educational estimating tool - not professional advice. a scenario, not a prediction. read the full disclaimer.
how much of your houston lot does the thoroughfare plan take
houston's major thoroughfare and freeway plan sets a right-of-way width for every thoroughfare and collector. where one is narrower today, a lot that replats can be asked to give the city a strip along its front. pick a neighborhood, then click a lot, or type an address, to see that strip.
scenario
the lot you clicked
click a lot on the map, or find one by address, to see its streets, the widths and the strip drawn on the lot.
neighborhood totals
| hyde park, private lots | (a) full width | (b) triggering lots only |
|---|
neighborhood by neighborhood
| planning area | private lots | (a) share of private land taken | (b) share taken | (a) lots losing over 10% | (b) lots losing over 10% |
|---|
the cap and the relief
the cap. the city may require dedication only in an amount roughly proportionate to the development (ldc 25-6-23 and 25-6-55(a)), set in a written determination by the director before the application is approved, and it may take a lesser amount. the full-width strip on this page is the ceiling the table describes, not the amount a given project would owe.
the relief. the director may grant a variance from dedication where it would place an undue hardship on the owner or leave the property unsuitable for an economically feasible use (ldc 25-6-86). an owner with 15 percent or more of a lot under a right-of-way reservation can ask for a waiver (ldc 25-6-81(b)). in some cases the city may accept a public access easement over the strip rather than a deed to it, which keeps the land in the lot; that is negotiated case by case, and no code section is cited here for it.
what triggers it. the dedication article applies to zoning or rezoning, preliminary plan or final plat, and site plan applications (ldc 25-6-21). four or fewer homes on a legal lot need no site plan (ldc 25-5-2(b)(1)), so building them on an existing lot goes through a building permit and does not trigger dedication; splitting the lot (a plat) does. scenario (b) follows that line by zoning: it leaves out sf-1, sf-2, sf-3, sf-4a and sf-5 lots and counts every multifamily, office, commercial, sf-6 and pud lot. every street segment counted on this page also carries the table's remark that its required right-of-way does not apply to single-family home properties.
method
- boundary. the city's super neighborhood polygon, used whole. a lot is in if its centre point is.
- lots. harris central appraisal district parcels as published on the county's map service; stacked condominium copies counted once; lots in the exempt (x) classes left out. "private" means every other parcel.
- required width. the right-of-way figure in the plan's hierarchy code for each segment (t-4-100 reads 100 ft). segments with two figures or "varies", freeways and tollways, and segments the plan marks proposed are not counted. a thoroughfare or collector with no code falls back to the city's minimum right-of-way by street classification (100, 80 or 60 ft).
- today's width. measured on a line square to the lot's street edge, from the lot line through the street centerline to the first lot line across the street (median of three samples along the edge). where no lot line is found across, twice the distance to the centerline is used and the lot says so.
- the strip. per side = (required - today) ÷ 2, from each side's own lot line. chapter 42's wording on how a widening is split between the two sides was not confirmed in the code text, so an equal split is assumed, as the austin page does; the strip is clipped out of the lot line exactly, and corner overlaps are counted once.
- no buildable footprint. houston has no zoning setbacks; chapter 42's building lines depend on the street class and options this page does not read per lot, so no footprint is drawn. the houston lot screen reads the building lines back for a tract you describe.
- which neighborhoods. inner-loop super neighborhoods where the plan's widenings cross existing lots. an area is published only if it passes the data checks: at least 200 private lots, at least 30 lots on a plan street, no more than 25% of frontages with no lot line found across the street, and measured widths that agree with the plan's own sufficient-width / to-be-widened status on most segments.
sources
the other half of the question. this page shows what a lot could give up. what the same lot can now hold is how many homes a houston lot can make: run the lot there with the front of the lot moved back by the strip shown here.