Loop 610 through Uptown can lay claim to something only one Houston sports team can rival: A four-peat.

The segment of freeway from Interstate 10 to Interstate 69 is the most-congested highway segment in the state, according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s updated ranking released Tuesday. Since 2016, the annual list has put the Loop on top.

No one should be surprised at the ranking, or the fact Houston claims 12 of the top 20 worst freeways, drivers and experts said.

“The higher the population, generally, the correlation to congestion is higher,” said David Schrank, a senior research scientist at TTI and co-author of the annual analysis for the Texas Department of Transportation.

That has led to back-to-back-to-back-to-back wins along Loop 610 when it comes to losing time. Only the Houston Comets of the WNBA can claim four consecutive titles for area sports teams, winning championships from 1997 to 2000.

The Comets folded eight years later, a fate that is impossible to imagine for the freeway, where drivers currently are constricted by two construction projects, with more on the horizon. Workers are building a dedicated busway along northern segments of Loop 610 near I-10, while large cranes sprout from the I-69 interchange at the segment’s south side.

For drivers, construction will be a constant at the interchange until 2023.

Few drivers on Tuesday expressed surprise that Loop 610 was the worst, or that there was any real hope for improvement across the region.

“I’ve lived here for 44 years,” said Tony Black, 54, as he left a West University Place restaurant near his job. “(Traffic has) only gotten worse.”

For years, he said, he believed officials “dropped the ball” in terms of planning and building future freeway lanes. In the past decade, though, he has come to the conclusion nothing was going to stop the surge in vehicles.

“You couldn’t build them fast enough for what’s been happening here,” Black said of the freeways.

Steady stream

The congestion list bears that out. Rarely, Schrank said, do the top 20 freeway segments on the list change much, with all coming from the state’s four largest metro regions.

Typically, segments only move up or down a few slots. Some notable Houston-area adjustments this year include:

Interstate 45 south of downtown to Loop 610 south jumped five spots to No. 6.

Because of truck traffic, the I-45 south segment was the costliest in the region, with an estimated $132.8 million in wasted fuel and time and delivery delays.

Texas 288 within Loop 610, where construction delays have eased slightly, fell from 12th to 19th.

FM 1960 from I-45 to Texas 249 was the worst non-freeway segment in the state, ranked 27th.

Through all the movement, Loop 610 through Uptown remained king of the worst roads. Since 2010, when the Texas Legislature first required the list of most-congested segments, the portion of the Loop through Uptown rose from 18th to sixth by 2013, then first or second in every year since.

As of 2018, the most recent traffic count available, more than 287,000 vehicles used Loop 610 between Post Oak and Memorial daily. That is a decline from the 307,000 reported in 2013, though some of the past counts have been called into question as over-inflating some freeway estimates compared with nearby local roads.

Temporary relief

State highway officials are pouring about $3 billion of taxpayer dollars annually into relief projects, with funds specifically from voter-approved initiatives in 2014 and 2015.

Leaning heavily on the top 100 list as a guide, transportation officials in 2017 announced the Texas Clear Lanes program that directed about $18 billion over the next decade to projects in the five major metro areas: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Austin.

The nine projects in the Houston area — including the Loop 610 and I-69 work, and the widening of I-45 into Galveston County and I-10 west to the Brazos River — remain under construction or are awaiting the start of work, meaning relief is still a ways off. A long list of other projects, such as a planned $7 billion-plus overhaul of I-45 from downtown Houston north to the Sam Houston Tollway, remain on the horizon, meaning years of work somewhere across the region.

“You can only afford to do a couple things at once as these mega-projects go,” Schrank said. “In the meantime, a quarter-million people move to Houston, or a half-million.”

The worst spots will just move around the area, Schrank and others predicted, as certain spots are addressed and others worsen.

“It is kind of like pushing on the side of a balloon,” he said, noting the air pressure will just expand elsewhere.

Relief, however, is somewhat fleeting, no matter the size of the project. Widenings typically precede further development, which in turn fills the freeway all over again.

There is no clearer example in Houston than the Katy Freeway, which in 2010 was being touted as a success story, fresh off a major $2.3 billion widening west of Loop 610 to Katy. Many noted how the freeway was the worst trip in the state, and applauded when the segment from the Sam Houston Tollway to Eldridge landed 103rd in the 2010 congestion list.

Then congestion returned quickly, vaulting the segment to the 44th most congested in 2012 and fifth by 2016. It is ninth on the 2019 list.

Still, Schrank defends the decision to widen it as a remedy to growing demand that is an improvement over the alternative over doing nothing. He noted the previous freeway had far less capacity and carried about 220,000 vehicles or fewer daily.

Now portions of I-10 around the Sam Houston Tollway and Gessner — the segment of freeway with the most lanes of any road in Houston — carry 370,000 vehicles daily, and congestion is largely confined to peak commutes.

dug.begley@chron.com