Interstate 45 Totally Explained

Everything about I-45 totally explained

Interstate 45 (I-45) is an Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Texas. It connects the cities of Dallas and Houston, continuing southeast from Houston to Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico.
I-45 replaced U.S. 75 over its entire length, although portions of U.S. 75 remained parallel to I-45 until its elimination south of downtown Dallas in 1987. At the south end of I-45, State Highway 87 (formerly part of U.S. 75) continues into downtown Galveston. The north end is at Interstate 30 in downtown Dallas, where U.S. 75 used the Good-Latimer Expressway. A short continuation, known by traffic reporters as the "I-45 overhead", signed as part of US 75, and officially Interstate 345, continues north to the merge with the current end of U.S. 75. Traffic can use Spur 366 to connect to Interstate 35E at the north end of I-345.
The portion of I-45 between Galveston and downtown Houston is known as the Gulf Freeway. The short Pierce Elevated connects this to the North Freeway, which leads to Conroe. I-45 and I-345 in the Dallas area, north of the interchanges with Interstate 20 and State Highway 310 (old U.S. 75), is the Julius Schepps Freeway. The Gulf Freeway and North Freeway both include reversible High-occupancy vehicle lanes for buses and other high-occupancy vehicles to and from downtown Houston.

Route description

In addition to the official control cities of Galveston, Houston, and Dallas, I-45 serves a number of other communities, including La Marque, League City, Spring, The Woodlands, Conroe, Willis, Huntsville, Madisonville, Centerville, Buffalo, Fairfield, Corsicana, and Ennis. U.S. Highway 190 joins I-45 for 26 miles from Huntsville, Texas to Madisonville, Texas. U.S. Highway 287 joins I-45 for 18 miles from Corsicana, Texas to Ennis, Texas. U.S. 287 signs are only posted (with I-45) from the northern end of Business Loop 45 in Corsicana to the Ellis County line. Interstate 45 gained notoriety during Hurricane Rita in 2005. Thousands of Houston area evacuees jammed the roadway trying to leave. As a result, the freeway became a parking lot. Gas stations ran dry and hundreds of people's cars simply ran empty, their occupants having to spend the night along the shoulder. Four-hour drives suddenly became 24-hour drives. Even though the Texas Department of Transportation started contraflow lane reversal at FM 1488, it didn't alleviate the traffic jam deep into the city, as that starting point was even north of The Woodlands, which is close to Conroe, the northern terminus of the greater Houston area.
At just 284.913 miles, I-45 is the shortest of the primary interstates (those ending in 0 or 5).

Gulf Freeway

The stretch of I-45 connecting Galveston with Houston is known as the Gulf Freeway. It was the first freeway built in Texas--opened in stages beginning on October 1, 1948, thru a full completion to Galveston in 1952, as part of U.S. Highway 75. At the north (Houston) end, it connects to the North Freeway via the short Pierce Elevated, completed in 1967. The section north of the curve near Monroe Road/State Highway 3 in southeastern Houston was built on the right-of-way of the former Galveston-Houston Electric Railway, which entered downtown on Pierce Street.
   After several interchanges, I-45 crosses the Galveston Causeway and passes Tiki Island. The split with State Highway 6 and State Highway 146 (to State Highway 3) may be the beginning of the Gulf Freeway; old U.S. Highway 75 south of this junction was upgraded on the spot.
   The Gulf Freeway generally parallels State Highway 3 (old US 75) about 1 mile (1.5 km) to the west, bypassing La Marque, Dickinson and South Houston. It includes interchanges with several other freeways: the Emmett F. Lowry Expressway (Farm to Market Road 1764), NASA Road 1 Bypass (freeway under construction) and the Sam Houston Tollway, meeting the north end of State Highway 3 in southeastern Houston. (This part of SH 3 — on Winkler Drive and Monroe Road — isn't part of old US 75.) A center reversible HOV lane begins just south of the Sam Houston Tollway. In Houston, I-45 meets Interstate Highway 610 and State Highway 35 at a complicated interchange. At the merge with Spur 5, a short freeway spur to the University of Houston, elevated collector-distributor roads (also part of Spur 5) begin. The C/D roads and the HOV lane end at Dowling Street, the original end of the Gulf Freeway. Just past Dowling Street is an interchange with U.S. Highway 59 (Eastex Freeway and Southwest Freeway) and State Highway 288 (South Freeway), after which I-45 technically becomes the North Freeway as it runs along the northwest half of the block between Pierce Street and Gray Street as the Pierce Elevated.
   The reversible high-occupancy vehicle lane begins in downtown Houston at the intersection of St. Joseph Parkway and Dowling Street, with easy access inbound to St. Joseph Parkway and outbound from Pierce Street. It runs down the median of the Gulf Freeway, mostly at the same level as the main lanes. Ramps are provided for access to and from the following roads:

