Planned underpasses open key routes in Houston's East End

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Houston city council member Robert Gallegos holds up a copy of the Houston Chronicle as he speaks during a press conference discussing the recent $36.9 million grant for railroad crossings on the East End at Commerce and Navigation on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, in Houston.

Underpasses coming to Houston's East End, thanks to a federal commitment announced earlier this week, have the potential to open up neighborhoods now trapped by trains, officials said Wednesday.

"We are just thrilled because this is 11 years in the making," said Carol Lewis, chairwoman of the Gulf Coast Rail District, at a Wednesday event aimed at celebrating what officials called the last money needed for new underpasses at Commerce near Navigation and York near McKinney.

The award of $36.9 million, announced Monday as part of the Railroad Crossing Elimination Program, covers about 30 percent of the $123.6 million cost of the underpasses.

Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose, who traveled to Houston on Wednesday to see the crossing and speak with city and transportation officials, called the work a "major step forward to increase safety and quality of life."

"Most of the good ideas don't come from Washington, but more of the funds should," Bose said, echoing something Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg often notes.

At Commerce, where the railroad tracks cross at an angle, the street will be depressed so traffic flows below the trains along with the underpass at Navigation, which will be rebuilt. At York, north and south of Rusk, near where two major rail lines can trap travelers, the planned underpass will stretch beneath both sets of tracks.

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Separating the roads from the rails removes a persistent frustration for drivers in the area, where residents complain freight trains can stop and idle along the rails, blocking streets, grinding traffic to a halt and complicating police and fire response in the area.

"They are completely encircled by stopped trains sometimes," Houston District I Councilman Robert Gallegos said of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Plans for the underpasses are not new, but officials said they were only able to move forward once the federal commitment arrived. The underpasses are planned to include sidewalks and possibly bicycle lanes so walkers and bikers also have safe routes that do not cross the rail tracks, alongside drivers.

The work will mean major changes for people who travel in the area, both during construction and long after. Once the York underpass is completed, Houston will close Sampson – which acts along with York as two adjacent one-way streets moving in different directions – then make York a two-way street around the tracks. Street crossings of the tracks at McKinney and the rail crossing on Milby near Polk will be closed once the York underpass is in place.

Near Commerce, the underpass work will close the street crossing of the tracks along Hutchins.

The effect of the underpasses and closings, however, could be opening up many predictable routes for drivers in the area.

"The first, second, third time a traveler gets to a blocked crossing, they make up their mind they are not to go that way anymore," said Lewis, a transportation studies professor at Texas Southern University, in addition to the rail district chair.

With predictable routes, with ways to avoid trains, drivers will adjust and the neighborhood's traffic pattern can change, she said, hopefully for the better.

Though the underpasses led to cheers from officials this week, much work remains, along with informing the community about the plans. More thorough design of both underpasses continues, said Veronica Davis, director of transportation and drainage operations for Houston Public Works. Construction could begin in late 2025, she said.

The changes are being closely watched by local residents and businesses, said Jack Hanagriff, railroad safety and mobility coordinator for the East End Management District.

"They all want to know how this is going to affect them," Hanagriff said.

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The impact, however, stretches far further than the two or three blocks around each underpass and each closed street crossing, he said. By creating a sealed, nearly 9,000-foot-long corridor with no street crossings of the tracks, trains that are now blocking a handful of Houston streets have a large segment of track where they can idle. That means, Hanagriff said, an expectation that trains will stop blocking major streets such as Lockwood and Cullen in the East End if they can stay elsewhere.

"This is part of like 10 crossings," Hanagriff said of the improvements to York and Navigation.

Only when all of those crossings have some relief, either through changes at those locations or changes elsewhere that reduce the chances of a stopped train there, will neighbors sleep easy, said Lindsay Williams, chairwoman of the Eastwood Civic Association's train committee.

"This one provides a relief valve north-south," she said of the two new underpasses, collectively called the West Belt project. "It is a relief valve, but it is not a solution to the situation."

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