Anyone who has ever driven in Houston knows that traffic can be absolutely abysmal. Seemingly, it’s not for city planners lack of trying. It may come as a surprise for many to learn that the country’s widest freeway is located in Katy with a whopping 13 lanes.
Everything is bigger in Texas. Connecting the western part of the Katy suburb to the city center, the Katy Freeway, located on a section of I-10, spans 26 lanes if including 12 main lanes, 8 feeder lanes, and 6 managed lanes, making it the widest highway in the country.
At a daily average, the Katy Freeway is trafficked by some 219,000 vehicles.
The effectiveness of this massive freeway has been the subject of debate. Proponents of the Katy Freeway insist that the freeway’s management system – in which mass transit vehicles use the managed lanes during peak hours while single-occupancy vehicle pay tolls during off-peak hours – effectively disperses traffic and reduces congestion.
Critics however, have pointed out that this is not the case. Roadtotravel, for instance, has pointed out that commute times have increased by an average of 30% in the morning and 55% in the afternoon. The publication also points out that this result is due to subsequent demand of people feeling now incentivized to drive.
We should note that Houston’s claim to the widest freeway in the world has been disputed. Politifact argued that frontage roads are not normally included in measuring the size of a freeway, and without, the Katy Freeway would only have 13 lanes at the widest – less that roads in Canada and China.
All said, the Katy Freeway is an impressive testament to Houston engineering, and a key component of Houston’s metropolitan system.