This spring, in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, my family joined thousands of other Houstonians in taking advantage of the car-free streets to go for long bike rides. It was surreal. Streets in Houston are for cars, not people, and yet there they were: People on brand-new bicycles, seeing the city up close for the first time. Kids rode bikes in packs like characters from The Sandlot. Families, like mine, luxuriated with toddlers on once-dangerous streets. Bike rentals skyrocketed.
In cities across Texas, people were unable to gather in their usual spots—offices, malls, movie theaters—without risking disease and death. Large swaths of the state began to suffer from a collective case of cabin fever. In response, Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio closed streets to cars so that people could walk, bike, and safely social distance outdoors.
Houston, meanwhile, failed to formalize its car-free streetscape beyond a single pilot project. I learned that lesson firsthand as we rode around Rice University one Sunday morning at the end of May, when a car nearly hit us while speeding on the way to a red light. The natural order had returned to Houston. The streets belonged, once again, to cars.