Eastwood Transit Center - full access
Interstate Highway 610 north frontage road - full access
Monroe Road and Monroe Park & Ride - full access
Fuqua Park & Ride and South Point Park & Ride - full access
Frontage roads north of Dixie Farm Road (Farm to Market Road 1959) - towards downtown, with a ramp stub for continuation

North Freeway

The North Freeway HOV begins in downtown Houston near the University of Houston–Downtown, with easy access inbound on Milam Street and outbound on Travis Street. Ramps and entrances are provided for access from the following roads:

Interstate Highway 10 westbound exit and entrance only - full access

Quitman Street - full access

Airline Drive (to Crosstimbers Road) - full access

N. Shepherd (to N. Shepherd Park & Ride) - full access

Farm to Market Road 525 (Aldine Mail Route) - full access

Kuykendahl Park & Ride - full access

Farm to Market Road 1960 (to Spring Park & Ride) - full access The HOV ends approximately one mile north of the FM1960 exit.

Schepps Freeway

The stretch of I-45 along the Julius Schepps Freeway in Dallas, from the Trinity River to Downtown Dallas, is elevated above the surrounding areas. As such, when ice storms hit the Dallas area (usually on average 1-2 times per year), the freeway is shut down, and traffic is diverted to State Highway 310 and U.S. Highway 175 which parallel I-45.
I-345 is just 1.4 miles this cutoff was added by 1919 as State Highway 32, and U.S. Highway 75 was assigned to the alignment in 1926. Prior to the coming of the Interstate Highway System in the late 1950s, the only improvements to US 75 in Texas beyond building a two-lane paved roadway were in the Houston and Dallas areas. However, the highways in and near these cities included some of the first freeways in the state: the Gulf Freeway (Houston) and the Central Expressway (Dallas).

Gulf Freeway (Houston to Galveston)

The Galveston-Houston Electric Railway began operating an interurban between those cities on December 5, 1911, and last ran on October 31, 1936, though the Houston Electric Company, operator of Houston's city transit system, continued to run trains on the portion between downtown and Park Place. A proposal for a "super-highway" between the cities was first made in 1930, and Houston Mayor Oscar Holcombe began to work towards it later that decade. He announced an agreement with the Houston Electric Company on April 12, 1940, through which the company could convert its four remaining lines to buses, in exchange for the right-of-way used by the Park Place line. This line was last used on June 9, 1940, the last day of streetcar service in Houston; the replacement is still operated by METRO as the 40 along Telephone Road.
   Before the new highway was built, U.S. Highway 75 followed Galveston Road (now mostly State Highway 3), Broadway Street, and Harrisburg Boulevard into downtown Houston. State Highway 225 carried traffic from La Porte along La Porte Road to US 75 in Harrisburg, and State Highway 35 connected Alvin with downtown Houston along Telephone Road and Leeland Street. Plans made in October 1943, when the Texas Transportation Commission signed an agreement with Houston and Harris County, referred to the new bypass as a relocation of US 75. Drawings were released by the state on January 31, 1946, and included almost continuous frontage roads, broken only at railroad crossings. of four one-way streets, timed for 30 miles per hour (50 km/h), carried traffic to Main Street. Initially, the two southwestern streets - Pierce Street and Calhoun Avenue (now St. Joseph Parkway) - carried traffic towards the freeway, and the other two - Jefferson and Pease Streets - carried exiting traffic; once the freeway was completed far enough to allow US 75 to be marked along it, Pease and Pierce Streets carried that highway to Fannin Street.
   The first freeway dedication in the state took place at 7 p.m. on September 30, 1948, at the overpass over Calhoun Road at the University of Houston. The roadway between downtown and Telephone Road was opened to traffic after speeches, but lacked an official name, being called the "Interurban Expressway", after the rail line that it replaced, by the press. Mayor Holcombe quickly started a contest to assign a name, and the city chose the winning entry on December 17, 1948. Sara Yancy of Houston Heights won $100 for her submission of "Gulf Freeway", named for the Gulf of Mexico that the highway would reach when completed. The freeway was extended to Griggs Road in February 1951, Reveille Street (onto which SH 35 was realigned) in July 1951, and was completed to the Galveston Causeway on August 2, 1952, with a ceremony on the bridge over Farm to Market Road 517 near Dickinson. However, beyond Reveille Street, the road wasn't built to freeway standards, with 32 at-grade intersections, though no traffic signals. The highway curved away from the old interurban right-of-way near Monroe Road, about where the Park Place streetcar line had ended. In December 1952, a short spur, now part of Interstate 610, was opened to connect with SH 225. A three-way split in the northwest part of Park Place, near where Gulfgate Shopping Center opened in 1956, carried non-stop traffic to and from SH 35 and SH 225.
   The first major change was made in preparation for the North Freeway connection, when the directions of Calhoun Avenue and Jefferson Street were swapped so that they'd alternate. A bridge, dated 1954, was built to carry traffic from Jefferson Street over traffic to Jefferson Street, soon crossing downtown on the one-way pair of Calhoun Avenue and Pierce Street to the new North Freeway. A median barrier was added in 1956 to prevent crossover accidents. Southeast of downtown Houston, the at-grade intersections proved dangerous, and only two had been replaced with interchanges by 1959, when the Texas Highway Department began a program to upgrade the road to full freeway standards. Frontage roads would be required along the entire highway, since the state hadn't purchased access rights, and so abutting property owners were able to build driveways to the road. To accomplish this, traffic was shifted to the newly-built frontage roads so that the central main lanes could be reconstructed. This grade separation was completed from Houston to Almeda-Genoa Road (exit 34) in June 1959, Farm to Market Road 1959 (exit 30) in October 1964, Farm to Market Road 518 (exit 23) in December 1970, and Farm to Market Road 1764 (exit 15) in 1976. As the section beyond FM 1764 into Galveston had already been rebuilt, That year also marked the end of the reconstruction inside I-610, along with the elevated distribution lanes alongside the main lanes near downtown; the first short piece of the Alvin Freeway was finally connected to these in 1999. This project gave I-45 its current configuration, mostly eight main lanes wide, from Sims Bayou past I-610 to Griggs Road in 1981, to Telephone Road in 1982, to Lockwood Drive in 1985, and finally to downtown in 1988.

