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As work crews tore up medians on Houston Avenue north of downtown last week, advocates were left to wonder about the future of the city’s push to make its deadly streets safer.
Was Mayor John Whitmire’s decision to rip out the controversial concrete a one-off? Or does he plan to halt future expansions of Houston’s safe street network?
Whitmire has tied his choice on Houston Avenue to engineering flaws and a lack of community engagement specific to that project. Coupled with the departure of two safe streets proponents from City Hall, however, his move has advocates worried about the bigger picture.
“When we heard the mayor decided to tear out the safety improvements on Houston Avenue, we weren’t just concerned about those five blocks,” said Joe Cutrufo, executive director of BikeHouston, which advocates for a safer and more complete bicycle network. “We were concerned about what that signaled for other safety projects already completed and those in the works.”
The debate over Houston Avenue began under former Mayor Sylvester Turner before erupting under Mayor Whitmire.
Last December, at the urging of former District H Councilmember Karla Cisneros, Houston Public Works began installing concrete medians and curbs near the street’s intersection with Washington Avenue.
The work added a center median on Houston Avenue from Center Street to Memorial Drive, reducing the road to four lanes and adding pedestrian islands to make crossing the street safer.
Pointing to the death of a cyclist on a stretch of Houston Avenue that was not covered by the changes, and the lack of new bike lanes, street safety advocates said the alterations did not go far enough. Still, they were pleased to see the city take action regardless.
Community pushback on the project was longstanding, however. Trinity Downtown, a Lutheran church at the intersection of Houston and Washington Avenue, said the changes made accessing its parking lot a nightmare for parishioners. Firefighters and police complained they were struggling to navigate the intersection, according to Whitmire.
Weeks into his administration, and without discussing the matter with Cisneros’ successor, Councilmember Mario Castillo, the Whitmire administration decided to reverse course. With remarkable speed for a municipal bureaucracy, Houston Public Works began tearing out the changes to the road on Feb 6. The demolition engendered a set of other issues, causing a water leak and gas leak on back-to-back days.
The backlash from some quarters was immediate.
“Whitmire ran for mayor with a strong emphasis on public safety. Tearing out street safety improvements is the opposite of public safety,” Cutrufo said.
Deepening Cutrufo’s concern was the departure of Houston’s former Chief Transportation Officer David Fields and Head of Transportation and Drainage Operations Veronica Davis, who championed transportation safety projects in the city.
Castillo has been public about his disappointment in Whitmire’s decision regarding Houston Avenue, noting the cost to taxpayers.
“(Houstonians) need to know how much these things are costing and where the money is coming from and why we’re doing them. And we can’t do that if we find out on Friday it’s going to be removed on a Monday,” Castillo said.
Removing the median on Houston Avenue will cost $230,000 and asphalt resurfacing would cost an additional $500,000, Castillo said. Those figures do not include the costs to repair the water and gas line breaks that occurred during demolition. The original cost of the project was $100,000.
Whitmire’s move also has prompted cheers. Trinity Downtown posted a sign on its electronic billboard thanking the mayor. At a City Council public comment session on Tuesday, one woman praised the mayor’s actions.
“Mayor Whitmire, I want to thank you for what you did on Houston Avenue, with removing the – whatever you call the barriers that were put in the street. I go by there every day to go to work, and in addition to problems with businesses accessing their driveways, Memorial backed up as I was leaving downtown,” Julie Thobae said.
The next skirmish?
While lamenting the changes to Houston Avenue, safe street advocates already are looking forward to pending road redesigns aimed at improving safety.
One project on the city agenda is a redesign of North Main Street from Boundary Street to Cottage Street that would add bike lanes. The project originally was planned to start at the end of last year or early this year, according to Castillo.
Peter Eccles, director of policy and planning for LINK Houston, which advocates for a transportation network designed for more than drivers alone, said the North Main Street project was identified by city staff and the community to address known safety issues in the area. Sections of the road are on the city’s “high injury network” – the 9 percent of Houston roads that account for 58 percent of traffic deaths and serious injuries.
“I hope that they build off of all of that data and come to the conclusion that that North Main project is solving a lot of very real problems,” Eccles said.
There have been signs the next phase of the project could face pushback similar to Houston Avenue, however. The city has proposed extending the redesign farther north, from Cottage Street to Airline Drive.
On Tuesday, a parishioner at Christ the King Catholic Church, which sits along the proposed extension, said leadership there is concerned about the impact that change would have on access for motorists.
Whitmire thanked the church representative for speaking out. In a statement Thursday, Houston Public Works spokesperson Erin Jones said the administration will listen to public input carefully.
