Construction and closures Roads: Ballenger I-10 Texas Department of Transportation Wurzbach Parkway
by Brian
2 comments
Ballenger projects starting back up
After the bankruptcy of Ballenger Construction late last year, several TxDOT and COSA projects were lain dormant. The good news is that their bonding company is nearing the end of the process to hire new contractors to get those projects finished. Work should be starting next month again on the I-10 project (Ramsgate to Loop 1604) and the “bookends” of the Wurzbach Parkway project. I’m not as familiar with the COSA projects, but I hear the Hunt Lane project should also have a new contractor by this time next month.
Travel
by Patrick
Comments Off on Bluebonnets along Texas highways expected to be spotty
Bluebonnets along Texas highways expected to be spotty
Wow. Look at this gorgeous rolling ribbon of road and bluebonnets.
This Texas Hill Country highway made msn.com’s top 10 scenic drives in the U.S.
Texas Hill Bluebonnet Tour, from msn.com's "10 scenic spring drives"
“If you want to see fields and fields of bright blue flowers resting atop a bed of emerald green grass, look no further than the annual Texas Hill Bluebonnet Tour,” it says.
But not all is so flowery.
“Wild about wildflowers? Too bad,” says an Express-News story posted yesterday, which lament’s this year’s spotty blooms.
Unlike last year’s lush bounty, fed by more than 10 inches of rainfall, this year’s blooms will be small and scattered due to just a third as much rain since Jan 1, according to the report. Meanwhile, look for the color to peak in early April.
Automobiles Commuting Data visualizations
by Patrick
Comments Off on Worst commutes in San Antonio
Worst commutes in San Antonio
San Antonio commuters spend an average of 23 and a half minutes getting to work, the latest federal data show.
Nothing shattering. In fact, it’s about two minutes less than the national average.
But what surprises me are some of the zip codes with the longest commutes.
Before seeing the U.S. Census data mapped out recently by a team at WNYC in New York, I figured commuters with the longest slogs tended to live in areas swaddling Loop 1604 on the North Side and exurbs like Boerne and New Braunfels.
In the map above, the beleaguered U.S. 281 corridor shows up as expected. But South Loop 1604 looks worse than its northern leg. And look at the bruised ring of satellites to the west and south.
A concentration of jobs on the North Side, along Loop 1604 and interstates 35 and 10, is likely sucking in many of these commuters from counties on all sides. The pull is stronger and wider than than I had realized.
You can hover over zip codes to see average commute times. You can also slide the map to see other cities, and zoom out to see other states. Here’s a full-page version.
Note that these stats include transit, walking and bicycling. But in a car town like San Antonio, despite volatile gas prices the past five years, nine out of 10 people still drive or carpool to work. Here’s a breakdown.
TexasHighwayMan.com turns 15!
Fifteen years ago today, I put my esoteric interest out for the world to see. On March 1, 1998, the “Texas HighwayMan Pages” were born. Just like today, I covered everything I knew about Texas roads and the San Antonio freeway system. I still have that original site archived and wow, how things have changed, both in terms of the subject matter as well as in the quality of web publishing (and my skills in doing so.) That first site looks so amateurish today: cheesy, grainy, and oftentimes animated (for no good reason other than I could) graphics, brightly colored and/or busy backgrounds, low-res photos, and a generally clunky layout. But back then, that was cutting edge stuff. That first site was hosted on express-news.net, back when the Express-News actually provided consumer Internet access. About a month later, I added the Getting Around Germany section of my site, so I’ll be celebrating that anniversary im nächsten Monat.
Folks ask me why I put the site together and keep it up. Well, the answer is that it’s the classic labor of love. Although it seems like an esoteric topic, just about anyone who drives is interested in knowing what’s going on with the roads. Being interested in transportation all my life, I had a lot of the answers to folks’ questions in my head or at least in a pile of old newspapers and other assorted planning documents in my closet, so I thought why not share it with the world? And that’s what I’ve been doing for 15 years and plan to do for at least the next 15.