Guide
Road closures on this coast
Checked September 28, 2026 against TxDOT’s DriveTexas and its district camera lists.
The Highways tile repeats what the Texas Department of Transportation publishes on DriveTexas about the state highways these towns depend on. On much of this coast a town has one road in: a causeway, a ferry landing or a single farm-to-market road across the marsh. That is what makes a closure there different from a closure somewhere with a grid.
The roads each board watches
All three boards read the same statewide DriveTexas file and keep only the rows on their own roads. Each road is also cut to a box on the map, so I-45 means the Gulf Freeway into Galveston and not downtown Houston, and I-10 means Baytown and Chambers County, not San Antonio.
On the Lower Laguna Madre board
| Route | Runs |
|---|---|
| SH 100 | Los Fresnos and Laguna Vista to Port Isabel, then over the Queen Isabella Causeway — South Padre Island’s only road to the mainland |
| Park Road 100 | north up South Padre Island from the causeway |
| SH 48 | Brownsville along the ship channel to Port Isabel |
| FM 510 | Laguna Vista west toward San Benito |
| SH 4 | Brownsville out to Boca Chica Beach |
| SH 186 | Raymondville east to Port Mansfield — Port Mansfield’s only road |
| US 77 | Brownsville and Harlingen north through Raymondville. Parts of it are signed I-69E and TxDOT files those parts under that number; the tile reads both as one road |
On the Coastal Bend board
| Route | Runs |
|---|---|
| SH 361 | Gregory through Ingleside and Aransas Pass to the Port Aransas ferry, then from Port Aransas down Mustang Island to the JFK Causeway |
| Park Road 22 | the JFK Causeway onto Padre Island |
| SH 358 | South Padre Island Drive across Corpus Christi to the causeway |
| I-37 | downtown Corpus Christi out through Nueces County |
| US 181 | Corpus Christi over the bay to Portland and Gregory |
| SH 35 | Gregory up the coast through Rockport, Fulton and Port Lavaca toward Palacios |
| SH 185 | Victoria down to Seadrift and Port O’Connor |
| US 87 | Port Lavaca to Victoria |
| SH 316 | Port Lavaca out to Magnolia Beach |
| FM 136 | Woodsboro down to Bayside on Copano Bay |
| US 77 | Kingsville and Riviera north toward Robstown |
| FM 628 | US 77 at Riviera out to Loyola Beach on Baffin Bay |
On the Upper Texas Coast board
| Route | Runs |
|---|---|
| SH 87 | through Galveston to the Bolivar ferry, then from Port Bolivar through Crystal Beach to High Island; and, as a separate stretch, Sabine Pass to Port Arthur. There is no road along the shore between High Island and Sabine Pass |
| FM 3005 | Seawall Boulevard west down Galveston Island through Jamaica Beach to San Luis Pass |
| I-45 | the Gulf Freeway from Webster over the causeway into Galveston — the island’s main way off |
| SH 146 | Texas City up through Kemah, Seabrook and La Porte to Baytown |
| I-10 | Baytown east across Chambers County toward Beaumont |
| SH 61 | I-10 at Hankamer down to Anahuac |
| SH 124 | High Island north to Winnie and I-10 — the Bolivar Peninsula’s road inland when the ferry is not the way |
| SH 73 | Winnie east to Port Arthur |
| SH 82 | Port Arthur across Pleasure Island to the Louisiana line |
| US 69 | Port Arthur up to Beaumont |
| SH 288 | Freeport and Lake Jackson north to Angleton and Pearland |
| SH 332 | Lake Jackson out to Surfside Beach |
| SH 36 | Freeport up to Brazoria and West Columbia |
| FM 1495 | Freeport over the bridge to Quintana |
| FM 457 | SH 35 down to Sargent |
| SH 60 | Bay City down to Matagorda |
| FM 616 | through Lolita |
| SH 35 | Palacios east through Bay City, West Columbia and Angleton to Alvin |
DriveTexas does not carry county roads or city streets, so a closure on one of those is not on this tile however close it is to town.
What DriveTexas is
DriveTexas is TxDOT’s map of conditions on the roads the state maintains: in TxDOT’s words, “Interstates, US Highways, State Highways, and Farm- (FM) and Ranch- (RM) to- Market roadways.” TxDOT says the conditions it shows are verified by its own employees and contractors. It is updated around the clock; this site reads it every few minutes along with everything else on the board.
