Rebuilt West Loop: It's still a freeway

After about five years of work, the $344 million reconstruction of the West Loop is finally finished — and though it's quite a bit better than it used to be, it's still a freeway. That means traffic still backs up, there's still noise, hundreds of cars still spew pollution and nearby neighborhoods still have a dozen lanes of concrete at their back doors. Hey, that's not good, right? Well, maybe not, some people say.

The Loop project was meant to alleviate some of the freeway's notorious congestion by reconfiguring entrance and exit lanes, mainly with long elevated lanes that let drivers exit without having to compete with other drivers entering the freeway. There are also some things we really appreciate, like the new West Loop feeder road tunnels under the Southwest Freeway and the freeway entrance from eastbound Alabama on the west side of the Loop. But for people in the area, the same old problems still exist, said Ed Browne of the Citizens Transportation Coalition:

"If I lived in adjacent neighborhoods, I would worry about pollution, soot, noise, and property values.

"Of course, the argument is that before, it was a parking lot so there was more pollution, etc. To which I say that in a few years (or sooner) it will just be a bigger parking lot."

Yes, but a really fancy parking lot. Some people are really unhappy, like Bill Ware and Carol Caul, who live near the 610/Katy Freeway interchange and have sued TxDOT because of noise. They claim traffic noise from the freeway impacts their neighborhood directly and is reflected off the bottom of the Woodway/Memorial ramp, and that the new freeway causes unacceptable noise levels in Memorial Park and the Arboretum. We'll see how that goes.

Overall, rebuilt freeways can only do so much, Intermodality's Christof Spieler told the Chronicle: "There's just so much that clever engineering can accomplish. ... The problem is simply too many cars and no place to put them."