Houston Street, Our New Construction Hell

There was a NY Times City section about the almost $30 million Houston Street construction project that will start this August and last for many, many years, from West Street to the Bowery. From the jawdropping scope of the project to the not-incidental project cost, Gothamist's first thought was "Wait, you mean the construction already on Houston isn't associated with this project?" Our second thought was, "No, not the part of Houston west of Broadway! It's so nice and quiet, relatively speaking!" As we read on, the city will be installing "new curbs, new traffic signals, new sidewalk space, new shrubbery, new sewers, new water mains, new everything" and many shop owners along Houston are unhappy, as they have already been living in construction hell. Translation: Walking along Houston Street will be noisy and dusty for years to come - and good luck trying to cross town in a cab. We tried to look for some more information, but all the Department of Design and Construction has on it is that it'll end in January 2008 (which will mean November 2008 if we're lucky). We stumbled on this interesting Department of Transportation page about protected streets, as in streets where construction cannot occur for five years because construction has already been completed; Houston is not listed here at all.

And will this construction make for more bike accidents along Houston? Indubitably.