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.

Getting the Texas Department of Transportation to focus more on moving people than automobiles, city officials believe, could quell some of the rancor over the region’s largest freeway rebuild in decades.

“There is a lot of alignment to TxDOT’s goals and the city’s goals, but they are different,” said Margaret Wallace Brown, Houston’s planning director.

Those differences, however, could have radical effects on the project based on what TxDOT has proposed and elements Houston’s planning department is pursuing as part of a response to the project from Mayor Sylvester Turner. After a year of public meetings, city officials are suggesting further study and consideration of:

replacing the four managed lanes in the center of the freeway with two transit-only lanes — one in each direction;

keeping I-45 within its current boundaries to limit acquisition of adjacent homes and businesses;

bus stations along the freeway so neighborhoods within Beltway 8 have access to rapid transit service;

and improved pedestrian and bicycle access to those stations and other access points along the freeway.

City planning officials said the request, likely in the form of a letter from Turner, is

meant to continue an ongoing dialogue

— city and TxDOT staff speak practically daily — but also clearly state that the project must reflect Houston’s aims if it is to enjoy city support.

BRAZOS BROUHAHA:

The aims are to develop a project that focuses on “moving people and freight and not vehicles,” said David Fields, chief transportation planner for Houston.

“One example is designing frontage roads more like city streets,” Fields said, adding the specifics at various locations remain part of the process.

Once-in-a-generation project

TxDOT officials said that until they receive the city’s written response they cannot comment on the request or its specifics.

“We have no intentions of getting out in front of Mayor Turner, especially given the amount of effort extended to reach this point,” agency spokeswoman Raquelle Lewis said in a statement.

During the monthly meeting of the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Transportation Policy Council on Friday, state Transportation Commissioner Laura Ryan said officials are committed to working with the city. Ryan said the goal is a project that “will work, for the most part, for as many people as possible.”

Critics of the state’s rebuilding plan

said they remain optimistic the city can nudge TxDOT toward improvements, but stressed they want Houston leaders to hold steady on some changes.

“I think to be effective the city has to say exactly what it wants,” said Michael Skelly, who organized opposition to the project’s design. “My view is TxDOT needs very explicit guidance from the city.”

Still, the responsibility for rebuilding the

freeway remains with state transportation officials

. Earlier this month at an H-GAC meeting where the project was discussed, James Koch, director of transportation planning and development for TxDOT’s Houston office, said the agency continues to talk to the city about all of the segments but must take a regional approach to rebuilding what is the spine of Houston’s road system.

“We are not going to touch this facility again for decades,” Koch told members of the Transportation Advisory Committee on April 15.

The project,

estimated to cost at least $7 billion, lies entirely within Houston

but has major ramifications for the region.

TxDOT’s plan calls for the complete rebuild of Interstate 45 through downtown north to Beltway 8. The most significant changes come in the downtown segment where I-45 is planned to shift from its current location along Pierce Street and the western side of the central business district to parallel Interstate 69 on the east side.

Both freeways would be depressed, similar to how I-69 travels through Midtown below local streets, along the east side of downtown. Plans call for a cap over the freeway in EaDo and adjacent to the George R. Brown Convention Center, though any development or construction of the site as a park or public space would require city or private funding.

OUT OF CONTROL:

In remaking I-45, nearly every freeway connection in downtown will need to be retooled. Construction of the downtown segments is potentially months away, with TxDOT setting aside funding for the first segments starting at I-69 southwest of Texas 288. Work will proceed counter-clockwise from Midtown, through EaDo and then along Interstate 10 to where it crosses I-45.

Plans to rebuild I-45 inched along for about a decade before the current framework was unveiled in 2015, meeting with TxDOT’s goals to add capacity and rebuild the aging freeway.

Transit as mitigation

Those plans proceeded with limited controversy until about 2017, when a coalition of concerned neighborhood, park, bicycling and environmental groups corralled their various problems with the project into a series of campaigns to alter it.

Spurred by the activism and the growing awareness of the mega-project’s pending approval, others rallied to the opposition, prompting Turner to task the planning department with developing a response to TxDOT outlining the city’s preferences.

Many of those concerns remain unresolved, at least according to opponents. More than two dozen advocates and residents on Friday supported the city’s efforts and urged the state to delay any environmental approvals until changes could be made.

Many noted a full assessment of the project’s impacts cannot be made when people are unable to participate in public meetings in person during the COVID-19 crisis.

Brown said Houston officials believe the downtown segment, which went through various changes and discussions with the Houston Downtown Management District, is with a few minor exceptions “where the city would like it to be.”

As a result, Turner’s request focuses on the project north of I-10 where the proposed changes would significantly widen the freeway through the north side — requiring up to 450 feet of right of way in many spots. Rather than fit five general-use lanes and two managed lanes in each direction through the neighborhoods, the city wants TxDOT to consider four existing lanes and adding a single transit-only lane in each direction.

Brown stressed the city’s aim is not to dictate how the freeway is built, but to incorporate more that the city sees as beneficial following years of discussion about the design.

“We are not asking them to throw any of that work away, just to take a look at things and keep moving in that direction,” Brown said.

Meeting the city’s aim of further relying on transit requires partnership with Metropolitan Transit Authority, which has a voter-approved, long-range plan that includes bus rapid transit along I-45. Board members last week said the city’s goals align with those efforts.

Two transit-only lanes — one in each direction — would be cheaper to build and dramatically improve travel times for buses, said Roberto Treviño, Metro’s executive vice president for planning, engineering and construction.

Board members applauded the city’s work to prioritize buses. Sanjay Ramabhadran recalled how a few years ago, the project was approached warily by some because of the effect it would have on bus service and how Metro could mitigate the effects.

“I think we have come a long where transit is the mitigation,” Ramabhadran said.

dug.begley@chron.com