Most of what it carries is planned work. Lane closures, bridge replacements and widening jobs are entered ahead of time with a start and an end. Crashes and high water appear too, but only once somebody at TxDOT has entered them, so the first minutes of a wreck on the causeway are likely to reach you by radio or by brake lights before they reach this tile.
What shuts the road, and what does not
TxDOT writes each row as a short list of stock phrases. The tile calls a road Closed only when TxDOT does:
- the row’s condition is Closure, or
- it says the roadway is closed, all main lanes closed or the bridge is closed, or
- it says lanes closed to traffic, detour in place and nothing else in the row says a lane is still running.
Everything else is a Delay: a lane closed, alternating lanes, a pilot car, a flagger, one lane each way. So is a row that says only “main lanes closed” without “all”, which TxDOT uses for closing some of a freeway’s lanes.
A frontage road is not the highway. A row that says “frontage road only, main lanes are open” is shown as a delay even when the frontage road itself is shut.
A ramp is not the highway either. An entrance or exit ramp closed on its own gets its own word, Ramp closed: the way on or off at that interchange is gone, but the road is open.
Night-only and day-only closures (“nighttime closure only”, “daytime closure only”) are shown as delays, with TxDOT’s words, because the road is open at the other hours. If you are driving at night, read the row.
Why the work says it started last year
Big jobs are entered once and run for months or years: a widening on US 69, the ferry landing work on SH 361. The start date is when the job began, not when a lane last closed. The board does not raise a long-running job as news every time it looks; it is listed so you know it is there.
Where it is, in TxDOT’s terms
TxDOT places each row by distance from a crossing road — “2.2 miles east of FM 272” — and the tile repeats that, rounded to a tenth of a mile. TxDOT writes roads as codes (SH0087, IH0045, FM3005); the tile writes them the way the signs do (SH 87, I-45, FM 3005).
City and county roads are a different office
DriveTexas covers the roads TxDOT maintains. The Seawall is on it because it is FM 3005; a flooded side street in Galveston, a county road on the Bolivar Peninsula or the beach itself is not. TxDOT’s own advice is to ask the city or county that maintains the road.
High water
On this coast the road most often shut by weather is shut by water, not ice: a tide pushed up by wind, a storm surge, or rain with nowhere to drain. TxDOT enters flooding when its crews close or sign a road, and the tile shows it the moment it is entered. Water over a road that has not yet been entered is not on the tile. Do not drive into water across a road.
The highway cameras
The Highway cameras tile shows up to three of TxDOT’s cameras on your town’s own highways, nearest first, within 25 miles, with the rest behind a tap. Each row names the road, how far from town the camera is and which way. On the upper coast that includes TxDOT’s cameras at the Galveston and Bolivar ferry landings, filed under SH 87, which is the road the ferry carries.
The time is under the picture. Some of TxDOT’s cameras print the time on the frame and some do not. TxDOT sends the time beside every picture, and the tile prints it under the frame. A picture more than half an hour old says how old it is.
The picture comes through this site. TxDOT serves its camera pictures only through its own site, in a form a browser on another site cannot load, so this site fetches each picture from TxDOT and passes it on, keeping it for a minute so that many readers looking at one camera share one fetch. Nothing is stored. If TxDOT does not answer, the tile says TxDOT is not serving that camera’s picture.
Out of service. A camera TxDOT lists as offline never takes one of the three places; the tile counts them instead.
No camera. Where TxDOT has no camera on your highway within 25 miles, the tile says so and names the nearest one on that road. Much of this coast lands here: TxDOT’s cameras are mostly on the freeways near Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Houston and Beaumont.
The list of cameras was read from TxDOT’s camera lists for its Pharr, Corpus Christi, Yoakum, Houston and Beaumont districts on September 28, 2026.
If you are about to drive it
- DriveTexas, every state road with the map, TxDOT’s cameras and the rest: drivetexas.org.
- TxDOT travel information: 1-800-452-9292. Automated information 24 hours a day; a travel counselor from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.
- For a city street or county road, the city or county that maintains it.
Sources
- DriveTexas, Frequently Asked Questions — which roads it covers, that it is updated 24 hours a day, the phone line and its hours, and asking the city or county about roads the state does not maintain
- TxDOT, Be your own traffic reporter — what DriveTexas shows, that conditions are verified by TxDOT employees and contractors, and the travel counselor line
- TxDOT’s DriveTexas conditions feed, read September 28, 2026 — the stock phrases quoted above and how often each appears