US-90A Final Construction Schematics

This is the final construction design that I downloaded from the TxDOT web site. I have organized it to make it easier to view. The contract for construction will be awarded in June 2001. Estimated cost is $49.5 million. Work on 90A north of this segment has been underway for over a year and will be built to the same standards, which is fully-grade separated but not access controlled. (see map.)

US 90 will be Houston's first, and hopefully only, "mini-freeway" or "superstreet." (I consider Memorial to be fully access controlled for it's freeway-like section.) The facility is fully grade separated at all intersections but is not controlled access. The median will have a few, widely spaced breaks in it to allow left turns. All overpasses will have six lanes, and between overpasses the roadway will generally have 8 lanes. Since there is a railroad track on the north side of the right-of-way, the westbound lanes will effectively be access-controlled since there is no property access over the railroad tracks, except in one location just west of Hillcroft.

So is a mini-freeway a good thing a or bad thing? Well, that depends on the alternative, of course. It's a bad thing if the mini-freeway is being built instead of a fully controlled-access freeway. It'a a good thing if the other alternative was a facility with traffic lights. The improvements to 90a will be a great benefit to motorists since the traffic lights will be eliminated. Still, I feel that this corridor should have been designated as a full freeway to provide an alternate freeway route to US 59, the Southwest Freeway, which is possibly the busiest freeway in the United States at 371,000 vehicles per day. The southwest freeway will be very difficult to further expand because it has maxed-out its right-of-way; at this time, no further improvements are plannned for the section of US 59 north of US 90A. I don't know the factors that played into the decision to build the "mini-freeway". I assume cost and the need to acquire a lot of right-of-way were at the top of the list.

As a point of historical interest, this section of US 90A was one of Houston's first divided four-lane highways (or dual-carriageway, as it was called back in those days.) A 1952 map shows this section of 90A as a four-lane divided. This route was signed as US 90A and also as US 59 at the time (see map). US 59 did not start to take shape until the early 1960's.

These schematics start at the east end and work westward