Construction and closures Roads: Loop 1604 stimulus funds Texas Department of Transportation Tommy Adkisson widening
by Brian
Comments Off on Ribbon cut on Loop 1604 project in NE San Antonio
Ribbon cut on Loop 1604 project in NE San Antonio
Local TxDOT officials joined with several dignitaries yesterday to cut the ribbon on a project that widened Loop 1604 near Randolph AFB. The 17 month, $6.6 million project upgraded 2.5 miles of Loop 1604 from a two-lane “farm” road to a four-lane divided highway. The project came in on-time and under budget.
Speakers at the ribbon-cutting included US Representative Henry Cuellar. Cuellar helped secure the federal economic stimulus funding to get the project off the ground.
This section of the loop has been in the news recently. A project to continue the expansion from its current terminus at Lower Seguin Road to I-10 is planned to start next year. However, county officials had briefly considered transferring funding from that project to construct the northern set of ramps at US 281 and Loop 1604. An alternative source of funding was found, however, thus allowing the widening project to continue as planned.
It’s worth noting that this expansion mirrors a similar expansion done on Loop 1604 West nearly two decades ago. Road improvements tend to be incremental or evolutionary. The road system San Antonio has today didn’t just drop out of the sky one day. The project dedicated yesterday upgraded a congested and dangerous two-lane road to a four-lane divided highway with traffic signals. This configuration is a substantial improvement over the previous road and is more than adequate for the current needs and for those in the foreseeable future, just as the expansion of Loop 1604 south of Braun Road was back in the ’90s. Will traffic growth eventually render this roadway obsolete? Maybe. But building a full-fledged expressway at this location now is unnecessary and would have been an injudicious use of scarce funding, just like doing so out on Loop 1604 West back in the ’90s would have been.
The curse of Street View
Picture of the Eifel Tower from my latest "trip" to Paris
Lots of people have their Internet compulsions and addictions: Facebook, Farmville, YouTube, eBay, video games, and so on. My wife is a recovering Pinterest addict.
My web vice is Google Maps Street View.
I’ve always been a spatial kind of guy. I instinctively know which way is North. I was telling my mom how to get home from the airport when I was four. My degree is in Geography. I have no need for a GPS.
And I love to travel. Mostly, I’m a it’s-not-the-destination-but-the-journey kind of guy. I love watching the scenery go by, seeing new places in fast-forward. Of course, that comes from being a transportation-enthusiast. Getting from Point A to Point B is often my favorite part of vacations.
So now that I can essentially do that from my desk for a huge chunk of the world using Street View, it can quickly consume a significant quantity of my time. more »
Roads: Gilbeau Road Loop 1604 Shaenfield Road superstreet
by Brian
Comments Off on Second Loop 1604 superstreet intersection opens tomorrow
Second Loop 1604 superstreet intersection opens tomorrow
The second of two superstreet intersections on Loop 1604 in San Antonio is slated to open tomorrow. The intersection at Shaenfield should be mostly online for motorists for tomorrow morning’s commute. There will still be some finish-up work continuing during the next few weeks, but the new traffic patterns will be in effect tomorrow morning. That means motorists coming from Shaenfield will no longer be able to turn left onto Loop 1604 northbound. Instead, everyone will turn right and those wanting to go north will then use a new turnaround about 1/4th of a mile downstream. Motorists wanting to turn left from Loop 1604 onto Shaenfield will still be able to do so using new dual left turn lanes.
If you’re observant, you’ll notice that there have also been left turn lanes built from southbound Loop 1604 that seem to go nowhere and a second turnaround north of Shaenfield that seems to serve no purpose. Those have been built in anticipation of a future extension of Shaenfield to the east. The City of San Antonio is currently in the planning stages for that.
The superstreet intersection at Loop 1604 and New Gilbeau opened about a month ago and has provided a noticeable reduction in congestion. The final element of the current package of improvements along that stretch of Loop 1604 will make changes the SH 151 intersection; it’s due to be completed later this year. An underpass for SH 151 at Loop 1604 is slated to begin construction next Spring.
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Commuting Construction and closures Roads: Texas Department of Transportation Texas Transportation Institute
by Patrick
Comments Off on Worst traffic road conditions in Texas
Worst traffic road conditions in Texas
Officials have released a list of the 100 worst traffic conditions in Texas.
Dallas motorists suffer the most highly congested road conditions in Texas, says a recent report from the Texas Department of Transportation.
The state’s top three bottlenecks are all located in Dallas County, according to the 100 Most Congested Roadway Segments in Texas. But while Dallas has the hottest spots, Harris County actually has more of them. The Houston area has 31 on the worst road conditions traffic list while Dallas has 21.
Road conditions for Fort Worth are next in line for headaches, with 15 tight spots, followed by San Antonio with 11 and Austin with 10.
Here are the top 10 most congested roads and their respective counties:
San Antonio traffic – the new close shave
A new, easily observable – and highly dangerous – phenomenon is occurring with increasing frequency in San Antonio traffic, on the highways and possibly lesser roads. I call it the new close shave. It has now been visited upon me four times in the last week and yet I had never noticed it before. When I merge onto the freeway, a person already speeding in the right hand lane, where newcomers must, by design, make their appearance, will not only fail to move into the next lane over but speed right up to my rear bumper before only moving halfway into the next lane, try to graze my external rear mirror if at all possible and then move back into the right hand lane as sharply as possible, often with just enough space for maybe a sheet or two of paper between our vehicles. more »
Travel: Arkansas
by Patrick
Comments Off on A little weirdness on the road to Central Arkansas
A little weirdness on the road to Central Arkansas
Heber Springs, Ark., a friendly town of 6,000 that tourists swell to 30,000.
Driving through the pine forests of East Texas, on the way to Central Arkansas, you pass signs for places like New Boston, Pittsburgh, Mount Pleasant and even Paris.
It’s almost like pioneers started running out of names by the time they got to Texas.
But things get a bit more imaginative once you arrive at the Arkansas border. Names there start off with morphed incarnations like Texarkana, and later dish up tidy permutations such as Arkadelphia.
The one that snapped me to attention on my trip last weekend was “Okolona.”
You know, Oklahoma’s just a short jog to the west, I thought. Could it be? Is this some sort of an Arkansas localism? Perhaps it was pranksters?