Interstate 45


Interstate 45 is a major Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Texas. While most primary Interstate routes which have numbers ending in "5" are cross-country north–south routes, I-45 is comparatively short, with the entire route located within Texas. Additionally, it has the shortest length of all the primary Interstates divisible by 5, and is the only Interstate Highway of such. It connects the cities of Dallas and Houston, continuing southeast from Houston to Galveston over the Galveston Causeway to the Gulf of Mexico.
I-45 replaced U.S. Highway 75 over its entire length, although portions of US 75 remained parallel to I-45 until its elimination south of Downtown Dallas in 1987. At the south end of I-45, State Highway 87 continues into downtown Galveston. The north end is at I-30 in Downtown Dallas, where US 75 used the Good-Latimer Expressway. A short continuation, known by traffic reporters as the I-45 overhead, signed as part of US 75 and also part of unsigned I-345, continues north to the merge with the current end of US 75. Traffic can use Spur 366 to connect to I-35E at the north end of I-345.
The portion of I-45 between Downtown and Galveston is known to Houston residents as the Gulf Freeway. The short elevated section of I-45, which forms the southern boundary of Downtown, is known as the Pierce Elevated after the surface street next to which the freeway runs, while north of I-10 it is known as the North Freeway. I-45 and I-345 in the Dallas area, north of the interchanges with I-20 and SH 310, is the Julius Schepps Freeway. The Gulf Freeway and North Freeway both include reversible high-occupancy vehicle lane for busses and other HOVs to and from Downtown.
The freeway is the subject of ongoing controversy and federal investigation due to a proposed expansion project in Harris County, which would displace hundreds of people from their homes and worsen air quality. The local authorities have opposed the expansion project, while the Texas Department of Transportation supports expansion, and negotiations are pending. The project's estimated cost is at least $9.7 billion and is expected to take at least two decades to complete.

Route description

In addition to the official control cities of Galveston, Houston, and Dallas, I-45 serves a number of other communities, including La Marque, League City, Spring, The Woodlands, Conroe, Willis, Huntsville, Madisonville, Centerville, Buffalo, Fairfield, Corsicana, and Ennis.
US 190 joins I-45 for from Huntsville to Madisonville. US 287 joins I-45 for from Corsicana to Ennis. US 287 signs are only posted from the northern end of Business I-45-F in Corsicana to the Ellis County line.
Image:I-45 & Louetta Rita Evacuation.jpg|thumb|Hurricane Rita evacuation from the Louetta Road overpass
I-45 gained notoriety during Hurricane Rita in 2005. Thousands of Houston area evacuees jammed the roadway trying to leave. As a result, the freeway became a parking lot. Gas stations ran dry and hundreds of people's cars simply ran empty, their occupants having to spend the night along the shoulder. Four-hour drives suddenly became 24-hour drives. Even though TxDOT started contraflow lane reversal at Farm to Market Road 1488, it did not alleviate the traffic jam deep into the city, as that starting point was even north of The Woodlands, which is close to Conroe, the northern terminus of Greater Houston.
At just, I-45 is the shortest of the primary Interstates and the only primary Interstate to be entirely inside of one state.

