A heavy truck crash shut down the right shoulder and center lane on North Sam Houston Tollway eastbound at Ella Boulevard at 7:14 AM on Thursday, November 5th. Responding officers verified the incident and the affected lanes remained closed as of the morning update.
This stretch of the tollway has become a high-volume crash location. According to LTA data, the corridor logged 33 incidents over the past 30 days, with 25 classified as major. Over the past 90 days, the location recorded 112 total incidents, 77 of them major. The pattern extends further back: since January 2020, state crash records show 1,185 crashes within about a quarter-mile of this intersection, per TxDOT CRIS public crash records.
Contributing factors as recorded by investigating officers, per TxDOT CRIS, show "Failed To Control Speed" as the leading factor, cited in 381 crashes at this location over the past six years. The hit-and-run rate at the corridor stands at 9.1%—236 of the 2,592 units involved in crashes here were never identified.
Crashes occur throughout the day at this location, though timing varies. The single busiest hour is 4–5 PM with 12 crashes, though incidents here are spread across multiple time windows rather than concentrating in one peak period. Fridays have historically been the highest-incident day, with 16 crashes recorded over the past 90 days.
Weather at the time of the crash was clear with temperatures around 65 degrees. The incident remains under investigation.
Sources: TxDOT Crash Records Information System and Local Traffic Accidents database. Counts through November 5, 2026.
North Sam Houston Tollway Eastbound at Ella Blvd
Harris County, Texas
This report was produced by LTA's editor-designed production system under the executive editorial direction of Dennis R. Mundy, Executive Editor. The system combines our proprietary data pipeline with AI-assisted drafting to deliver verified incident coverage to LTA's editorial standards.