HOUSTON — Joseph Lewis is 62, but has no trouble remembering the address where he spent the first years of his life: 1221 East 30th St. But if you head to that Independence Heights neighborhood address today, you won’t find his home.

Only one block of East 30th Street, with a handful of houses, remains before the road dead ends near a Whole Foods. Lewis’ home, like many others in this neighborhood north of downtown, long ago gave way to the 610 Loop and its feeder roads.

“I remember that we didn’t like it as boys, because we were already settled there,” Lewis said.

Before the road opened, they tried to make the most of its growing construction site. That was especially true on Sundays, when Lewis and his brothers wanted to go to the neighboring St. Anne De Beaupre Catholic Church.

“We would bring cardboard boxes to slide down the dirt,” he said with a smile.

But Lewis knows now that the 610 Loop was not a playground.

“It divided us,” he said.

As has happened throughout the country, the expressways built after World War II disproportionately affected Houston’s communities of color. Independence Heights, the first municipality established by black Texans, was isolated from the rest of the city by Interstate 45 and the 610 Loop. And now the Texas Department of Transportation plans a new expansion of I-45 and other expressways in and north of the city’s urban core. Once again, that could impact communities of color, including historic black neighborhoods like Independence Heights and the Fifth Ward, as plans call for demolishing homes and businesses to accommodate more roadway space.

The North Houston Highway Improvement Project is estimated to cost $7 billion and would add ramps, frontage roads and lanes for carpooling or transit, among other modifications. Work will focus on the downtown loop (which includes portions of Interstates 10, 45 and 69); I-45 between downtown and the 610 Loop; and I-45 north from the 610 Loop to Beltway 8.

TxDOT estimates it will need to acquire 162 single family homes, 643 multifamily units and 508 public housing units.

“At the core, this project aims to reduce congestion by improving ability and operational efficiency in I-45 and along I-10 and I-69 around downtown,” said Varuna Singh, a Houston district director for TxDOT. “Congestion is the main issue, and that is followed closely with reconstructing the corridor for current standards which will have the principal impact of improving safety.”

Of course, more lanes don’t always solve congestion. After the $2.2 billion Katy Freeway expansion, travel times have actually increased for many commuters, according to Houston’s official traffic data. It has become a textbook example of what is called “induced demand,” a term to explain why more lanes sometimes spur more traffic.

With the I-45 expansion project, some experts forecast the same outcome. They say the solution is financing more transit, rather than more highway lanes. The Public Interest Research Group, a nationwide nonprofit, declared the project one of its annual “highway boondoggles.”

This seems obvious to 93-year-old Sammie Maxie, who has lived in Independence Heights since 1943 and every night hears ambulances racing over I-45.

“People are constantly moving to Houston. It’s constantly growing and as soon as you finish an expansion, you have to do something else,” Maxie said. “You can’t fix something that is constantly growing.”

Texas’ population growth is also fueling other urban highway projects across the state. In Austin, TxDOT will add lanes to several segments of I-35, although the project in the downtown area is not funded yet. In San Antonio, the agency might add two lanes to I-10 and make other modifications.

The Houston region’s population is expected to grow from 5.8 million to 9.6 million people between 2010 and 2040. TxDOT says that average daily traffic will grow about 39% between 2011 and 2035 in and around downtown. In the area between I-10 and I-610, traffic is projected to grow 15% in the same period.

But accommodating that is not the only goal of the project.

“There are several factors that must be addressed. One is that some of the infrastructure in this quarter is the oldest highway infrastructure in the region, in some cases in significant need of repair and replacement,” said Alan Clark, transportation planning director with the Houston Galveston Area Council (H-GAC), the regional planning authority.

Some of the northern portions of I-45 date from the 2000s. But others, like the intersection near where Lewis’ home used to be, are from the 1960s. Portions of the lanes are so narrow that tall trucks have tipped when they’ve taken the curve too fast.

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Many critics worry about where people displaced by the new project are supposed to go. Public housing residents and hundreds of renters and homeowners likely won’t be able to pay market-prices to stay in the area. And getting fair compensation has not been historically easy for people of color.

“Especially in the case of lower income communities, they tend to be paid substantially below the fair market value,” said Thomas W. Mitchell, co-director of Texas A&M University’s Program in Real Estate and Community Development Law. “This is in part because sometimes they don't have a sophisticated idea of what their property is worth, but it's also because, even if they do, they don't have the financial resources to hire attorneys to fight.”

This, added to the legacy of redlining, only worsens the wealth gap between white people and Americans of color.

“We want to keep those that are displaced by the project in the Independent Heights neighborhood,” said Carl Swonke, environmental affairs director for TxDOT. “We are making efforts to do offers for those those homeowners that would allow them to buy a comfortable place in their neighborhood so that they aren't displaced outside the community.”

Houston residents push back

The Houston-Galveston Area Council in July discussed earmarking $100 million for the segment of the project that goes between downtown and the 610 Loop. Such hearings typically happen during work hours and don’t garner much attention.

“But the room was full, and not of the usual engineers and lobbyists who come to watch and see where the money is going so they can plan what's next,” said Oni Blair, executive director of LINK Houston, a non-profit focused on transit and mobility issues.

Many of the residents who showed up wore red stickers asking to delay the vote.

“A lot of them were people of color. There was a lot of energy,” Blair said.

For more than four hours, residents either asked for the project to halt or slow down so neighborhood impacts could be addressed.