TxDOT held its I-45 information meeting last night, and Charles Kuffner was able to attend and his question was asked:
The Q&A session was where the action occurred. Well, in the questions, anyway, where the opposition to any widening of I-45 outside the existing right-of-way was a recurring theme. With the huge crowd present, questions were written down and submitted to be asked by a moderator (who I believe was Jim Weston of the I-45 Coalition). My questions did get asked – they were “Why are we widening I-45 when we’ve already got the underutilized Hardy Toll Road?” and “Won’t widening I-45 north of I-10 just make congestion on the Pierce Elevated worse?” To the first, Tello and Kennison more or less repeated what they said up front, which is that the Hardy is an integral part of the overall mobility plan. If they had any figures as to the projected use of the Hardy in 2025 (the benchmark year used in the I-45 study), I didn’t hear about them. As to the Pierce, Tello basically conceded that there was no plan to do anything about that, then when pressed on the question Henry got up and suggested US 59 and Spur 527 as alternate routes. I did not find that to be a good answer, but it’s what I got.
The full post is filled with details from the meeting, which he thought was an exercise in frustration.
