Numerous locations in Houston could possibly be extra pedestrian-friendly.
The pandemic—for all of the upheaval and grief—did show the worth of being outdoors (and the worth of the QR code, too). We remembered we would have liked to share house. Houston BCycle noticed 21 p.c extra journeys. Parks had by no means been so packed, so valuable. The town was constructing bike lanes; planning a way forward for quick, frequent buses; growing a plan to cease ruining the planet.
5 years and one mayor later, we nonetheless have the parks. However downtown Houston will need to have seen the sunshine, because the Extra Area: Predominant Avenue venture pilot will change into everlasting by the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Eleven blocks of Predominant Avenue on each side of the Metro Crimson Line, from Dallas Avenue to Allen’s Touchdown, will likely be closed to automobiles, the road and sidewalk joined in a uniform aircraft to make room for extra individuals and timber. The hope is that iconic bars like Little Dipper will take the lead constructing the pandemic-era eating sheds that are actually being faraway from cities like New York and create what Downtown Houston CEO Kris Larson referred to as a “vibrant, occurring retail atmosphere” in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
Perhaps it can! And perhaps that’s not the entire level. As a result of the experiment implies the concept that there are elements of a metropolis that could possibly be higher off with out automobiles.
Particularly in Houston, in spite of everything, automobiles demand loads of house. Larson’s predecessor, Bob Eury, estimated that 30 blocks of the Central Enterprise District had been solely parking. (Sure, parking is a enterprise, too, because it’s been figured we use our automobiles solely about 5 p.c of the time.) Vehicles waste loads of house, and so they additionally get in the way in which of the remainder of our lives. In 2024, extra individuals died in automotive crashes in Houston than in homicides, and the area has been for years one of the crucial harmful locations within the nation to get round, whether or not you’re driving, strolling, or biking. Transportation is our area’s single-largest supply of the air pollution, destabilizing the local weather and making latest hurricanes that rather more harmful. Hundreds of thousands of fossil gasoline–powered autos contribute to the air air pollution that harms kids’s brains and educational growth and the noise air pollution that has been linked to Alzheimer’s.
What if we determined automobiles didn’t all the time belong in each single a part of our metropolis? Larson advised the Houston Chronicle that the Predominant Avenue Promenade will likely be “not like the rest we’ve in downtown.” It’ll be not like the rest we’ve wherever, truly. So the place else is likely to be higher off if we do away with automobiles—and what would possibly we get again?
Predominant Avenue may use some additional no-car lanes.
1. The remainder of Predominant Avenue to Wheeler Transit Middle
A few of us have been calling for dedicating the 2 remaining lanes of downtown’s Predominant Avenue to Wheeler Transit Middle in Midtown to pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and others for years—particularly when drivers have their selection of any lane close by on Louisiana, Milam, Travis, Fannin, and San Jacinto.
You gained’t miss them.
2. Memorial Drive from Houston Avenue to Shepherd Drive
Trying again on Hurricane Harvey—and Tropical Storm Imelda and the Tax Day Floods and the Fourth of July Flood that washed out the fireworks and Allison and the flood in 1937, why not—it’s clear that poor previous Buffalo Bayou and the earthen Barker and Addicks dams upstream had been engineered for a metropolis and local weather that not exist.
SWA Group’s 2015 redesign of Buffalo Bayou Park is “designed to flood,” however 500-year storms are turning into annual occasions. Restoring the acreage beneath the redundant concrete of Memorial Drive may prolong the park for miles, including timber, native grasses, trails, and higher topography, all there for us to take pleasure in when it’s dry and defend our property when it’s not. Willow Waterhole in southeast Houston close to Brays Bayou, a rolling sequence of six “lakes” excavated out of a flat, former agricultural panorama, can retain 600 million gallons of stormwater—and the remainder of the time it’s there for birding, fishing, even cross-country meets.
3. Should you don’t like that, superb, then Allen Parkway from Sabine to Shepherd.
You may have one east-west artery out and in of downtown, however you don’t want two. NIMBY’s selection!
4. Rice Village is a no brainer, proper?
It’s taken virtually 20 years and what number of lawsuits to get half a high-rise to begin going up close to Rice College. The density of Rice Village and its mixture of incomes, residences, and retail areas make it an excellent candidate to be remodeled into one thing as walkable as an precise village. However by the point a decide decides to permit Kelvin Avenue to be closed to automobiles for 2 hours each seventh Sunday, Houston will likely be too sizzling for anybody to tolerate strolling even from West Elm to Fairly Kitty.
5. OK, for those who don’t like every of this, superb—let’s strive one thing else.
There are few locations within the area the place a planning director or TIRZ president can wiggle their nostril and create the dynamic atmosphere Larson and others hope to see. If the Predominant Avenue Promenade doesn’t rework downtown into Day for Evening, it’ll be proof for some that Houston won’t ever be as dense, as full of life, as social as New York Metropolis. The pandemic, for all of the empathy, additionally proved individuals don’t love giving issues up.
So perhaps we don’t take Memorial Drive or Allen Parkway away. As a substitute, perhaps we add an elevated bridge above Buffalo Bayou that hyperlinks to Memorial Park, so customers can zip alongside a narrative or two above the automobiles, separated, secure, up between the high-rises to be constructed. Perhaps we set up a playful panorama rather than the wasteful dozen parking spots inside Heights Mercantile, so mother and father aren’t spiking with cortisol from checking over their shoulders that nobody’s gunning to run their kids over.
Perhaps it’s 100 of those little strikes, added right here and there to a metropolis that forgot about our well being, that slowly improve security, scale back air pollution, and substitute the penetrating motor noise with the birdsong it could be good for us to have the ability to hear once more.