Gulf Freeway

The stretch of I-45 connecting Galveston with Houston is known as the Gulf Freeway. It was the first freeway built in Texas—opened in stages beginning on October 1, 1948, up to a full completion to Galveston in 1952, as part of US 75. At the north end, it connects to the North Freeway via the short Pierce Elevated, completed in 1967. The section north of the curve near SH 3/Monroe Road in southeastern Houston was built on the right-of-way of the former Galveston–Houston Electric Railway, which entered downtown on Pierce Street.
After several interchanges, I-45 crosses the Galveston Causeway and passes Tiki Island. Old US 75 south of this junction was upgraded on the spot.
The Gulf Freeway generally parallels SH 3 about to the west, bypassing La Marque, Dickinson, and South Houston. It includes interchanges with several other freeways: FM 1764, State Highway NASA Road 1, and the Sam Houston Tollway, meeting the north end of SH 3 in southeastern Houston. A center reversible HOV lane begins just south of the Sam Houston Tollway.
Image:45intoI-10 2.jpg|thumb|250px|right|I-45 and I-10/US 90 next to Downtown Houston
In Houston, I-45 meets I-610 and SH 35 at a complicated interchange. At the merge with Spur 5, a short freeway spur to the University of Houston, elevated collector–distributor roads begin. The collector–distributor roads and the HOV lane end at Emancipation Avenue, the original end of the Gulf Freeway. Just past Emancipation Avenue is an interchange with I-69/US 59 and SH 288, after which I-45 technically becomes the North Freeway as it runs along the northwest half of the block between Pierce Street and Gray Street as the Pierce Elevated.
The reversible HOV lane begins in Downtown at the intersection of St. Joseph Parkway and Emancipation Avenue, with easy access inbound to St. Joseph Parkway and outbound from Pierce Street. It runs down the median of the Gulf Freeway, mostly at the same level as the mainlanes. Ramps are provided for access to and from the following roads:
The abandoned marshy land between Harris and Galveston through which the I-45 runs became known as the Texas Killing Fields because over 30 dead bodies have been found in the area.

North Freeway

The I-45 North Freeway HOV begins in downtown Houston near the University of Houston–Downtown, with easy access inbound on Milam Street and outbound on Travis Street. Ramps and entrances are provided for access from the following roads. All are fully accessible.
  • I-10/US 90 westbound exit and entrance only
  • Quitman Street
  • Airline Drive
  • North Shepherd
  • FM 525
  • Kuykendahl Park & Ride
  • FM 1960
The HOV ends approximately north of the FM 1960 exit and becomes a diamond white line at grade separated HOV north to just before exit 84 Loop 336 on the south side of Conroe. This provides constant HOV access with one lane on the northbound side and one lane on the southbound side with periodic dotted lines for access at major exits.

Julius Schepps Freeway

The stretch of I-45 along the Julius Schepps Freeway in Dallas, from the Trinity River to Downtown Dallas up to and including I-345, is elevated above the surrounding areas for most of its length. As such, when ice storms hit the Dallas area, the freeway is shut down, and traffic is diverted to SH 310 and US 175, which parallel I-45.

History

In the initial assignment of state highways in 1917, the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and Greater Houston were connected by a branch of SH 2, which ran via Waco and Bryan and continued on to Galveston. The more direct route followed by I-45 was not initially part of the system between Richland and Huntsville; this cutoff was added by 1919 as SH 32, and US 75 was assigned to the alignment in 1926. Prior to the coming of the Interstate Highway System in the late 1950s, the only improvements to US 75 in Texas beyond building a two-lane paved roadway were in the Houston and Dallas areas. The highways in and near these cities, however, included some of the first freeways in the state: the Gulf Freeway and the Central Expressway.

Gulf Freeway (Houston to Galveston)

