Complete Streets projects across the Houston area are on pause after Mayor John Whitmire called for a reevaluation of projects involving pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
The administration called for a pause on all projects involving road diets, crosswalks and other pedestrian infrastructure, and bike lanes, including those already under construction and some that received federal funding.
Since taking office in January, Whitmire ordered the removal of medians that served as pedestrian islands along one major thoroughfare. He halted construction and planning on other bike- and pedestrian-friendly improvements throughout the city.
Houston has roughly the same number of pedestrian deaths a year as New York City, even though the Texas city’s population is a third of the size. The dangerous streets prompted former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and other local leaders to install more protected bike lanes and seek funding for sidewalks in neighborhoods that long lacked them.
Local governments in the area have secured $100 million in federal grants for projects that include bike and pedestrian improvements.
"[The mayor] is seeking to carefully balance current and future mobility needs for all Houstonians by providing a range of mobility options without affecting our existing mobility options.” said Marlen Gafrick, Whitmire transportation advisor, in a statement.
Mary Benton, another Whitmire spokesperson, detailed some of the mayor’s concerns with Houston’s ABC 13 Eyewitness News.
“A review of mobility projects constructed in the last administration revealed newly constructed bike lanes removed residential and business street parking, failed to accommodate residential solid waste trash cans, negatively impacted emergency responders, and impacted our general mobility with reduced lanes,” she said.
The mayor has called on police to step up enforcement of traffic laws in response to people getting killed by drivers while walking. He also suggested cyclists didn’t belong on city roads. “Bikers need to be protected from the traffic,” he said in a statement, “and they need to do that on bike paths that are recreational and not try to compete with people going to work and school.”
The mayor recently told the Houston Chronicle that part of his plan was to rethink how transportation money was spent. “Some neighborhoods have no sidewalks,” he said. “Then you have neighborhoods like the Heights who have three-foot sidewalks that they’re tearing up to put in 10-foot sidewalks. So there needs to be some equality in prioritizing our resources. […] We need to slow down the 10-foot sidewalks until some people get a three-foot sidewalk.”
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Source: Routefifty.com, Planetizen.com
