Interstate 45 - History - Gulf Freeway (Houston To Galveston)

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 "super-highway" between the cities was first made in 1930, and Houston Mayor Oscar Holcombe began to work towards 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 buses, 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 METRO as the 40 along Telephone Road.

Before the new highway was built, U.S. Highway 75 followed Galveston Road (now mostly State Highway 3), Broadway Street, and Harrisburg Boulevard into downtown Houston. State Highway 225 carried traffic from La Porte along La Porte Road to US 75 in Harrisburg, and State Highway 35 connected Alvin with downtown Houston 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 30 miles per hour (50 km/h), carried traffic to Main Street. Initially, the two southwestern streets — Pierce Street and Calhoun Avenue (now St. Joseph Parkway) - carried traffic towards 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 p.m. 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, Reveille Street (onto which SH 35 was realigned) in July 1951, and was completed to the Galveston Causeway on August 2, 1952, with a ceremony on the bridge over Farm to Market Road 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 Interstate 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 non-stop traffic to and from SH 35 and SH 225. This split was also the location of a lane drop; the roadway carried six lanes (three in each direction) 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 State Highway 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 Houston, 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 (exit 34) in June 1959, Farm to Market Road 1959 (exit 30) in October 1964, Farm to Market Road 518 (exit 23) in December 1970, and Farm to Market Road 1764 (exit 15) 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.

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 Shopping City, 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 Freeway and Alvin Freeway - 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 Shirley 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 main lanes 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 main lanes 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.

However, this was 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 the NASA Road 1 Bypass, began in mid-2007.

Widening of the freeway between Kurland Drive and Clear Lake City 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. It will also involve rebuilding the overpasses at Dixie Farm Road and Clear Lake City Boulevard. The project is expected to take four years to complete. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, the project is approximately five miles in length, starting at Kurland and ending approximately one mile south of Clear Lake City Boulevard.

The project has four phases. Phase one is the reconstruction of the main lanes 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 the summer of 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 main lanes on the southern half of the project, and is planned to begin in the summer of 2013. Phase four, scheduled to start in fall 2014, will be the demolition and reconstruction of the overpass at Clear Lake City Boulevard.