The Galveston–Houston Electric Railway began operating an interurban between those cities on December 5, 1911, and last ran on October 31, 1936, though the Houston Electric Company, operator of Houston's city transit system, continued to run trains on the portion between Downtown and Park Place. A proposal for a "superhighway" between the cities was first made in 1930, and Houston Mayor Oscar F. Holcombe began to work toward it later that decade. He announced an agreement with the Houston Electric Company on April 12, 1940, through which the company could convert its four remaining lines to busses in exchange for the right-of-way used by the Park Place line. This line was last used on June 9, 1940, the last day of streetcar service in Houston; the replacement is still operated by the Houston Metro as the 40 along Telephone Road.
Before the new highway was built, US 75 followed Galveston Road, Broadway Street, and Harrisburg Boulevard into Downtown. SH 225 carried traffic from La Porte along La Porte Road to US 75 in Harrisburg, and SH 35 connected Alvin with Downtown along Telephone Road and Leeland Street. Plans made in October 1943, when the Texas Transportation Commission signed an agreement with Houston and Harris County, referred to the new bypass as a relocation of US 75. Drawings were released by the state on January 31, 1946, and included almost continuous frontage roads, broken only at railroad crossings. Although the freeway ended at Live Oak Street, a so-called "four-street distribution system" of four one-way streets, timed for, carried traffic to Main Street. Initially, the two southwestern streets—Pierce Street and Calhoun Avenue —carried traffic toward the freeway, and the other two—Jefferson and Pease streets—carried exiting traffic; once the freeway was completed far enough to allow US 75 to be marked along it, Pease and Pierce streets carried that highway to Fannin Street.
The first freeway dedication in the state took place at 7:00 pm on September 30, 1948, at the overpass over Calhoun Road by the University of Houston. The roadway between Downtown and Telephone Road was opened to traffic after speeches but lacked an official name, being called the "Interurban Expressway", after the rail line that it replaced, by the press. Mayor Holcombe quickly started a contest to assign a name, and the city chose the winning entry on December 17, 1948. Sara Yancy of Houston Heights won $100 for her submission of "Gulf Freeway", named for the Gulf of Mexico that the highway would reach when completed. The freeway was extended to Griggs Road in February 1951 and Reveille Street in July 1951 and was completed to the Galveston Causeway on August 2, 1952, with a ceremony on the bridge over FM 517 near Dickinson. However, beyond Reveille Street, the road was not built to freeway standards, with 32 at-grade intersections, though no traffic signals. The highway curved away from the old interurban right-of-way near Monroe Road, about where the Park Place streetcar line had ended. In December 1952, a short spur, now part of I-610, was opened to connect with SH 225. A three-way split in the northwest part of Park Place, near where Gulfgate Shopping Center opened in 1956, carried nonstop traffic to and from SH 35 and SH 225. This split was also the location of a lane drop; the roadway carried six lanes between Houston and the interchange and four beyond to Galveston. After the new US 75 was completed, the old road between Downtown and South Houston was dropped from the state highway system, while the remainder became SH 3, connecting to the Gulf Freeway via Winkler Drive, effective August 20, 1952.
The first major change was made in preparation for the North Freeway connection, when the directions of Calhoun Avenue and Jefferson Street were swapped so that they would alternate. A bridge, dated 1954, was built to carry traffic from Jefferson Street over traffic to Jefferson Street, and US 75 was moved to Calhoun Avenue northbound, soon crossing downtown on the one-way pair of Calhoun Avenue and Pierce Street to the new North Freeway. A median barrier was added in 1956 to prevent crossover accidents. Southeast of Downtown, the at-grade intersections proved dangerous, and only two had been replaced with interchanges by 1959, when the Texas Highway Department began a program to upgrade the road to full freeway standards. Frontage roads would be required along the entire highway, since the state had not purchased access rights, and so abutting property owners were able to build driveways to the road. To accomplish this, traffic was shifted to the newly built frontage roads so that the central main lanes could be reconstructed. This grade separation was completed from Houston to Almeda-Genoa Road in June 1959, FM 1959 in October 1964, FM 518 in December 1970, and FM 1764 in 1976. As the section beyond FM 1764 into Galveston had already been rebuilt, this marked the completion of the Gulf Freeway as an actual freeway.
Image:Houston, TX skyline from freeway.jpg|thumb|Looking northwest along the Gulf Freeway toward Downtown in 2006; the Spur 5 distributor lanes, completed in 1988, are to the right
