Houston Chronicle Sept. 28, 2003, 8:56PM

Booking it on city freeways

Wherever you are in Houston, it seems there's a freeway close by. Now you can find them in your local bookstore, as well.

Lifelong Houstonian Erik Slotboom is fascinated with our concrete behemoths that, at high speed or a crawl, accommodate hundreds of thousands of vehicles each day. In high school, he came across a book on the freeway system in Los Angeles, which rivals Houston as freeway capital of the country.

"I wished someone would do a book on Houston's freeways that went into the history, had historical photos, described the origins," Slotboom said. "I wanted to know everything about freeways -- who designed them, why they were built in a certain place. I kept waiting for someone to do the book and finally realized, `Hey, I'm the person to do the book.' "

After losing his high-tech job in Austin at the end of 2001, Slotboom decided it was the perfect time to take a break from his mechanical engineering career and put together his dream book. He spent most of 20 months working on it, moving back to Houston this year to finish his research and get Houston Freeways: A Historical and Visual Journey published.

The 404-page, textbook-size hardback explores how Houstonians got around before the first freeway opened here in 1948. It also looks at how the freeway system developed and, in great detail, breaks down the routes and peculiarities of each highway. Photos and graphics abound.

Slotboom is distributing 5,000 copies of the publication via Houston bookstores ($34.95) and on his Web site, www.houstonfreeways.com ($29.95). He anticipates that traffic engineers, road builders, architects, students, historians and other highway geeks will snap them up.

"Houston probably is the world's most freeway-influenced city," he said. "There's a lot of fascinating stories behind just about every one."

-- Lucas Wall

transportation beat