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Designated bus lanes will run along the middle of Post Oak Boulevard.
The Uptown BRT will run along the middle of Post Oak Boulevard. It will connect with designated bus lanes that TxDOT is building along the 610 West Loop.
The Uptown District is heading up the project. Metro will operate the buses.
Uptown District President John Breeding says when Post Oak was first built decades ago, the neighborhood was mostly suburban. Now it’s a major business center, so much of the initial work will focus on underground utilities.
“And so we need to go in there and not only replace them because they’re worn out, but increase the capacity to serve what is there today and what will be there in the future,” says Breeding.
Breeding says he knows some businesses in the neighborhood aren’t happy about the project, but he says they’ll have direct access to Post Oak while that utility work is taking place.
“So instead of an open ditch running down the street we’re going to be strategically placing places where we can actually bore from one pit to the other and we’ll keep two lanes of traffic open all the time,” Breeding explains.
Construction on the actual bus lanes is expected to start in spring of 2016. TxDOT hopes to start on the West Loop bus lanes in 2017. The project also includes a new transit center at Westpark and the West Loop.
The total price tag is around $192 million with money coming from state, federal, and local sources.
