The Texas Department of Transportation is planning a shutdown of all lanes on Highway 290 near West 34th Street to allow CenterPoint Energy to tackle repairs on tornado-ravaged transmission lines, as reported by KHOU. The freeway closure, which includes feeder roads, will begin at 9 a.m. and is expected to cause about a half-hour traffic hitch.
Last week's punishing storm took down transmission towers and left a swathe of the Southeast Texas region without power, nearly a million customers were initially plunged into darkness and, according to the CenterPoint outage tracker, 17,961 households were still waiting to have their power restored as of Thursday evening. The Houston Chronicle notes that less than 4,700 customers remain without power from the storm that barrelled through the area on May 16; CenterPoint faced the Herculean task of reconnecting over 920,000 customers after the storm's wrath.
Houston Chronicles also mentioned police will be on the scene to monitor traffic flow during the temporary obstruction while the utility giant works to restore normalcy to the affected grid.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority interim CEO, Tom Jasien said on Thursday that Metro's HOV lane in the freeway's center could remain shuttered into next week so crews have a safety buffer as they busy themselves along the freeway, according to the Houston Chronicle.
