Part 2, Pages 184-234
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But just as the South Freeway represented the vision of the freeway of the future, it would also be intertwined with perhaps the most dramatic story in the history of race relations in Houston. It’s a story of integration, white flight, and urban transformation. And it’s a story where the South Freeway would have the final word, at least in terms of ground zero for the events that would unfold over a 15-year period.
 
This view shows the South Freeway corridor in June 1972, looking north. Right-of-way clearance had begun in the late 1960s and was nearly complete at the time of this photo. The location of Jack Caesar’s house at the southeast corner of Wichita and Hutchins is indicated in red, and is now approximately in the center of the freeway. Caesar’s house became a flash point for racial integration in Houston in 1952 when Caesar and his family became the first blacks to move into the all-white, heavily Jewish Riverside Terrace neighborhood. In April 1953, a bomb exploded on Caesar’s front porch. The bomb caused only minor property damage and no injuries, but it launched full-scale white flight from the Riverside Terrace neighborhood.
 
The South Freeway corridor sat vacant for more than five years due to funding shortfalls at TxDOT. The existence of such a wide corridor of clear land so close to the central business district for most of the 1970s was a remarkable novelty and is something that will probably never again be seen in any city in the United States in the context of freeway construction.
 
 
 
The La Porte Freeway has earned itself a unique distinction among Houston’s freeways. It is the only freeway in the region that has sustained a permanent cancellation within the city of Houston. The most notable feature of the La Porte Freeway is its abrupt end just inside Loop 610, where the freeway was truncated.
 
 
 
The freeway was coming back to life, and Richard Holgin was ready for it. He was determined to do everything he could to stop the freeway, and he was now empowered by NEPA and other new regulations that gave commu-nities a large voice in the process.
 
In the final analysis, it can be concluded that insufficient highway construction funding was the principal cause of the demise of the Harrisburg Freeway. But when the freeway’s future became tenuous due to the funding situation, Richard Holgin’s opposition probably was the decisive factor in the ultimate decision to abandon the freeway. Had there been no opposition or if there had been visible community support, the Harrisburg Freeway prob-ably would have moved forward, slowly but surely.
 
All great freeway cities need a great freeway. Chicago has the Dan Ryan Expressway. New York City has the New Jersey Turnpike. Los Angeles has the El Toro Y. Toronto has the 401 Freeway. If Houston is to join the ranks of the world’s great freeway cities, it needs a big, monumental freeway. And if the Katy Freeway expansion moves forward as planned in mid-2003, Houston will get its mega-freeway to propel it into the ranks of the freeway elite.
 
In the early days of the Katy Freeway’s development outside Loop 610, there was a dispute between the two highest-ranking TxDOT managers in the Houston district about the required corridor width for the freeway. Wiley Carmichael, who managed projects outside of Loop 610, wanted to construct IH 10 within the available US 90 right-of-way, while A. C. Kyser, who managed the Houston Urban Project Office and was responsible for projects inside Loop 610, recommended a wider corridor. The project was under the jurisdiction of Carmichael and he got his way, but the use of the narrow corridor proved to be very costly to Houston in the long run, necessitating a large and costly right-of-way clearance for the planned expansion and delaying the project about 25 years after it was needed.
 
While A. C. Kyser’s 10-lane inner loop section of the Katy Freeway was well-designed to take care of traffic needs far into the future, Wiley Carmichael’s underdesigned section outside Loop 610 soon became overwhelmed with traffic and eventually degenerated into Houston’s worst traffic nightmare.
 
 
 
The interchange, completed in 1989, will be dismantled and rebuilt during the Katy Freeway expansion and reconstruction, scheduled for 2003–2008. The life of this interchange will be about 16 years. This appears to be the shortest lifespan of a major interchange in the United States.
 
Houstonians are apt to think of billboards, commercial clutter, and lower-tier commercial establishments when the North Freeway is mentioned. No one has ever called the North Freeway glamorous or scenic. The most notable structure along the North Freeway, a Goodyear blimp hangar, was dismantled in 1994 and replaced with “big box” retail structures. Perhaps a 1999 Houston Chronicle article on the North Freeway found the right word for the freeway, calling it a "workhorse."
 
Something fast and cheap was needed to help relieve the traffic congestion on the North Freeway, and the contraflow lane met both those requirements. It took away the inside traffic lane from the non-peak traffic direction, using it for buses and vanpools traveling in the peak direc-tion. The contraflow lane was separated from oncoming traffic only by pylons spaced at 40-foot (12 m) intervals. There was no barrier.
 
The contraflow lane ended its five-year run on November 23, 1984, when traffic was shifted to a central barrier-separated lane. By that time, planning was well underway for an extensive transitway system on Houston’s freeways—a system that was inspired and influenced by the success of the North Freeway contraflow lane.
 
Originally opened in 1974, the Woodlands received numerous national and international awards for its responsible and innovative design. Suburban home buyers have made the Woodlands Houston’s perennial leader in new home starts through most of the 1980s and 1990s, and continuing through 2003. The Woodlands will almost surely go down in Houston’s history as the largest and most successful suburb, and one of the more notable suburban developments in the United States. And it took a freeway to make it all happen.
 
 
Clearing out the old and bringing in the new is a regular event on Houston’s freeways, but sometimes the transformation is especially satisfying. In the case of the Eastex Freeway, the “old” was the original, antiquated 1950s-era design, Houston’s last vestige of a first generation freeway. The “new” is a state-of-the-art freeway, among the best in Houston. Getting from old to new was a particularly long and painful process due to the seemingly interminable delays during construction, but by the late 1990s Eastex Freeway motorists were finally driving on their new freeway. After the transformation was complete, there was surely no doubt: new is better.
 
 
"The Eastex Freeway widening has been a theater of the glacial."
-Houston Chronicle, April 26, 1998
 
 
CR=copyrighted image, reproduction or use prohibited
 
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