Officials with the city of Houston and Montrose Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone No. 27 discussed plans for the reconstruction of West Alabama Street between Shepherd Drive and Spur 527 during a Feb. 22 meeting of the Neartown Association.
Muhammad Ali—an engineer with Gauge Engineer who represented TIRZ No. 27 at the meeting—said the Midtown TIRZ, Upper Kirby Management District and TIRZ No. 27 are working together to pursue a federal grant for a broader effort to reconstruct the road. As previously reported by Community Impact Newspaper, the Upper Kirby district is working on a portion of West Alabama between Buffalo Speedway and Shepherd Drive where similar improvements are being planned.
The reconstruction between Shepherd and Spur 527 will include a heavy focus on safe crossing with landscaping for pedestrians and bicyclists, and a drainage upgrade, Ali said. Studying and planning are underway, and designs will be shared with the public in the future, he said.
Lauren Grove, a senior staff analyst with the city of Houston, gave Neartown residents insight into the concerns the city is hearing regarding West Alabama. Concerns included the multiple turning patterns on the street, drivers swerving and weaving, unclear traffic flow with the lane configuration, crashes and near-miss crashes, and difficulty crossing for all road users, including pedestrians and bicyclists.
The street has seen seven serious injury crashes within a one-mile stretch of the road—two of which involved pedestrian injuries—making it a high-injury network street, Grove said. According to Houston’s Vision Zero, the city’s high-injury network “represents 60% of traffic deaths and serious injuries occurring on 6% of Houston streets.”
Grove said the types of crashes on West Alabama are car-only crashes 88% of time time. Around 0.3% of crashes involve parked cars, 8% involve fixed objects, and 3% involve people walking and biking. Almost 35% of crashes are caused by a failure to yield, she said.
Grove said she found lane configurations that change suddenly led to some of the crashes, as well as a lack of safe crossings, failure to yield, too much distance between existing pedestrian crossings and traffic signals that are hard to see.
West Alabama has three lanes. In the morning during peak traffic, two of these lanes head eastbound while one goes westbound. At night during peak traffic, two lanes head westbound while one goes eastbound. At all other hours, the middle lane is used as a turning lane.
Lanes have overhead signage that indicate how each lane is being used depending on the time of day, which Grove said creates another safety concern. According to Lance Gilliam—who attended the Neartown meeting as chief of staff for Abbie Kamin, Houston City Council's District C representative—the third lane was supposed to be temporary, but has now been in place for going on 20 years.
Several Neartown residents expressed concerns about West Alabama at the meeting, saying they would like to see the middle reversible lane be taken away.
The reconstruction of West Alabama between Shepherd and Spur 527 is still in an early phase, but Grove said residents who would like a say in what happens can submit traffic safety concerns to Vision Zero’s interactive map and email [email protected].
The city of Houston is also working on a section of West Alabama between Buffalo Speedway and Weslayan Street, which is slated for completion in the spring of 2023.
