Texas State Highway Beltway 8
State Highway Beltway 8 or BW8, also Sam Houston Parkway, is a Texas state highway within Harris County of the Houston area. The Sam Houston Tollway, which follows much of the same route, is run under the auspices of the Harris County Toll Road Authority and is not part of the state highway system.
Beltway 8—defined as an orbital motorway—is the second of three highway loops within the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area, with Interstate 610 being the inner loop and Texas State Highway 99 (Grand Parkway) being the outer loop. The Grand Parkway is still under construction. Beltway 8 and Sam Houston Parkway are the names given to the frontage roads and a small section of freeway in northern Houston between Interstate 45 and US 59, while the Sam Houston Tollway is the name for the tollway that is located in the highway's median. Access to the Sam Houston Tollway is provided via Beltway 8 by means of entrance and exit ramps. As of 2005, Beltway 8 is complete while the Sam Houston Tollway is about 85 percent complete. Portions of the West Belt, as sections of the Beltway are called by their compass names, are in various stages of expansion due to high traffic volumes. The remaining portion is a small section of tollway between US 90 and US 59 northeast of Houston, which should be completed between 2007 and 2009.
The tollway's construction was piecemealed from the opening of the West Belt in the mid-1970s to the completion of the South Belt in the mid-1990s. The Jesse Jones Memorial Toll Bridge, as the Beltway's crossing of the Houston Ship Channel was originally called, was constructed by the Texas Turnpike Authority (TTA) and was opened in the early-1980s
Free sections
The longest free section of main lanes is on the north side of Houston, stretching from Ella Boulevard east to the current end of the freeway east of U.S. Highway 59 (Eastex Freeway). This is maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation east of roughly the Hardy Toll Road interchange.[1] It includes the interchanges with US 59, the Hardy Toll Road, and Interstate Highway 45 (North Freeway).
Three shorter free sections also exist:
- Beginning of main lanes north of Wallisville Road to Jacinto Port Boulevard, including the Interstate Highway 10 (Baytown-East Freeway) interchange
- Genoa-Red Bluff Road to Beamer Road, including the Interstate Highway 45 (Gulf Freeway) interchange
- West Airport Boulevard to Beechnut Street, including the U.S. Highway 59 (Southwest Freeway) interchange
These all exist in order to allow federal funding to have been used to build the freeway-to-freeway interchanges at the Baytown-East, Gulf and Southwest Freeways.[citation needed]
The frontage roads are general continuous, and allow for slower free travel along the tolled segments. Only one break exists in the frontage roads; there are also several locations where one must turn to stay on them:
- Jacinto Port Boulevard to State Highway 225 (Pasadena Freeway) - the frontage roads do not cross the Houston Ship Channel (and thus that piece of Beltway 8 was removed in 1978[2])
- Deerwood Drive to Boheme Drive - both directions are on the east side of the Tollway for the crossing of Buffalo Bayou
- West Little York Road to U.S. Highway 290 (Northwest Freeway) - both directions shift to the west side, intersecting US 290 at Senate Avenue, northwest of the Tollway
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