By: Dug Begley

Houston has a Main Street, two of them in fact, but its actual main street — Westheimer —  is about to get a lot of attention from downtown to the western edge of the metro area as part of regional transit plans.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston and Metropolitan Transit Authority officials announced Wednesday that $5 million in federal funding will go to spruce up and rebuild segments of Westheimer where Metro is bundling small improvements to make a big difference in bus service along the street.

“It is really a much-needed improvement,” Fletcher said, noting that transportation in the region must be “accessible, affordable, efficient, and keep Houstonians moving.”

The money was included in federal appropriations for 2023, where members of Congress dedicated funding to specific projects. Work on some of the improvements, such as new bus stops and sidewalks, could start in the summer, Metro Chairman Sanjay Ramabhadran said.

The plans along Westheimer, one of 17 so-called BOOST corridors planned by Metro over the next 25 years, are not finalized so the specifics of what the $5 million will fund is undetermined.

“It will make this a much more comfortable corridor,” said Joe Webb, chairman of the project and planning committee for the Montrose Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.

Along more than 15 miles of Westheimer, stretching from downtown Houston to George Bush Park, Metro is planning to add larger bus stops with lighting and digital signs to display when the next bus will arrive, along with much-needed sidewalk repairs, curbs to make boarding the bus less of a step up for riders and pockets in some locations where buses can swing in and pick up passengers without blocking the street.

“We want it to look and feel to some extent like a (bus rapid transit) corridor or rail corridor,” Ramabhadran said.

He said Metro plans to spend about $30 million on the improvements along Westheimer, with funding coming from federal sources, the $3.5 billion in local borrowing voters approved for Metro in 2019, and others that could coordinate, such as the city, county and area management districts.

Many already have a template of what Westheimer could look like in other spots. Parts of the road in Westchase were redone during the past two years, part of a $20 million redo in the area that brought wider sidewalks, landscaping and new bus shelters.

“We are always going to be an auto-dominated city,” Westchase District general manager and former state lawmaker Jim Murphy said. “But transit is going to be a key part of that… public transportation has got to compete with cars.”

That is especially true along Westheimer, the region’s longest east-west major thoroughfare and by many measures its most crowded. Westheimer and Voss is commonly the region’s busiest intersection, with other major crossings not far behind. The street is lined with some of Houston’s most beloved restaurants and some of its most iconic shopping centers, from River Oaks, to the Galleria to West Oaks Mall. It draws travelers from across the region regardless of ethnicity, age or economic status, both inside Loop 610 and in Houston’s far-flung suburbs.

"If you want to travel the world, all you have to do is ride the 82 Westheimer," Ramabhadran said. "You will experience the cuisines and languages of the entire planet."

The 82 Westheimer bus line, meanwhile, is the busiest in Metro's system and by ridership is the most-used bus route in Texas. The route also is a major carrier into the central business district.

Westheimer will be the third bus line converted under the BOOST program, which stands for Bus Operations Optimized System Treatments. Work continues along the 54 Scott and the 56 Montrose/Airline routes where some of the changes already are noticeable with larger stations and pedestrian crossings.

“It’s certainly nice to have someplace to sit down,” Margarite Lopez said as she waited along Studewood for a bus Wednesday morning at a BOOST-branded stop. “I saw them rebuilding the street, so it was nice to see something for those of us on the bus, too.”

Riders and drivers should expect more construction across the region. The BOOST corridors are part of Metro’s $7.5 billion long-range plan, which includes two-way HOV lanes on all local highways, an extension of the Green and Purple Line light rail routes to Hobby Airport and 75 miles of bus rapid transit along key corridors.

A second round of meetings for the planned 25-mile University Line starts Thursday night, with seven more to follow until March 9.

The upcoming meetings reflect some of the changes Metro made to the proposed route from the Tidwell Transit Center north of Trinity Gardens to the Westchase Park and Ride near the Westpark Tollway and Sam Houston Tollway.

The biggest changes come in Third Ward, where community feedback led Metro to not plan dedicated transit lanes on Blodgett, but instead head north from Wheeler Avenue along Ennis to Elgin.

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