October 30, 2020 - “We've all been together since we were kids, and with this expansion coming up, I don't know what's going to happen,” said resident Sean Jefferson Jr. “I don't know where we're going to go.”
October 28, 2020 - “Feedback now is due Dec. 9, after which TxDOT can prepare the project for its final environmental clearance under federal guidelines.”
October 22, 2020
October 9, 2020
September 25, 2020
September 3, 2020 - “We're here today to tell the Houston-Galveston Area Council, to tell the Houston City Council, to tell TxDOT we don't want this project,” said ‘Stop TxDOT I-45’ organizer Molly Cook.
August 17, 2020 - A federal highways to boulevards program will not be a silver bullet for community restoration, but it would begin to address many of the underlying inequalities in the built environment brought to public attention by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing and increasingly public police violence against Black Americans.
July 26, 2020 - “This proposal is inequitable and unacceptable,” said Jonathan Brooks, director of policy and planning for LINK Houston.
June 19, 2020 - “I find this project disgusting and I cannot in good conscience support a vote … until all parties involved reckon with the damage they are going to inflict,” said Oni Blair, a member of the Transportation Advisory Committee and executive director of LINK Houston.
June 8, 2020 - The construction of America’s downtown highways destroyed thousands of black neighborhoods during the height of the urban renewal era in the 1940s and ’50s — and a new impact study of a controversial highway project in Houston serves as a reminder that the racist policy never ended.
June 4, 2020
June 3, 2020 - Demonstrations over the death of George Floyd in the Twin Cities occupied a major artery that tore apart a thriving African-American neighborhood.
May 10, 2020 - The Chronicle's editorial board calls for dedicated bus lanes, reduced displacement, and a project that will help, not harm, the environment.
May 1, 2020 - All eyes in Texas are on the coronavirus and the state government's response to it. But some of the biggest state agencies are still doing what they always do, like building highways and debating oil and gas regulations.
April 24, 2020 - The city of Houston is prepared to ask for major changes in state plans to rebuild Interstate 45 that potentially could scale back the planned widening of the freeway and put a greater focus on transit lanes than making room for more cars.
March 11, 2020 - Adding lanes for “traffic relief” remains politically popular. But in Houston and Portland, highway expansions are facing an energized — and effective — local resistance.
March 5, 2020 - "Those who live, work and drive in the Houston area are painfully familiar with the futility of the highway-widening solution."
February 24, 2020 - Monday marks the first time traffic-clogged Houston has a transportation planner, a position officials said will coordinate mobility issues around the city.
January 28, 2020 - On Tuesday, dozens of protesters addressed city council to increase political pressure against the expansion.
January 21, 2020 - A new survey of mayors finds a big disconnect between what mayors want in terms of street design and what they’re actually willing to support to make it happen.
January 17, 2020 - Bike lanes and transit are important, yes. But keeping car trips short is also a major factor in Streetlight Data’s U.S. Transportation Climate Impact Index.
January 17, 2020 - Transportation is a top contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but the worst offenders aren't congested cities like New York and San Francisco. Instead, it's sprawling, car-dependent metros like Dallas and Houston, a new analysis finds.
January 8, 2020 - Shifting transportation priorities in Texas will phase out expansive road development in the near future, Gov. Greg Abbott predicted Wednesday in a speech to the Rotary Club of San Antonio.
December 25, 2019
December 17, 2019
December 17, 2019 - Where will the traffic go? Who owns the land? All this and more was discussed at a happy hour panel at the D Magazine offices.
October 31, 2019 - After months of not speaking, TxDOT and the city unveil their plans for a critical stretch of Interstate 30. This is what can happen when a city stands up for itself!
October 20, 2019 - This city’s south side was devastated when a highway section went up. Now that there’s talk of taking it down, residents think they should be protected — and compensated.
October 11, 2019 - Historic black neighborhoods like Independence Heights and the Fifth Ward are in the crosshairs of Houston highway plans, decades after expressways separated communities from the rest of the city.
