I swear, I am so sick of this.
After Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s administration removed cyclist protections along Heights Boulevard and Austin Street in March, advocates for a contentious safety project on 11th Street in the Heights neighborhood are worried it could be next on the chopping block.
Construction finished in 2023 on a $2.3 million project to add bike lanes and other safety features on 11th Street while reducing the number of lanes for cars and trucks. It drew protests and praise, from a 3,000-signature petition against the changes to a Project of the Year award from the Texas chapter of the American Public Works Association.
The project has been under review by Whitmire’s administration for more than a year. On Wednesday, he again criticized the project, saying businesses and residents don’t like it and emergency personnel avoid the street. But, he said, the administration has not made a decision on its future.
“It’s not my controversy,” Whitmire said. “I’m just trying to solve it.”
[…]
Whitmire said the Houston Fire Department avoids 11th Street since it was revamped, although photos taken by proponents of the redesign show both fire trucks and ambulances have continued to travel on the street. The fire department deferred comment to the mayor’s office.
The perceptions of higher traffic run counter to a HPW study first published by Axios. It found overall traffic times “do not appear to have increased significantly” because of the changes, with drivers experiencing an additional seven seconds of travel time during the peak morning hours and eight seconds in the evening peak.
According to the HPW analysis, the project decreased collisions and increased the presence of cyclists and pedestrians. Injury-causing crashes along 11th Street during the study periods decreased from four in 2019 to zero in 2023. All crashes decreased from 25 in 2019 to 16 in 2023. The total daily east-west crossings of Heights Boulevard by pedestrians and cyclists increased from 87 in 2019 to 324 in 2024.
Gilbert Perez, owner of Bungalow Revival LLC and Bespoke by GJCD, has noticed the increase in pedestrian volume.
“I think the bike lanes have actually slowed traffic down quite a bit,” Perez said. “It makes it a much safer street for our clients to come in, for other pedestrians. My foot traffic has increased since the bike lanes were put in, and I think it brings people from the neighborhood to our businesses.”
According to the HPW analysis, vehicle speeds decreased from as much as 39 miles per hour to as low as 30.5 miles per hour. The speed limit on 11th is 30 miles per hour.
Sara Saber, owner of Three Dog Bakery, opened her shop just as construction began and felt “a little panicked.” Now, she said, “it feels safer as a pedestrian, for sure.”
Perez and Saber are part of a coalition of 18 businesses and organizations sending a letter to Whitmire’s administration, including A New Leaf elementary school, the parent-teacher association for Hogg Middle School, the Woodland Heights Civic Association and state Rep. Christina Morales. They call for the protection of the 11th Street redesign, which they say transformed a “high-speed, dangerous thoroughfare” into a “thriving and safe corridor.”
Ashley Wilson, assistant general manager at Loro Asian Smokehouse and Bar, said the project “doesn’t really negatively affect us, but it also doesn’t really positively affect us” — but additional construction to reverse the project would.
“More construction would be annoying for us because that’s the way to get into our business,” Wilson said.
[…]
Multiple Heights residents told Houston Public Media the 11th Street project has made recreational biking more accessible. A central feature of the 11th Street project was an improved crossing at Nicholson Street, which runs parallel to a north-south hike-and-bike trail.
Jeff Worne moved his family to the Heights in 2018 because of its proximity to the hike-and-bike trail.
Before the safety improvements, Worne said, he “wouldn’t let our younger kids go anywhere close to the street to cross” because of speeding cars, but now “it feels much safer to cross there.”
The HPW analysis found a nearly 200% increase in cyclists and pedestrian use of the crossing after the project was completed, from 211 per day in 2018 to 623 in 2024.
The 11th Street bike lanes are also used by commuters to work and school, such as Rice University political scientist Bob Stein and his grandchildren.
“(Bicycles) are not a car,” Stein said. “We actually do reduce congestion.”
Stein said Whitmire’s stance is “bewildering” because he’s catering to people outside the City of Houston.
“He seems to be more concerned about suburban drivers and speed on these roads, which is exactly what has hurt the city,” Stein said.
Whitmire lied about what HFD said about the Austin Street bike lane, so I am not at all inclined to believe his claim here. I still drive up and down 11th regularly, and it’s just not any more congested or bottlenecked than before. Even at 5 PM, it flows just fine. What is different from a driving perspective is if you’re approaching 11th from a side road that doesn’t have a traffic light, and you want to make a left turn, it no longer feels dangerous. Removing the extra lanes and getting the average speed down from 40 MPH to 30 MPH makes that experience a lot less hair-raising.
Whitmire’s gonna do what Whitmire’s gonna do, we all know that. We should still do what we can to keep 11th Street safe and usable. And as long as we’re even contemplating spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to rip out brand new perfectly functional infrastructure on whims, then spare me any talk about “finding efficiencies” and “cutting waste”.
Let me see if I’ve got this right: The speed limit is 30 mph. Previously traffic was averaging 40 mph. There’s been no change in traffic enforcement that I’ve seen (which is consistent with this being a city where you just about have to make an appointment to get a traffic ticket), but traffic is now flowing AT THE SPEED LIMIT. WTAF is the problem here???
As Kuff points out, turning into the pharmacy or getting out of the hardware store’s parking lot is no longer a game of Frogger. I too have seen a marked increase in the number of people using the pedestrian / bike path – not only at Nicholson crossing 11th but also where the path crosses Yale and White Oak as well.
As far as Whitmire’s whinging about people “tearing up their tires” – first, it’s more likely that if anything they’re scuffing their rims (which means that the barrier is doing its dang job), and second, hitting a person ought to be considered a much bigger deal than some minor car owie.