Alvin Mayor Paul Horn moved to the city in 1970, shortly after graduating from Texas A&M. Talk around town about the approaching freeway work that would turn sleepy Texas 35 into a major route north to Houston already was five years old.

It still is just talk, nearly a half-century later, but it is talk that is moving toward the most significant step in the freeway’s development in decades. Later this year, if the project clears a couple regulatory hurdles, the so-called Alvin Freeway will roar back to life as a planned three-mile extension meant more as a route to relieve Interstate 45 traffic to and from Hobby Airport.

“It will provide new connectivity to (downtown), the University of Houston and Hobby Airport,” said Raquelle Lewis, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation in Houston. “It will provide enhanced local connectivity by providing a new crossing over Brays Bayou and the Union Pacific and BNSF railroads.”

The extension, Horn said, also will raise hopes among Alvin residents that they eventually will get their freeway.

“When you are working with highways, long term is the name of the game,” the mayor said.

Perhaps fittingly for what has been a strange stop-and-start process for the freeway, the rebirth of a rebuilt Texas 35 — the sleepy highway that spills out of metro Houston across miles of loose development and acres of marshes — does not even start on Texas 35.

Instead, the first significant step on the project in two decades begins near the University of Houston along Spur 5, which officials will extend about three miles south to Bellfort. Work is expected to start around 2025.

Spur 5 acts as a relief valve for I-45 traffic headed to the campus, which some use as a little-known shortcut between the university and downtown.

Extending it adds to those benefits by including areas south of Old Spanish Trail where the spur ends, as well as providing another key route to Hobby Airport, said Quincy Allen, district director for TxDOT in Houston. Having that third southern route would remove some traffic from I-45 and Texas 288, along some of the most congested roadway segments in the state.

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Benefits will be greatly increased with direct ramps to Loop 610, which the extension will cross. Plans call for ramps from southbound Spur 5 to the Loop in both directions and from Loop 610 eastbound and westbound to the northbound Spur 5 are planned.

Still, Houston is a different place than decades ago when planners drew up a city with freeways spoked from downtown in all directions. So are opinions among area travelers. Many are supportive of anything that provides a faster automobile trip.

“If it takes some of the cars off I-45, I think that is a good thing,” said John Hampton, 46, as he filled his car’s gas tank near the freeway on Dixie Farm Road.

Others sighed and rolled their eyes when asked about yet another Houston freeway project.

“When are people going to learn you can’t keep building freeways,” said Ron Hunt, 31, who moved to Houston’s EaDo district to avoid a commute. “It just means more cars.”

The plans for Texas 35 also set up a rare instance of TxDOT moving a freeway — at least on paper — that will change addresses and drivers’ directions. Texas 35 already exists, breaking off I-45 near Gulfgate Mall and meandering south to Alvin as parts of Reveille Street and Telephone Road.

Until the work on Spur 5 gets far enough south outside the Sam Houston Tollway, the new freeway will remain Spur 5. Then once it ties into Texas 35, it will became the new state highway and the old portions will become Texas 35 Business, Lewis said.

Toll Decision Unresolved

More than a decade ago, when state officials were eager to build new routes using toll roads, making Texas 35 into a major route was likely to include tolls. Now, lawmakers are less willing to approve tolls, especially in places like the Houston area where many toll projects are open or planned.

“In today’s climate, TxDOT eliminated the tolling option which requires redoing both environmental documents,” Lewis said of the Texas 35 plans.

Parts of the plan led state officials to keep property along Mykawa Road in southern Houston untouched.

Because of the back and forth on tolling and other factors, TxDOT broke the project into two segments — the extension south to Bellfort and the portion from Bellfort all the way to Alvin. That is because the Bellfort segment includes connecting with Loop 610, something that requires federal approvals the southern segment would not face. The extension also does not require the same level of environmental scrutiny.

“Bellfort to Alvin is just now beginning a new federal (environmental) process and will be several years before it is near environmental clearance,” Lewis said.

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TxDOT is aiming at starting construction on the extension in 2025, but officials have not settled on how they will pay the full $387 million cost, of which $338 million is for construction. Texas Transportation Commission members approved $140 million in the state’s long-range plan, along with $141.5 million that could be sought via a federal program for major projects.

Federal funds controlled by local officials also are committed via the Houston-Galveston Area Council. The agency’s transportation policy council approved $56.5 million, specifically for building the interchange with Loop 610.

In doing so, however, members of an advisory board urged TxDOT to work closely with neighborhoods along the route, some of which may have forgotten 20-year-old plans for an expanded freeway.

TxDOT plans to hold public meetings on the proposal this summer. Because the project has received prior approvals and land already has been acquired for the first phase, its expedited environmental plan could be approved by the end of the year.

Unlike north of Bellfort, the southern portion has drawn concern in the past. In 1970, residents fought the highway because it would affect land that became F.M Law Park at Mykawa, along Sims Bayou. At the time, most of the tract was undeveloped land. Most of the park is now a golf course.

Waiting for a Way

The Alvin Freeway is the Rasputin of local roads.

“The Alvin Freeway is perhaps Houston’s only freeway that could be called a survivor,” Oscar Slotboom wrote in his history of the region’s transportation system, Houston Freeways. “It persisted on Houston’s freeway master plan in spite of community protest in the early 1970s, the highway funding crisis of the mid-1970s, and the failure of development and demand to materialize in its corridor.”

For Alvin, the delay has been both costly and comedic. Unlike nearby Pearland — with its access to Texas 288 — Alvin has not enjoyed the same commercial and residential boom to its tax revenues.

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Meanwhile, parts of the city are ready-made for a freeway that does not exist. The Texas 35 bypass that rings the east side of city has wide grassy medians and u-turn lanes in key spots. All that is missing is the freeway.

“When you have large tracts of land sitting there ready to be developed, that is going to spur some of this,” Horn said, noting property in and around Alvin will become increasingly attractive as other communities are built out.

Also raising Alvin’s chances is renewed interest in the southern segments of the Grand Parkway, the Houston region’s third ring road. The two long-sought links will cross in Alvin, and city leaders already are pressing for moving forward on the project in Austin.

“That is something that is exciting for people in Alvin,” Horn said.

dug.begley@chron.com

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