Sidewalks and Trails

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The Cullen Park Trail Connection will connect 29.9 miles of existing trails on the north and south sides of Interstate 10.  These trails include the Cullen Park and Mayde Creek Trails on the north side and the Terry Hershey, Mason Creek, and George Bush Park trails on the south. 

The City of Houston has been awarded a Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) grant from TXDOT for the portion of the Cullen Park Path along Barker Cypress (Segment 1).  This grant provides 90% of the construction funding. We expect the City of Houston will begin work on community outreach, design, and permitting in the first quarter of 2023.  The current estimated construction window is the middle of 2025.

This segment will be a new side path along Barker Cypress Road.  A side path is a 10’ wide shared-use path with a minimum 5’ separation from the road.  There will be a standard sidewalk on the Corps of Engineers property on the east side of Barker Cypress Road. 

This trail connection would replace the existing path along Barker Cypress Road, used by cyclists and pedestrians today.  Despite heavy traffic along Barker Cypress and the lack of adequate space, this path is used frequently by residents on the north side of I-10.  As with many corridors in the Greater Houston region , this path is decidedly unsafe.  Indeed, as recently as August 2019, a male cyclist traveling on Barker Cypress Road was struck and killed by a vehicle at South Park View Drive.  

But it is the trail’s important contribution to our quality of life – helping to make the area north of I-10 a place where people want to live. In our view, this project will benefit our community, not only from a safety perspective for cyclists, but by attracting new, younger residents to the growing apartment communities - who value and increasingly demand walking and hiking paths - and by positively affecting the satisfaction by all residents toward the community in which they live.