North Freeway (Houston to Conroe)

The last alignment of US 75 before the North Freeway was built left downtown Houston to the northwest on Main Street, turning north at Airline Drive, and then northwest along the present alignment of I-45, then known as Stuebner Airline Road, Shepherd Drive, and East Montgomery Road. The first short piece of the freeway to open crossed Buffalo Bayou, connecting the two one-way pairs from the north end of the Gulf Freeway with the south end of Houston Avenue. This was opened on December 12, 1955, and allowed US 75 to bypass its run on Main Street; At the other end, US 75 was upgraded from Spring Creek at the north edge of Spring north to the San Jacinto River south of Conroe in 1960. In between, the upgrade was completed from Farm to Market Road 525 to near Richey Road in December 1961, south to the 1959 segment in February 1963, and north to the 1960 segment in March 1963, completing the North Freeway except for the Pierce Elevated (1967). The freeway as initially built had eight lanes (four in each direction) between downtown and I-610, six to Farm to Market Road 1960, and four north of FM 1960.

Schepps Freeway (Dallas) and to Richland

The Central Expressway was the first freeway in Dallas, built as a new alignment of US 75. It first opened between San Jacinto Street and Fitzhugh Avenue in 1949, and soon stretched south to Hutchins. However, the stretch through downtown ran along the surface, as did the part south of the bridge over the Trinity River, due to diversion of funds to the north portion. By the late 1950s, a bypass to the east of the downtown section was planned. By the time construction reached Hutchins, in about 1955, the state decided to build further segments to full freeway standards. By 1961, the freeway was complete between Hutchins and the State Highway 14 split at Richland, except for the bypass around Corsicana, which was built ca. 1964. It wasn't until 1964 that I-345, extending I-45 north along the proposed Central Expressway bypass, was added as a proposed state highway. I-45 and I-345 was built and opened in the 1970s, with the final section, between Lamar Street (exit 283A) and the Central Expressway (exit 283B), At the north end, before it merged into the Central Expressway (which continued to carry US 75), I-345 straddled the bridges over Bryan Street and Ross Avenue, the latter the location of the opening ceremonies in 1949. Because of their location, these two bridges were not replaced in the 1990s reconstruction of the North Central Expressway, and are the only surviving grade separations from the initial construction north from downtown.
Reconstruction and widening to six lanes, from the Ellis-Navarro county line (between exits 243 and 244) north to State Highway 310 (exit 275), began in 1991. The last section, near the north end, was completed in 2002.

Between Conroe and Richland

The first part of I-45 between Conroe and Richland was the bypass around Huntsville. The final piece of I-45 between the cities opened on October 13, 1971, for 12 miles (19 km) between Fairfield and Streetman.

