Here’s a fun question and answer in today’s Move It! column:
Q: Has anyone ever considered making Westheimer one way outbound from about Loop 610 to Texas 6 and Richmond one way inbound for the same stretch? That would really speed traffic in the area. It would eliminate left-hand turns across traffic and allow many signals to be eliminated.
— Greg Staff, Cypress
A: David Saperstein, chairman of the Mayor’s Office of Mobility, proposed doing exactly what you suggested last year. But the city will not ask the Texas Department of Transportation to make the one-way conversion because too many business owners along Westheimer objected to it, Saperstein said.
“They felt they would get killed with it,” he said. “They worried that because of the large width of the street, if you were driving on one side of the street and then you see something you want to do on the other side, you couldn’t switch over to make it.”
Saperstein said he disagreed, but is honoring the retailers’ request to let the two-way configuration remain.
Other efforts are under way to improve the flow on Westheimer, however. The city reprogrammed the traffic signals in this corridor last year, resulting in a 20 percent drop in travel times, according to its survey. Also, Saperstein notes, the city is posting “no left turn” signs at intersections without signals along Westheimer to discourage drivers coming out of side streets and parking lots from attempting to turn across several lanes of traffic. Instead, you should turn right and make a U-turn at the next signal.
Janelle Gbur, TxDOT spokeswoman, said changing Westheimer and Richmond to one-way streets has been discussed and studied for two decades. While the state has never concluded that is necessary, it is working on other improvements to Westheimer. A $1.9 million project is in progress to reduce the number of median openings and increase protected left-turn lanes. That work is scheduled to wrap up in April.
David Saperstein is full of great ideas to get traffic moving, isn’t he? And it’s very gracious of him to honor “the retailers’ request to let the two-way configuration remain.”
