A railroad crossing on Lockwood Drive in east Houston is set to receive more than $10 million in federal funding, part of a push to finally untangle one of the city’s most complained-about stretches of track. The money comes from the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Crossing Elimination/Crossing Safety Program, which selected the Lockwood crossing as a candidate for a future grade separation.
According to ABC13 Houston, Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia said the goal is to design an underpass so that one mode of traffic, either trains or vehicles, would pass beneath the other, eliminating the at-grade conflict that has snarled the crossing for years. But Garcia was careful to temper expectations about what the money actually buys. He told the station the federal funding covers only the design phase of the project, and that additional funding will need to be secured later to pay for actual construction.
That distinction matters, because there is currently no timeline for how long the project could take, the station reported. The FRA, for its part, said the project will improve rail safety by removing a crossing that is frequently blocked by trains, a problem that has caused delays not just for commuters but for emergency responders trying to reach the area.
Thousands of Complaints Concentrated on the East Side
The Lockwood project didn’t materialize out of nowhere. Data reviewed by 13 Investigates and cited in the same ABC13 report found the FRA has received 23,000 complaints since 2021 about stalled trains blocking intersections across Houston, a tally echoed in an earlier ABC13 account of the same federal data. Most of those complaints, per ABC13, have come from the east side of town, at crossings on Eastwood Street, Leeland and South Lockwood, with a separate ABC13 post also naming Milby and Cullen among the frequently blocked locations…