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Between 2003 and 2009, $2.7 billion (1.4 billion pounds) of state and federal money will have been ploughed into expanding 23 miles (40 km) of Interstate-10 in west Houston to as wide as 18 lanes in some stretches of the city's main east-west road. "It is a concrete monstrosity," said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in the Texas city who fought the expansion of "I-10" and lost. "It probably shows as much as anything the philosophy of development here."
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The sprawling Houston metropolitan area, home to more than 5 million people, caters to drivers. Multi-deck parking garages are affixed to most large apartment complexes and there are drive-through lanes at pharmacies, banks, dry cleaners and coffee shops like Starbucks Corp. Lanier, a real estate developer who was chairman of the Texas Highway Commission from 1983 to 1987, said the city's decision to go with buses rather than rail for a mass transit system was the only option that made sense for such a low-density city where rail stations were impractical.
Part of the difficulty in weaning Houston off road building, environmentalist Blackburn said, is that the decades-long debate over transit planning has been dominated by the region's energy interests and by developers who made their fortunes building homes in far-flung suburbs.
Those pro-growth interests have appealed to Texas voters' preference for rugged individualism over government action. Lanier shrugs off any environmental woes that might come with the expanded highway. "You get a better environmental report moving people rapidly where they want to go, rather than having them sit in traffic," he said.
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