This past week, Mayor John Whitmire, after some contentious discussions and even a small protest, gave the go ahead to the Public Works Department to remove recently added street improvements at Washington Avenue and Lubbock on Houston Street.
The upgrades at the crosswalk were designed to improve bike and pedestrian safety in a heavily trafficked area near Trinity Lutheran Church and the city courthouse. The improvements paid for by District H cost $100,000 and their city council representative Mario Castillo was caught off guard by the sudden change, wondering if they would be reimbursed for the costs.
The mayor, who just took office last month, has been making a number of changes in city departments, which include Public Works, where a pair of deputy directors recently stepped down. This is causing concern among alternative transportation activists who fear Whitmire may be taking Houston backward in its effort to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, while also helping to ease congestion on city streets.
In December, a cyclist was struck and killed on Houston Avenue near Winter. The driver never stopped and has yet to be apprehended. That particular street, which helps connect downtown and the Heights, is a busy spot for cyclists and pedestrians. It intersects one of the city’s hike and bike trails just north of where the cyclist was killed.
According to the Mayor’s office, police, firefighters and even Trinity Lutheran had complained about the upgrades. Several larger vehicles had hit the new curbs and it complicated ingress and egress for trucks.
While Mayor Whitmire has never gone on record saying he wanted to scale back the city’s efforts to improve sidewalks and bicycle lanes, but he hasn’t exactly been an advocate. The moves near Washington Avenue sparked concerns among safety advocates that he may also remove improvements to streets like 11th Street in the Heights where new bike lanes were recently installed amid controversy from area merchants and some residents. But, reports are that no other changes are on the table at the moment.
Under Mayor Sylvester Turner, the city had a robust plan for improving pedestrian and cycling safety through the Vision Zero plan designed to reduce fatalities and serious injuries for riders and walkers by 2030. Thus far, there has been no formal discussion of the plan by the new administration.
For decades, those who walk and ride around Houston, particularly disabled Houstonians, have clamored for improvements to sidewalks and the addition of bike lanes. And while the city has installed hundreds of miles of hike/bike trails throughout the city, the on-street bike lanes are often incredibly dangerous. And some of the city’s most trafficked areas like the Galleria, Texas Medical Center and downtown have virtually no biking infrastructure at all with plenty of spots where sidewalks are in need of repair.
Whitmire campaigned heavily on public safety, but for him, that appears to mainly mean increasing police and fire department budgets, while focusing on vehicular safety and traffic concerns. When it comes to police and fire, that makes a lot of sense. Houston is well short of the number of public safety officers a city of our size actually needs and that must be addressed.
But the most vulnerable among us are often on foot or on two wheels and firefighters and police certainly agree given the number of injuries and fatalities they are forced to face every year. If the mayor wants to improve public safety, we’re all for it. Let’s just be sure to include everyone who needs protecting.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