“As with any incoming administration, Houston Public Works is in the process of briefing Mayor Whitmire’s administration on the design and plans for ongoing and upcoming projects, including the North Main Street Safety Improvements and proposed bikeway, to ensure it receives community input and reflects the appropriate safety measures. At this time, no timeline for construction has been announced,” the statement read.
Castillo said that from what he understands so far, the new administration is prepared to review all the street improvement projects on its agenda, no matter whether the design and public comment period already has passed.
Still, he sounded a note of optimism that Houston Avenue may not signal more radical changes to the city’s approach to road redesigns.
“I think Houston Avenue could be an outlier in all of it,” Castillo said, pointing out the speed of the decision. “I just can’t imagine that that’s going to be the way all of it works. But a little bit more time will tell.”
Vision Zero
For Castillo and traffic safety advocates, the Houston Avenue about-face raises larger questions about Whitmire’s approach toward street safety.
In 2019, former Mayor Sylvester Turner signed an executive order officially endorsing Vision Zero, an international model that focuses heavily on transforming high-injury streets by adding protections for cyclists and pedestrians. Turner set an official goal of ending traffic deaths in Houston by 2030.
Asked about his broader attitude toward bike lanes and Vision Zero on Wednesday, Whitmire took a swipe at Turner’s goal while defending his decision on Houston Avenue.
“Vision Zero. Why do we have Vision Zero for 2030? Why didn’t the leadership say 2024?” Whitmire said. “I think it ought to be safe this afternoon and in the morning. The Houston Avenue (project) was a disaster in terms of safety.”
Whitmire said that future road changes would not be built without more input.
“Other locations, we haven’t gotten there. You start naming them, they’re across Houston. We will listen to residents, we will listen to the stakeholders, but for sure, before Public Works starts out on a project, we need police, fire and EMS involved,” he said.
Whitmire said the backlash to his decision about Houston Avenue was politically motivated.
“There are folks taking Houston Avenue’s bad design and politicizing it for political agendas. I get it, I’ve worked in the political arena my whole life, but it’s unfortunate,” he said.
Eccles pushed back against the idea of poor design, pointing out the changes on Houston Avenue mirror ones recommended by the Federal Highway Administration as “proven safety countermeasures.”
“Generally speaking, these are some of the best tools that we have in addressing the sort of traffic issues that were on Houston Ave,” Eccles said.
Safe street advocates say the data backs them up on Houston Avenue. So far, the city has not been forthcoming with that information. The city referred a Houston Landing open records request about the planning process to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, arguing that such records should not be released to the public. Paxton’s office has 45 business days to respond.
Enforcement versus design
In prior comments, Whitmire has touted an approach to street safety that matches the pro-police messaging of his mayoral campaign. He has argued that the best way to curb the death count on Houston’s streets is by putting more police on the problem.
“The real solution to pedestrian safety is traffic enforcement. We’ve got to have traffic enforcement on the freeways and roads,” he said earlier this month.
If Whitmire succeeds in boosting enforcement, he will cut against a trend of declining traffic stops that stretches back more than a decade.
In 2013, Houston police made 272,000 traffic stops in response to alleged moving violations, a number that had dropped to 196,000 stops by last year. Police made or issued 48 percent fewer arrests and tickets.
Officials say the trend is tied to the Houston Police Department’s declining headcount, which Whitmire hopes to backstop with state Department of Public Safety troopers.
Numerous studies have found at least a temporary link between increased enforcement and safer driving. Critics, however, say speed traps represent at best a short-term solution, and at worst may exacerbate the distrust between police and minority communities.
Cutrufo said enforcement is a useful tool, but that road design provides a more durable deterrent to unsafe driving.
“The mayor says he makes decisions based on data,” Cutrufo said. “If there’s data to support an approach to traffic safety that is focused solely on enforcement, we’re yet to see it.”
Christopher Rivera, a spokesperson for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said he was concerned about Whitmire’s plan to expand traffic enforcement with the use of DPS troopers, especially after the passage of Senate Bill 4, a law being challenged in the courts that would make illegal entry into the United States a state crime. Whitmire has said state troopers will be under the oversight of Houston Police Chief Troy Finner.
“I believe that DPS will ultimately be allowed to do as they please,” Rivera said. “It’s ultimately up to the officers’ discretion to uphold the law, so if they choose to deport an individual because of SB 4, then the DPS officer can do so.”
Castillo had his own concerns with DPS troopers taking on enforcement, particularly given the issues in Austin last year with a much-criticized partnership with the agency.
“We’ve got a lot of different populations and neighborhoods, and our officers are trained on how to interact with a lot of those diverse communities,” Castillo said. “I just don’t know enough about DPS and their experience to be comfortable at the moment with that.”
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