Bicycle lanes will soon open up downtown Houston

HOUSTON, Texas (FOX 26) - The City of Houston has expanded its bicycle paths significantly and soon you will be able to use them for getting around the downtown district.

All down Polk Street, there are two bright green lanes going in each direction, biking signals as well as huge barriers. Each is designed so that if driven over, once hit by a wheel, the vehicle will be redirected back into its lane. The project cost the city around $100,000, which was mostly spent on hardware. The city installed the lanes so that cyclists could essentially travel from one end of downtown Houston to the other.

"It will extend it so that riders will be able to ride from the Eleanor Tinsley Park to the Sam Houston park area, to Discovery Green and then extend over into the bike lanes on Polk and tie into the Columbia Tap Trail System," says deputy director of public works and engineering Jeff Weatherford.

The project is expected to be done by the end of the year and ready for cyclists to use by the beginning of the new year. The rest of the project going from St. Emmanuel to Emancipation will be funded by East Downtown Tours, which will also work on some road improvement projects in the area.