Free Republic

When Modesti Cooper returned home to Houston in July 2019 after more than a decade overseas with the United States military, she moved into her dream house on the corner of Nance and Grove streets in Houston’s Fifth Ward. She’d bought a parcel of land and designed the home from scratch in her downtime while touring from Kuwait to Afghanistan to Iraq. It was a relief to finally move in. “It’s a calm, cool, nice area,” Cooper says. “Besides the traffic, there’s no violence, no noise. It’s so quiet, it’s unbelievable. I had rockets and mortars and missiles blown over...

Texas lawmakers have gone from championing to criticizing toll roads, a shift that some Houston-area leaders worry has gone too far and could limit coming projects. "Without toll roads and that funding, I don't know what we are going to do," said Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal, citing the need for new roadways in rapidly growing parts of the Houston area. The concern, voiced at a Dec. 15 meeting of the Houston-Galveston Area Council's Transportation Policy Council - the region's transportation planning group - was shared in response to decisions by the Texas Transportation Commission. A day earlier, the commission...

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Charges have been filed against a man who stopped traffic on a busy freeway for a marriage proposal.The proposal happened on the North Freeway near downtown Houston on Sunday. Eyewitness News learned Tuesday that Harris County District Attorney's Office is charging Vidal Valladares, 24, with obstruction of highway, a class b misdemeanor.We spoke with the couple on Tuesday, as Valladares said he was going downtown to answer to the charges."I'm feeling bad, and of course," said Valladares. "I'm wanting to apologize to everyone if I caused any problems. That wasn't my intention in the beginning. I just...

According to proposals on the table at the Texas Department of Transportation, the highway system around Downtown Houston may be subject to a significant transformation. This well may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city to reconnect neighborhoods long bifurcated by highway IH-45 while also improving traffic capacity of the highways. How to change and improve the highway system is of great debate. As the Department of Transportation follows through on its federally required processes to propose and examine alternatives to the expansion of IH-45, also called the North Houston Highway Improvement Project, itÂ’s winnowing the options quickly. Now is...

TEXAS CITY — A massive superhighway that Texans have protested at public hearings statewide drew heated opposition among Galveston County residents, who said they feared the toll road would cripple the local shipping industry and do nothing to improve insufficient hurricane evacuation routes. The Trans-Texas Corridor would wind from Laredo to Corpus Christi, wrap around the western edge of Greater Houston, parallel Interstate 59 through East Texas and leave the state in Texarkana. But residents at a public hearing Thursday night in Texas City questioned the real purpose for the road, which would also be part of a national Interstate...

The much touted — and disputed — Trans-Texas Corridor may be one step away from a pipe dream and one step closer to a reality. The group this week released its Tier 1 Environmental Impact study, a look at how building the highway, dubbed I-69, running from Texarkana to Laredo, would affect the 50 or so counties it would run through. Bryan Wood, district engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation in Bryan, said the first study only looks at how the many initially proposed component of the highway would impact the surrounding areas. “We’re still a long ways away...

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is reaching out to his city's residents still living in Houston with a large billboard on the southeast side at the Gulf Freeway and Wayside. It reads "Re-elect our Mayor Ray Nagin and let's keep New Orleans moving forward." Members of the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association have arranged for buses to take people back to the city to vote. Early voting begins Monday.