In the Spring area, where the freeway is horribly bottlenecked and dangerous at two lanes in each direction, relief is finally in store. To the north of The Woodlands, there are some concrete plans for widening, but no start date. Sometime after 2002, the freeway will be widened to eight lanes from FM 1488 to Loop 336 south of Conroe and six lanes all the way north to the Walker County line. The HOV lane will be extended north to Texas 105 in Conroe. Since Montgomery County does not belong to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the question of who will operate it has yet to be resolved.
Officials hope to set a construction date next month for sometime in the next few years.
The transportation department will begin a one-year study this fall of what needs to be done South of Beltway 8 to downtown Houston. Residents will have an opportunity to look at different options and voice suggestions. North was the first Houston freeway to have a carpool lane and is the only freeway to have a toll road running exactly parallel to it. Users loved the concept, but people in regular cars didn't like having a lane stolen from them. So Metro set out to build separate HOV lanes in freeway median strips in the 1980s.