City officials and consultants will spend the coming weeks finalizing a few ways to turn the region’s largest and most controversial freeway rebuild of recent years into an Interstate 45 for commuters and inner-city-dwellers alike.

First, however, they must weigh about three dozen ideas with their costs, be it more traffic, trouble for pedestrians or added property acquisition.

“Every one of these is a set of trade-offs,” consultant Christof Spieler told a crowd Feb. 1 at Aldine Ninth Grade School. “If you make lanes narrower, that means you need less property, but it also means you might have more crashes.”

City planners and consultants said the ideas are all viable in and of themselves, but some would require the Texas Department of Transportation to seek federal waivers, such as one calling for 11-foot freeway lanes in certain areas. Others could be a choice between different interests, such as moving the freeway away from White Oak Bayou to preserve greenspace, at the cost of a “more massive” set of ramps, planners said.

The project, expected to cost at least $7 billion, will rebuild most of the downtown freeway system along I-45, Interstate 10, Interstate 69 and Texas 288 and assorted ramps. North of downtown, TxDOT plans to reconstruct I-45 with two managed lanes in each direction from I-10 to Beltway 8.

TxDOT is moving ahead with plans for final environmental approvals and could begin construction within 12 months.

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City officials will accept comments on their proposed changes through Friday, and forward the refined ideas to TxDOT in the coming weeks.

At three community workshops earlier this month, consultants and city planners sought public input on roughly three dozen design changes — ranging from additional transit investments, such as bus stations along the freeway, to reducing the number of frontage road lanes at many spots within Loop 610.

“We don’t need freeways,” Gayle Rogers said of her neighborhood just southwest of the I-45 interchange with Loop 610. “We need sidewalks.”

Proposed changes along the route would add those sidewalks, but planners stressed that for every benefit there is cost. In some spots, for example, adding sidewalks would require more property acquisition, meaning the loss of more yards and, possibly, homes.

In other spots, adding transit, such as a bus depot at North Main, Little York or Tidwell, brings the challenge of how to get pedestrians safely across frontage roads and could upset attempts to build park space atop some freeway segments. More lanes to allow buses to enter and exit transit stations also would require more right of way.

Many of the trade-offs would be worth it, attendees at the meetings said.

“You cannot keep chipping away at these communities inside Loop 610. If you do, they’ll be nothing left but freeway lanes,” said Sara Cavendish, 30, who lives east of downtown.

Competing interests

As with many community meetings related to transportation, the workshops drew many of the project’s critics, and few of the commuters clamoring for a better I-45. Even among the skeptics, competing interests remained.

“Resolving the flooding should be the top priority,” said Gabrielle Adame, 33, who lives near I-45 and Quitman. Bike lanes are great, she said, but less important to her than protecting homes or having easy access to the neighborhood via car.

Several of the changes Houston planners are considering are similar to options TxDOT previously explored but decided against because of safety concerns or traffic impacts during peak commutes. TxDOT officials have defended the agency’s current design — which followed historic levels of community input for a highway project in the Houston area — and point to analyses that show how dramatically traffic speeds would improve.

Officials also bristle at the notion they are ignoring transit, noting that the freeway is being widened to add two managed lanes in each direction, lanes that specifically benefit and encourage carpools, vanpools and transit.

“In the future, that is where other transit can go,” said Eliza Paul, district director for TxDOT in Houston.

Effects on the neighborhoods vary, but many in those communities consider them immense and further erosion of what the freeway has taken away over the past half-century.

“Those past designs built in some inequity,” said Spieler, a consultant and former Metropolitan Transit Authority board member overseeing some of the city’s efforts to alter the project. “Part of this discussion is, are we perpetuating further injustice.”

Since 2017, nearly 15 years after TxDOT first broached the idea of widening the freeway, the project has become increasingly divisive. Community and environmental groups have raised concerns about air quality effects, especially in relation to schools that will be closer to the new freeway. Meanwhile newly-elected officials at the county and city level — some informed by flood issues they blame on suburban development — question the need for some of the planned expansion.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner tasked the city’s planning department with soliciting public comment, with funding from the Houston Endowment.

“If done right, the project can be transformational,” Turner said in a video summarizing his aim to alter the project and demand it address flooding and transit needs in various locations.

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Debate not over

State officials expect to release the final environmental assessment on the project, broken into three segments, in late spring or early summer. Paul encouraged people to examine the final proposal for some of the changes TxDOT already has incorporated to address some of the concerns.

That release will kick off a comment period — though the state does not plan to hold public meetings — before TxDOT can seek federal clearance. With that approval, TxDOT can proceed with construction, which is planned to begin on the southern end near I-69 and Spur 527 and move around downtown and then along I-10 and northward.

Completion of this round of public comments, however, hardly will be the end of debate. Opponents of the project likely will continue to lean on city leaders for support, along with the Houston-Galveston Area Council that oversees transportation planning in the region. H-GAC’s Transportation Policy Council last year approved $100 million in locally-controlled funding for the project, which could be eliminated in future spending plans if local opposition to the project grows.

TxDOT officials said even after they receive approvals for the rebuild, they will work with local agencies to refine the project.

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Though local elected officials and staff said they are working hard to improve, not impede, the widening, a handful of groups and people are pushing for major changes, or an outright rejection of a wider I-45.

“It is a mistake to route our traffic through downtown,” said Michael Skelly, who has organized some of the efforts to change the project over the past two years.

While saying some of the city suggestions would improve the project, Skelly said Houston does not go far enough in demanding changes. Skelly said he wants officials to consider minor changes to I-45 and focus their efforts on routing traffic out of downtown along Loop 610 or the Sam Houston Tollway, through mostly commercial and industrial areas.

“If we’re going to spend $7 billion, I’d rather spend it on a big idea like this,” Skelly said.

The idea, along with opposition by a group arguing to stop the project entirely, contradicts the mandate designers had when they settled on the plan in 2015 to widen the freeway and re-route it to the east side of downtown. For years, their goal has been to increase capacity on I-45 — not move that capacity elsewhere.

“We’re not taking that for granted,” Spieler said. “If the response we get is that reducing capacity is a goal, that requires TxDOT to not fulfill what they are trying to do. Within that, we don’t know which of these are good ideas or bad ideas, but we think there are more options for change.”

dug.begley@chron.com