September 26, 2019 - “We’d rather see the freeway flood than the homes.” - Rebecca Reyna, executive director of the Greater Northside Management District
September 25, 2019 - Taking a cursory look at two radically different transportation plans for Houston, TX shows how the default position of federal transportation policy is to increase driving.
September 16, 2019 - Strong Towns offers a look into the playbook civil engineers use to thwart public will and ruin public places.
September 6, 2019 - "Here’s how to make I-45 better: first, fix the parts that need repair, without making them any wider. At the same time, introduce congestion-based pricing on the entire roadway to maximize its capacity around the clock. Invest the proceeds in transit, biking, walking, and in those poor people who truly have no choice but to keep driving."
September 3, 2019 - Urban traffic congestion is growing dramatically, according to a new report. So why aren’t drivers taking longer to get to work?
August 21, 2019 - There are ways to solve congestion that don't involve adding onto freeways.
July 30, 2019 - A new working paper on the 'freeway revolts' of yesteryear sheds light on what's at stake locally in the latest highway project.
July 26, 2019 - "Mattress Mack, Judge Lina Hidalgo join dozens in protest of I-45 expansion funding"
July 26, 2019 - "...the go-ahead from the H-GAC Transportation Policy Council fell well short of full-throated support."
July 23, 2019 - "After the approval of $100 million towards the project, community activists say the current I-45 plan generates too much pain for mostly poor, mostly minority Houstonians."
July 23, 2019 - Community leaders gathered in front of Bruce Elementary School to request regional leaders to delay vote on $100 million down payment for I-45 expansion.
July 13, 2019 - Recommendations include: build a fast regional transit system, optimize lanes and price congestion, expand greenways to everyone, protected bikeways to every neighborhood, and build sidewalks.
June 24, 2019 - Sheila Jackson-Lee and David Price speak on NHHIP's impact to historic Independence Heights and on funding for bicycle and pedestrian facilities in Houston. (Video starts at Rep. Jackson-Lee's comments.)
June 18, 2019 - The dubious distinction on the list comes days before two city-sponsored public meetings to gauge ongoing fears about the project.
June 14, 2019 - How many negative effects are acceptable in one neighborhood for other people’s faster commutes?
June 13, 2019 - Advocacy Director Jessica Wiggins warns, "More people will die on bikes, in cars, walking, and otherwise if the design standards stay as they are. Specifically frontage roads need to be abandoned."
January 28, 2019 - City leaders have called the $1.3-billion redo one of the city's biggest transportation priorities and a key battleground in a fight between regional mobility and neighborhood-centric ideals.
October 18, 2017 - In 2014, just before a project was undertaken to widen two interstates in the northeast, Tom Maziarz, then the chief of planning at the Connecticut Department of Transportation, said, "You can't build your way out of congestion." Well, this is Texas. And TxDOT appears to believe that you can.
June 20, 2014 - "For as much as U.S. metros have grown over the past few decades, commute times have remained oddly stable."
June 17, 2014 - New roads will create new drivers, resulting in the intensity of traffic staying the same.
October 2013 - Even the country’s most sprawling, least dense, most automobile-dependent city in America is trying to adapt to people’s preference for urban living.
September 15, 2020 - The City of Houston's first-ever Chief Transportation Planner, David Fields, presents Houston's Transportation Vision.
August 19, 2020 - Local and national experts discuss how transportation infrastructure projects, like the proposed I-45 expansion, impact community health.
March 2020 - How more lanes and more money equals more congestion. Read the 37-page report.
February 12, 2020 - In a 1-hour video, traffic engineer Don Kostelec explores the reasons for road widening and the consequences of having wide roads.
September 11, 2019 - Watch podcaster donoteat play Cities:Skylines, discussing community impacts as he builds a new urban freeway.
July, 2019 - See link to full report at end of press release.
June 13, 2019 - See link to full report at end of press release.
September 24, 2010 - The Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates a step-by-step design process for the re-balancing and re-urbanization of suburbia into more sustainable, economical, energy- and resource-efficient patterns, from the region and the community to the block and the individual building.