and jobs, driving will mean hours stuck in gridlock each way. Millions of those trips will have to take place without an automobile, Edwards said.
Planning for how to offer those trips needs to happen now, she added.
“We can make some really good decisions or wait on them and suffer,” Edwards said. dug.begley@chron.com