As the first freeway in Texas, the standards of the Gulf Freeway soon became inadequate, with poor sight lines and little room to merge when entering. It also attracted development, such as Gulfgate Center, the first mall in the Houston area, the Manned Spacecraft Center, and many residential developments. Heavy congestion began to affect the freeway by the early 1960s; two roughly parallel freeways—the Harrisburg and Alvin freeways—were proposed at that time to relieve the traffic but were not built. A short project to widen the road to six lanes between I-610 and Sims Bayou was completed in 1960, and ramp meters were installed in 1966. The I-610 interchange was rebuilt with direct connections for most movements in 1975. Plans to reconstruct the freeway near Downtown began in 1972, taking about 170 houses and 22 businesses from the southwest side for the room to expand the main lanes and add parallel lanes for the Alvin Freeway. Local opposition was unsuccessful at stopping the project, and construction on this segment, and others to the southeast, took place in the 1980s. The lanes were shifted outward to make room for the transitway, which opened to I-610 on May 16, 1988. These lanes were inspired by the similar ones on the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway in the Washington metropolitan area. That year also marked the end of the reconstruction inside I-610, along with the elevated distribution lanes alongside the mainlanes near Downtown; the first short piece of the Alvin Freeway was finally connected to these in 1999. This project gave I-45 its current configuration, mostly eight mainlanes wide, from Sims Bayou past I-610 to Griggs Road in 1981, to Telephone Road in 1982, to Lockwood Drive in 1985, and, finally, to Downtown in 1988.
These projects, however, were not the end of construction on the Gulf Freeway. The highway beyond I-610 to FM 1959, which had just been upgraded in the 1950s and 1960s, saw an extension of the transitway to a temporary end near FM 1959, widening to eight lanes, and a large stack interchange at the Sam Houston Tollway. This reconstruction was completed between Almeda-Genoa Road and College Avenue in 1991, between College Avenue and Sims Bayou in 1994, and, finally in 1997, there was no construction anywhere on the entire length of the freeway when the tollway interchange was opened, along with the widening between Almeda-Genoa Road and FM 1959. A 1999 study recommended widening the entire stretch from the Sam Houston Tollway to Galveston to at least eight lanes. Construction to replace the Galveston Causeway began in mid-2003, and work on a section through Webster, including a new interchange with NASA Road 1, began in mid-2007.
Widening of the freeway between Kurland Drive at Bay Area Boulevard began in July 2011. This construction will expand the number of freeway lanes from six to ten and increase the number of frontage lanes from four to six. The HOV lane will be extended to the southern end of the construction. It will also involve rebuilding the overpasses at Dixie Farm Road and Clear Lake City Boulevard. According to TxDOT, the project is approximately in length, starting at Kurland and ending approximately south of Bay Area Boulevard.
The project has six phases. Phase one is the reconstruction of the mainlanes from the northern end of the project to just south of FM 1959. The end of this phase will include the demolition and reconstruction of the bridge at the FM 1959 intersection. Phase two, planned to begin in mid-2012, will be the reconstruction of the frontage roads from just south of FM 1959 to the southern end of the project. Phase three will be the reconstruction of the mainlanes on the southern half of the project and is planned to begin in mid-2013. Phase four, scheduled to start late 2014, will be the demolition and reconstruction of the overpass at Clear Lake City Boulevard. Phase five was the demolition and reconstruction of El Dorado and Bay Area boulevards. The demolition and reconstruction was finished in 2016. As a result, the 1960s-era cloverleaf interchanges have been eliminated with overpasses. Phase six will be making the new lanes of the freeway. It will have five lanes each direction along with the new overpasses for those two underpasses. This will be completed 2017.
In 2015, reconstruction and widening of I-45 began in Downtown due to heavy traffic. The southbound onramp from Allen Parkway will be moved to enter on the right side, and long-range plans call for the demolition of the outdated Pierce Elevated, with the reroute of I-45 being along I-69/US 59 and I-10/US 90 to the North Freeway. The parts of the Gulf Freeway at I-10 and I-45 will be known as the Downtown Connector. If I-45 was rerouted and the Pierce Elevated demolished, the connecting ramps south of Allen Parkway would become a second downtown spur, which will result in the demise of a full freeway loop around Downtown., there are no plans to place the Pierce Elevated in a tunnel similar to Spur 366 in Dallas since Greater Houston is prone to flooding, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.