A Meyerland father told Community Impact this year that he rides the Brays Bayou trails to take his two children to daycare in the Texas Medical Center. "The better the network gets, the more people will be willing to use it," he said.
A ride from Meyerland to the medical center runs along the bayou behind Braes Heights. As of this fall, that stretch between Buffalo Speedway and Stella Link Road is the piece the larger trail plan is waiting on. On October 9, 2026, Houston Parks Board posted a request for qualifications to hire the team that will design it. Upstream, the trail got its underpasses this spring. The mile closest to Braes Heights is just entering the design pipeline.
What Opened West of 610 in April
On April 25, Harris County Precinct 4 Commissioner Lesley Briones and the Houston Parks Board opened more than four miles of trail and seven new pedestrian and bicycle underpasses along Brays Bayou, according to Community Impact's coverage of the opening. The roughly $6 million project broke ground in January 2025 and was partly funded through Precinct 4's People 4 Places initiative.
The finished system runs from Loop 610 to South Gessner Road. The underpasses are the reason it rides differently now. Style Magazine laid out the project's pieces when construction started:
- A 10-foot trail on the north bank between Chimney Rock and Hillcroft
- Four lower-shelf underpasses on the south side, at South Rice, Chimney Rock, Hillcroft and North/South Braeswood
- Replacement trail from Fondren to Braeburn Glen, with underpasses at Fondren, Brays Bayou Drive and Bissonnet
"That's seven streets that people don't have to worry about crossing," Trent Rondot, conservation and maintenance director for the Houston Parks Board, told Community Impact. Officials said the underpasses improve access and trail safety for about 20,000 people in the surrounding community. Precinct 4 says the Brays Bayou Greenway serves more than 150,000 users a year.
The same ceremony dedicated the Captain Gary L. Herod Memorial Plaza, which honors a Texas National Guard pilot who steered a failing jet away from homes and landed it in Brays Bayou. The plaza sits at North Braeswood Boulevard and Mullins Drive, and Precinct 4's project page says it includes a Hero Bench. The project also added an ADA-accessible connection to the METRO bus stop at Mullins Drive, according to Style Magazine. For anyone riding west from the inner loop, the plaza now gives the route a natural turnaround point.
The Mile Behind Braes Heights Is the One the Plan Hinges On
The April opening was always meant to be the first stage. Houston Parks Board's stated goal is a continuous trail system from Gessner Road to the Texas Medical Center and nearby Hermann Park, with about 10 miles of new trails and underpasses in the full scope. Rondot told Community Impact the new underpasses tie in "really well with other projects that we're doing downstream towards the [Texas] Med Center."
Downstream from Loop 610, the next named segment runs right behind Braes Heights. The October solicitation, RFQ CM-FY27-TRA003, posted on CivCast, describes the Brays Bayou and Keegans Bayou Trail and Bridges Project in these terms:
The project includes approximately one mile of new 10-foot shared-use path along Brays Bayou from Buffalo Speedway to Stella Link Road, a new alternative-mode bridge at the confluence of Brays Bayou and Willow Waterhole Bayou, and a new alternative-mode bridge at the confluence of Keegans Bayou and Brays Bayou.
The scope also lists ADA-accessible connections, landscaping, signage and pavement markings. The Willow Waterhole bridge is the detail that matters most to Braes Heights. Willow Waterhole Bayou meets Brays near this stretch, and a dedicated crossing there is part of what turns a mile of bayou bank into a usable link in the chain.
The roads at both ends were finished years ago. The Harris County Flood Control District lists the Stella Link road bridge as completed in winter 2020/2021 and the Buffalo Speedway road bridge in winter 2021/2022, both as part of Project Brays. The flood-control rebuild came first. The trail that would run between those two bridges is still on the drawing board.
Where the Braes Heights Stretch Sits in the Pipeline
| Stage | Loop 610 to Gessner package | Buffalo Speedway to Stella Link mile |
|---|---|---|
| Procurement | Complete | Designer qualifications due Nov. 6, 2026 |
| Groundbreaking | January 2025 | Not announced |
| Opening | April 25, 2026 | Not announced |
| Key crossings | Seven underpasses | Willow Waterhole Bayou bridge planned |
Sources: Community Impact, April 2026; CivCast RFQ.
The October solicitation is for professional services. Houston Parks Board LGC, Inc. wants a single team to carry the work from preliminary investigation and design through bidding, construction engineering and inspection, and construction materials testing. Statements of qualifications are due through CivCast on November 6, 2026. In other words, the mile behind Braes Heights is at the stage of choosing who designs it. Building it comes later.
In January, Community Impact reported that Houston Parks Board was out to bid on a lower-shelf trail from South Rice Avenue to Stella Link Road, including a pedestrian bridge over Willow Waterhole Bayou, and that most unfinished Brays projects were slated to start construction in 2026 or 2027. The October RFQ defines different limits, Buffalo Speedway to Stella Link, and it opens at design. Treat the October document as the current description of the Braes Heights segment and the January limits as an earlier framing of the same corridor.
The Other Direction Already Connects
East of the gap, Brays already works as a destination trail. Houston Parks Board describes Brays Bayou as a greenway of more than 30 miles that serves Hermann Park, MacGregor Park, Gus Wortham Golf Course and Mason Park, with the Bill Coates and Mason Park pedestrian bridges along the way. A rider account published by the Parks Board starts at Hermann Park near South MacGregor Way and uses a pedestrian underpass to reach the bayou. From there it passes through medical-center greenspace with stops at Smither Park and the Orange Show before continuing to Mason Park.
This fall's 12th annual Park to Port ride, scheduled for Saturday, October 24, uses that eastern route. Its listing describes a 20-mile round trip from Hermann Park's Bayou Parkland along the Bayou Greenway to a turnaround at Mason Park, open to all skill levels and not a race. The City of Houston's special events calendar listed it from 7:00 to 11:30 a.m.
So Braes Heights sits between two finished pieces. One is the newly continuous Meyerland stretch to the west, with Herod Plaza as its anchor. The other is the established Hermann Park to Mason Park run to the east. Community Impact also reported a planned project to link the future Stella Link trail downstream from Buffalo Speedway to Hermann Park. The Buffalo Speedway to Stella Link mile is where those two finished pieces are meant to join.
Following the Mile From Here
Houston Parks Board has said it aims to complete $25 million worth of trails and pedestrian bridges by 2030, including links from Brays to Buffalo Bayou and Sims Bayou. Funding along Brays is shared among the Parks Board, Harris County Precinct 4 and the City of Houston. At the April ceremony, Briones said the Brays project was one of 50 Precinct 4 projects totaling $220 million. She also said People 4 Places opens each year for residents to submit infrastructure ideas, and that the 2026 call would open shortly.
For the Braes Heights segment, the next public milestone is the November 6 deadline for qualifications. After that comes the choice of a design team and, further out, a construction bid. The CivCast listing and Houston Parks Board are the places where the next step will show up. Until then, Herod Plaza at North Braeswood and Mullins is the newest stop on the Brays trail, and the ride there from the inner loop has seven fewer street crossings than it did a year ago.
Projects like the Buffalo Speedway to Stella Link trail affect how a Braes Heights street works day to day, and they come up when it's time to price a home. If you'd like to talk through how the bayou corridor fits into your home's value, Gayle G. Kennedy is happy to help. Request a complimentary home valuation and consultation, and we'll look at your block and what is planned nearby together.
