Here’s the news that’s “all the rage in Oak Forest,” according to a reader: TxDOT has reopened the segment of the hike-and-bike trail along White Oak Bayou that wends its way between between Ella Blvd. and 34th St. That stretch of asphalt had been closed in December 2011 for construction on the North Loop overpass at T.C. Jester. TxDOT is planning an official celebration of the reopening this coming Saturday, but it’s unclear whether the path, which lines the east side of the bayou, will have to be closed again at some point. “Please note that TxDOT has not completed the reconstruction of the bridges that support the feeder roads across the bayou,” reads a note on the Houston Bikeways Program Facebook page posted this morning. “We hope to get more details shortly.”
- Without much fanfare, TxDOT re-opened the segment of the White Oak Bayou trail [Houston Bikeways Program]
- Previously on Swamplot: White Oak Bayou Bike Bypass Impasse
Photo of trail at E. T.C. Jester and Loop 610 North: Jim Mackey/White Oak Bayou Association
Is this what they’re building at South Gessner and Brays Bayou, too? An underpass is sorely needed there, and it looks like they’re building ramps.
I always grumpily suspected, as I fumed and biked some other route that wasn’t closed, that the trail was just a free externality to the road builder. When they decided that shutting it was convenient for them, if they hadn’t been allowed to make that decision without some sort of ongoing consequence, I can’t see it staying closed so long for so little actual reason. (It isn’t like they have much construction to show for 3+ years!) For example, if they’d been charged a “dirt and rocks storage surface” rent commensurate with rendering useless a big stretch of a major public trail. Or if they’d simply been told no, that they had to minimize disruption.
Is my grumpy suspicion right? I’d love to know if I’m wrong.
However, the trail is reopened for now, and construction isn’t finished. Someone did something right—it seems like there’s probably a story behind that, and I’d be interested to hear it.
Yay – it only took two and half years!!! We should rename the hike and bike initiative to “Greenways 2075.”