the spur reopens
On my way home yesterdayI drove on the newly opened inbound lanes of 59 and the 527 spur for the first time. The portable dot matrix sign you see above was flashing “WELCOME BACK.” The Chronicle had coverage yesterday and today.
Worth noting:
- This project is considerably ahead of schedule. The spur was scheduled to reopen this December, and only last month, the Chronicle reported that the spur might reopen in June or July. TXDOT’s use of performance bonuses seems to be doing quite a lot of good.
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The Chronicle doesn’t mention an opening date for the HOV lane, but Robin wrote TXDOT’s Quincy Allen (who’s also quoted in the articles) who says:
We’re almost done with the HOV related work. Unfortunately we need this room for a staging area for the overhead signs that we will install soon. Bottom line… four to six weeks.
The 7,000 (14,015 average weekday boardings in 2004) people who ride buses in this HOV lane will be happy to hear that. So will people in vanpools and carpools. - 2 years ago, this view would have been of a depressed freeway rising up to an elevated structure over Montrose. TXDOT first suggested rebuilding that aerial structure and adding a second level — the HOV lane above it. (More at Texas Freeway, along with historic photos: 1, 2) Thanks to persistent, organized, and informed community leaders the freeway got depressed instead. We’re better off for it: we get a continuous HOV lane and a rebuilt freeway, but we’ve also eliminated an eyesore that blighted the neighborhood around it.
- …and there’s still a traffic jam. Now the limiting factor is not the construction site but the 288/59/45 interchange to the east. If you think of the freeway system as piping, what matters is the skinniest part of the pipe. When you replace that section, it will usually reveal the next skinniest section. And while the pipe is being replaced, it only makes things worse. The price we pay for building to try to keep up with congestion is not only billions of dollars and noise and displaced businesses and residents but non-stop construction. Is it worth it? What choice do we have? That for us all to decide.
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