Houston Hits Reverse on Safety-Focused Street Changes
Mayor John Whitmire has halted several road projects aimed at improving pedestrian and bike safety, worrying Vision Zero advocates in the Texas city.
Morning traffic in Houston in 2020, when the city joined the Vision Zero traffic safety movement.
Photo by Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
Lyla Rais thinks the cars go too fast on Montrose Boulevard. “It’s kind of like they’ll run us over,” she said. The nine-year-old walks to school every day with her dad, Mehdi Rais, and half a dozen other kids and parents from Montrose, a neighborhood just west of downtown Houston.
On a rainy Friday in May, they walk east on Clay Street, navigating puddles, and hover on the edge of the street. “If there’s no crosswalk then it’s not really safe, but if there is, you’re pretty safe,” said Rian Watson, also nine, who’s in Lyla’s third-grade class at Wharton Dual Language Academy. He mimics Rais stopping cars in the crosswalk — arm extended, hand up. “One time, Mehdi dropped an F bomb,” he said, when a car “came out of nowhere” as the kids were in the crosswalk.