By Elissa Rivas, ABC13 Houston.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Along Houston’s major corridors, there are signs, some of them subtle, that soccer is about to take over the Bayou City. The World Cup is less than 100 days away, but TxDOT has been preparing for it for nearly two years.
Ethan Beeson, the Landscape Architect for TxDOT’s Houston District, says there’s been a flurry of painting and planting along local roads.
“We see the transportation corridors as something that everybody is going to experience; the visitors that are coming to Houston for the first time, but also it’s for the people who live here,” Beeson said.
You may have already noticed the red, round bridge ornaments along the Southwest Freeway, now painted to look like soccer balls. Beeson said they were already due for painting, “but then, since the World Cup was coming up, we thought, why don’t we paint them as soccer balls?”
Beeson said TxDOT leaders want to improve maintenance schedules and are using funds already set aside for cleaning and painting roads to help Houston look its best for visitors.
“We used to mow four times a year. Last spring, we changed it to eight times a year in Harris County for the most dense urban part. We’ve increased our litter pickup cycles,” Beeson said.
TxDOT plans to continue these improvements after the World Cup, including washing and painting concrete barriers, retaining walls, and sound walls.
Right now, they’re focusing on corridors leading to airports and event sites: Interstate 45 inside Beltway 8, the 610 Loop and Interstate 10 inside the Loop, and US 59 from FM 1960 to the South Beltway.
TxDOT isn’t just painting-they’re also planting trees. They plant about 100,000 trees a year across the six-county district, and recently they’ve focused on areas where World Cup visitors will notice them.
Since last October, more than 5,000 trees have been planted along Houston’s major corridors: the Eastex Freeway, State Highway 288, the Gulf Freeway, and the South and West Loops.
Although the World Cup will end by summer, Beeson hopes Houstonians will enjoy these improvements for many years to come.
“The trees, yes, are being planted; they’re going in the ground right now, but they’re going to be here for a long time, long after, for years after the World Cup is done. So it’s something that everyone’s going to benefit from.”
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This story comes from our news partner ABC13 Houston.