TEI led mobility planning for the Livable Center team working to improve livability and generate economic development along the five-mile Long Point Road corridor in the culturally-diverse Spring Branch Management District.
Long Point is currently an auto-oriented street of strip malls with multiple restaurants, shopping facilities, businesses, a large park, and a few homes. The existing roadway is four lanes wide, with no center turn lane, in most places. METRO operates a highly utilized bus line with frequent stop location, but sidewalks are narrow, uneven, and close to traffic. Many wide driveways and large, underused parking lots create safety conflicts and stress for an unpleasant pedestrian experience.
This transformative plan builds on Long Point’s cultural assets to create a cohesive “main street” that’s walkable and bikable in the heart of Spring Branch. Recommendations aim to foster an attractive corridor for quality retail, restaurants, and safer places for people to walk, bike, ride transit, and drive. As transportation lead, TEI focused on multimodal mobility enhancements within the corridor’s public right-of-way:
- Two pilot projects: Near-term implementation steps include two pilot projects at key locations: a trial roadway reconfiguration from four lanes to three lanes, (one lane each direction and a center turning lane); and wider sidewalks/sidepaths for walking and biking.
- Bicycle circulation and regional connectivity: Existing right-of-way is insufficient for bike lanes along the entire 5-mile corridor; however, there are opportunities to include on- and off-street bikeways, use cross streets to provide access to destinations, and create regional connections north and south of the corridor.
- Transit optimization: Opportunities to make the high-frequency bus route more reliable, convenient, and comfortable include consolidating some of the transit stops, providing enhanced bus waiting/shelter areas, and implementing signal timing improvements.
