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Planning & Development

Transportation Planning

Transportation connects Houstonians with their jobs, their parks, and every part of their lives. Transportation planning helps to make sure that everyone throughout the city can do more than travel, but can travel safely, with a range of transportation choices, and enjoy the trip along the way.

By providing safe and reliable transportation for all, Houston’s Transportation Planning Division helps Houston be a great place to live, work, and play, providing economic opportunities and high quality life for all.

The Transportation Planning Division coordinates efforts for all modes: walking, biking, riding transit, and driving, so that the total demand for transportation doesn’t overwhelm any one of our options. Our work compares how the City is today with a different version of how it could look in the future; facilitate difficult questions of prioritizing Houston’s varying transportation needs and helping understand the tradeoffs for different choices; and develop fiscal plans to implement the decisions.

The Transportation Planning Division is responsible for the Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan (the City’s and its ETJ long range transportation plan). It also supports the development of the City’s transportation policies and regulations, provides technical support to the region’s Transportation Advisory Committee and the City’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, leads the Vision Zero for Houston Action Planning Process, manages the grant for Houston BCycle, the City’s bikeshare program, and facilitates discussion with TxDOT about the I-45 expansion, called North Houston Highway Improvement Program (NHHIP). It coordinates with the Houston-Galveston Area Council, METRO, and other transportation agencies within the region and pursues federal funding opportunities for transportation planning studies and public-private partnerships.

Consolidated Transportation Planning

A number of agencies within the City of Houston corporate limits plan, operate, maintain and implement transportation projects. Some of these agencies include City of Houston, Harris and Fort Bend County, TxDOT, METRO, Port of Houston, H-GAC, Management Districts , TIRZ’s, Freight Operators, Municipal Utility Districts, etc. However there is no centralized information source to identify these ongoing plans, programs, or projects. Sharing information would allow the City and the region to identify opportunities to leverage resources and better prioritize investment within our community.

The goal is to develop a GIS based online application that would identify planned, proposed or ongoing transportation planning, design, operational, maintenance and implementation projects within the City of Houston. Agencies that have GIS data or share the information in a similar format can be viewed through this application.