History
In the 1940s and early 1950s, Memorial Drive was originally intended to be one of ten freeway spokes extending outward from Downtown Houston. Despite the explosive population growth in the Houston area in recent decades, the heaviest traffic on Memorial Drive was in the early 1960s. Nearly 47,000 vehicles per day traveled on the section at Waugh Drive in 1960. When the Katy Freeway opened in 1968, the road's importance as a high-speed corridor decreased. In contrast to its earlier days, between 30,000 and 36,000 vehicles per day traveled along this section in 2001.
Houston City Council member Palm Holm announced in May 2007 that a large portion, roughly one fourth of the Memorial's length, will be expanded and beautified. The stretch of road from George Bush Park eastward to Gessner Road, about 6.2 miles (9.9 km), will be renovated to meet the population boom in the west Houston area. The first part of the expansion was slated to begin in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Memorial Drive (Houston, Texas)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)