Westheimer getting an extreme makeover

06:32 PM CST on Monday, January 24, 2005

By Dan Lauck / 11 News

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HOUSTON -- To drive Westheimer is to drive the gauntlet of the worst that Houston has to offer -- a fender-bender a minute, rolling traffic jams and worse.

KHOU

Crews are taking out the cut-thrus which are considered one of the worst problems on Westheimer.

If left to the insurance industry, Westheimer would be condemned and closed by nightfall. Instead, the state is trying to fix it.

That's good news for Gene Walker. He's been teaching driving for 30 years. Westheimer is a constant source of anxiety for rookies behind the wheel.

"We tell 'em... to be very patient, to be ready for people, to follow very close, ready for people cuttin' in on 'em--going back and forth, across," said Walker.

Westheimer's numbers help tell the story. They show the eastern section -- from the Loop to the Beltway -- had 2.5 times the number of wrecks per mile as the state average.

Even so, an improvement project under way since last summer was never about safety -- it was about mobility. Texans, it seems, don't mind dying. they just want to do it in a hurry.

The state, though, now believes it's found ways to speed up traffic and make it safer by getting rid of the cut-thrus.

"They're called conflict points," said John Bobo, who ran a study of Westheimer's problems.

He said the cut-thrus are the worst of the problems. They are the openings in the median for left-hand turns or U-turns. They often cause cars to back up into traffic which leads to collisions when people try to get past.

Most of those cut-thru's will now be disappearing and, some say, not a minute too soon.

The project is expected to be completed by the summer.