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Houston to reverse inbound lanes to get traffic moving

Houston Chronicle:

With many of the primary evacuation routes from Hurricane Rita looking like parking lots this morning, preparations began to reverse the flow of inbound lanes of I-45, I-10 and U.S. 290.

Traffic reporters were reporting predawn drive times ranging as long as13 hours from Friendswood to Conroe as mandatory evacuations in Galveston, the Clear Lake area and neighborhoods along the Houston Ship Channel put hundreds of thousands of motorists on Houston's freeways.

I-45 was perhaps the most clogged freeway. The main artery from Galveston through Houston and on toward Dallas, the freeway slows to an agonizing crawl beginning just inside the Sam Houston Tollway, through downtown and past Interstate 610 on the north side.

Avoiding the main evacuation routes was only somewhat helpful.

One Clear Lake evacuee reported sitting in traffic for over an hour on the tollway heading into Pasadena. In the dark before sunrise, only an endless line of red brakelights was visible, along with the glowing flares and the twinkling lights of nearby refineries. Pickups pulled boats, kids dozed in the backseats and bungee cords secured evacuees' most precious possessions in suitcases, rubber tubs and even cardboard boxes to rooftops.

...

This morning the projected path of the storm began to shift northward over Galveston Bay. Forecasters believe the path may continue to shift northward toward Beaumont, but it remains too early to tell where it will land late Friday night orearly Saturday morning. The entire Texas Gulf Coast remains vulnerable.

If the storm hits Beaumont near the Louisiana border, then the whole state of Louisiana will be on the wet side of the hurricane. That would be very bad news for New Orleans and other cities in the state. Some of the tracks do show the storm headed for the Sabine River which would takethe storm over Beaumont.