I-10 lanes reopen after fourth Houston Avenue Bridge strike this year

The Houston Avenue Bridge keeps turning I-10 into a bottleneck, and the latest truck strike pushed the count to 77 hits since the start of 2025. Multiple eastbound lanes reopened Monday afternoon after the bridge above Houston Avenue was hit again, but not before another round of backups, detours and frustration for drivers heading through downtown Houston and toward the Katy Freeway.

The latest strike was reported as the fourth time the bridge had been hit in 2026. ABC13’s SkyEye13 captured crews responding from above as traffic officials worked to reopen lanes and clear the disruption. Even with lanes moving again, the scene underscored how a single overheight hit can ripple across one of Harris County’s busiest freeway corridors.

The Houston Avenue Bridge has been a persistent weak point for eastbound I-10 near White Oak Bayou, where tall loads repeatedly collide with the structure and force inspections, lane closures and cleanup. The bridge’s clearance is 14 feet, 3 inches, a height that has not prevented a steady stream of crashes. By late 2025, the repeated strikes had already cost taxpayers more than $400,000 in repair and inspection expenses.

The long-term fix is already on the calendar. TxDOT has said it plans to demolish the Houston Avenue bridge in early 2027 and rebuild it underneath the freeway as part of a $400 million project to elevate Interstate 10 near White Oak Bayou. That redesign would remove one of the corridor’s most trouble-prone choke points, but for now the bridge remains in service and vulnerable to another impact.

The numbers have climbed quickly. Houston Public Media reported in September 2025 that TxDOT’s monitoring system had recorded 69 strike incidents by early that month. By October, ABC13 reported the bridge had been struck 72 times in 2025. CW39 quoted TxDOT saying its monitoring system had detected 72 strikes to date that year, while police had investigated only eight of those incidents. Local reporting has said many of the crashes were blamed on improperly permitted drivers or drivers ignoring approved travel routes.

For commuters, the latest reopening offered only temporary relief. The bridge’s repeated strikes have become a familiar traffic emergency for drivers trying to move between downtown Houston, I-10 eastbound and the larger freeway network, and the pattern is likely to continue until the bridge is finally removed.