Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, in less than a month on the job, has hit the streets at full speed. First he tackled potholes. Last week he tackled a state transportation department that’s spent the past half-century developing a highway network that is increasingly getting farther from Houston’s core and, according to the mayor, is worsening a congestion crisis.

“If there’s one message that I’d like to convey, it’s that we’re seeing clear evidence that the transportation strategies that the Houston region has looked to in the past are increasingly inadequate to sustain regional growth,” Turner told the Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday. “Our agencies must look beyond these strategies if we are to successfully accommodate the growth that Texas’ major urban areas are anticipating.”

The notion that Houston must change as it grows is nothing new. Every major world city from Rome to Medellin reinvented itself as it got larger. In Rome's case, that meant building aqueducts to provide water for an urban population; the Colombian city developed the best bus rapid transit system in the world.

The fact that Houston will require new solutions to old challenges is something previous mayors have admitted as they inched forward. Lee Brown talked of Houston’s light rail system – then covering a sliver of Houston and opened just in time for the Super Bowl – as a transitional step. Bill White often spoke of leveraging technology to use the existing streets more efficiently.

Annise Parker was both cheered and criticized for her support of alternatives to driving such as expanded light rail and many new bicycling projects. The two local leaders Turner took with him to Austin for the meeting, the city’s planning and public works directors, were installed by Parker and praised by local transit advocates for their breaks from previous agency philosophy.

But Turner, at least in tone, said what none of his predecessors ever publicly uttered. To a dais filled with sate highway officials, he declared: You’re doing it wrong.

“The traditional strategy of adding capacity, especially single occupant vehicle capacity on the periphery of our urban areas, exacerbates urban congestion problems,” he said. “These types of projects are not creating the kind of vibrant, economically strong cities that we all desire.”

Turner’s comments have drawn the attention of many of the people around Houston who for years have argued against highway expansion, during a time when expansion has been business as usual.

The comments are below, with some notes that add context or put some of the statements in perspective.

Will the "paradigm shift" start anytime soon? With billions to spend only on highways, it is unlikely TxDOT will abandon years of planned widening projects along Interstate 45 and other major thoroughfares.

At the same time, however, TxDOT is investing in transit and taking a lot of flack for it. A planned dedicated bus lane along Loop 610, funded in part by $25 million in state dollars, remains on pace but has been criticized as unneeded when so many cars are sitting in traffic.

No one is going to change enough minds to suddently erase the enthusiasm for widening highways. Supporters of a different strategy, however, can take consolation that Turner is hitting the road less traveled at all.