Exit list

#	Destinations	Notes
	- Downtown, East Beach	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
1A	, West Beach
1B	71st Street	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
1C
4	Village of Tiki Island
5	Frontage Road
6	Frontage Road	Southbound exit only
7A		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
7B		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
7C	Frontage Road	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
7		Southbound exit and northbound entrance
8	Frontage Road	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
9	Frontage Road	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
10
11	Vauthier Road
12
13	Johnny Palmer Road, Delany Road
15
16		Southbound exit and northbound entrance
17	Holland Road, Hughes Road
19
20
22	Calder Drive, Brittany Bay Boulevard
23
25
26	Bay Area Boulevard – University of Houston–Clear Lake
27	El Dorado Boulevard
29
30
31
32	Sam Houston Tollway
33
34	Almeda-Genoa Road, South Shaver Road
35	Clearwood Drive, Edgebrook Drive
36	Airport Boulevard, College Avenue
38
38B	Howard Drive, Bellfort Avenue	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
39	Park Place Boulevard, Broadway Boulevard
40A	Frontage Road	Northbound exit only
40B		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
40B		Southbound exit and northbound entrance
40C		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
41A	Woodridge Drive
41B	Griggs Road, Broad Street
42		Northbound exit is via exit 41B
43A	Telephone Road
43B	Tellepsen Street	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
44A	Elgin Street, Lockwood Drive, Cullen Boulevard – University of Houston	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
44B	– University of Houston	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
44C	Cullen Boulevard – University of Houston	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
45	Scott Street - Downtown	Signed as exit 45A southbound
46		Signed as exits 46A (north) and 46B (south)
47A	Allen Parkway
47B	Houston Avenue, Memorial Drive	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
47C	McKinney Street	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
47D	Dallas Street, Pierce Street	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
48		Signed as exits 48A (east) and 48B (west)
49A	Quitman Street	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
49B	North Main Street, Houston Avenue
50A	Patton Street	Southbound exit is via exit 50
50B	Cavalcade Street, Link Road	Signed as exit 50 southbound
51
52A	Frontage Road	Southbound exit only
52B	Crosstimbers Road
53	Airline Drive
54	Tidwell Road
55A	Parker Road, Yale Street
55B	Little York Road	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
56A	Canino Road	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
56B		Southbound exit and northbound entrance
57A	Gulf Bank Road
57B
59	West Road
60A
60B		Southbound exit is via exit 60A
60B		Signed as exits 60C (west) and 60D (east) northbound
61	Greens Road
62	Kuykendahl Road, Rankin Road
63	Airtex Drive
64	Richey Road
66A		Signed as exit 66 southbound
66B	Hollow Tree Street, Paramatta Lane	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
68	Cypresswood Drive, Holzwarth Road, Louetta Road
70A
70B	Spring Stuebner Road
72B	Hardy Toll Road south	Signed as exit 72 northbound
72A	Spring Crossing Drive	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
73	Rayford Road, Sawdust Road
76	Robinson Road, Woodlands Parkway	Signed as exits 76A (Robinson Road) and 76B (Woodlands Parkway) northbound
77	Lake Woodlands Drive, Research Forest Drive, Tamina Road
79
81
83	Crighton Road, Camp Strake Road, River Plantation Drive
84
85
87
88
90
91	League Line Road
92
94
95	Longstreet Road	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
98
102		Signed as exit 103 southbound
109
112
113		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
114
116		South end of US 190 overlap
118
123
132
136
142		North end of US 190 overlap
146
152
156
164
178
180
189
197
198
206
211
213
218		No southbound exit
219A		No northbound exit
219B	Frontage Road	Southbound exit only
220	Frontage Road
221	Frontage Road
225
228A	15th Street	Southbound exit is via exit 228B
228B
229		South end of US 287 overlap
231
232	Roane Road, East 5th Avenue
235B		Southbound exit and northbound entrance
235A	Frontage Road	Signed as exit 235 northbound
237	Frontage Road
238
239
242	Calhoun Street - Rice
243	Frontage Road
244
246
247		North end of U.S. 287 overlap
249
251A
251B
253
255
258
259
260
262	Frontage Road
263A
263B	Frontage Road	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
264	Frontage Road	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
265		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
266
267	Frontage Road
268
269	Mars Road
270	Belt Line Road
271	Pleasant Run Road
272	Fulghum Road
273	Wintergreen Road
274	Dowdy Ferry Road, Palestine Street
275		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
276	, Shreveport	Signed as exits 276A (west) and 276B (east)
277	Simpson Stuart Road
279		Signed as exits 279A (east) and 279B (west) northbound
280	Illinois Avenue, Linfield Street
281	Overton Road	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
283A	Lamar Street
283B	Pennsylvania Avenue, Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
283B		Southbound exit and northbound entrance
284A
284B	Main Street west, Elm Street	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
284C	Live Oak Street - Downtown (Central Expressway south)	Southbound exit and northbound entrance; there are two southbound exits, a left exit serving traffic on US 75 south and a right exit serving traffic from Spur 366
285	Bryan Street east	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
285	Ross Avenue	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
286A		Northbound exit and southbound entrance
		Northbound exit and southbound entrance

Further Information

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