The great cutout hunt
Texas has pushed quite a bit of old video to the web, including a few historic road gems. Take a look at this view of construction in Austin in 1965. The Texas Archive of the Moving Image can be found here.
Wintry Mix
This view looks at a snowy scene on South Carolina's Highway 11. The route runs along the top of the state near the borders with North Carolina and Georgia. It is perhaps best known as the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway, and offers great views of the surrounding hills and mountains. The author was in South Carolina this weekend, and notes that the state's new route markers [...]
A ranch style home in the desert
It's no secret that Phoenix is one of the sprawliest urban areas in the nation. Arizona's DOT is responding to this need for infrastructure with Loop 303, a third freeway loop around Phoenix. The road has been around in a two-lane highway form for several years now, but groundbreaking took place last week on the first section of freeway for Loop 303 stretching from I-17 north of Phoenix west and [...]
Two new route markers
Hooray, new route markers. DFW's tolling authority, the NTTA, is replacing all of their signs - which are now unique to each route - with a standardized version. The Dallas North Tollway's familiar round green shields are about 30% gone; the George Bush Turnpike's old signs are over 60% replaced, and the newly christened Sam Rayburn Tollway (SH 121) has about 25% of its signs in the new style. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3380/3523867876_2242837beb_b.jpg [...]
Lubbock gets two new stretches of freeway this month
Lubbock, Texas has opened two new stretches of freeway in May. Phase 2 of the large Marsha Sharp freeway completed the interchange at 19th Street (where US 62 splits off) and continued the main lanes northeast and east to Avenue Q (US 84). The $131 million phase of the project started about 4 years ago. It's still not 100% complete, as landscaping and signs are not installed yet. Additionally, no [...]
An old girl learns new tricks
Texas Stadium is being replaced with a new Dallas Cowboys stadium opening later this year in a suburb further west. The old stadium opened in 1971 and with it a flurry of freeways and ramps designed to allow for traffic to and from the venue. As the stadium grew up, so did Irving, the suburb surrounding it. Traffic volumes on the freeways surrounding the stadium area grew and grew and [...]
Ready, set, gonglu!
Going further afield again, this time to China. It's no secret that China is the world's hottest economy right now. The Chinese are flexing that muscle in the same way that America did in the 1950s - they're building massive amounts of freeway (known as gonglu in Chinese). By the end of the next decade, China will have more freeway miles than the United States and drivers will be able [...]
Ring around the posey
American cities may be attempting to be more European, what with pedestrianization and density being buzzwords in urban planning communities, but Europe is emulating the US in one way: ring roads. While some roads like London’s M25 or Paris’ Peripherique are famous – many former Warsaw Pact countries are racing to update their infrastructure to adapt to their new status in the European Union, and it seems that the first [...]
Three Texas Road news items
My home state has had a busy year with opening new stretches of major roadway. A large section of the new tolled SH 121 freeway north of Dallas opened in August. The new 16-mile stretch from Frisco to the southwest forms a partial loop of northern Dallas. San Antonio's newest behemoth opened in August as well, at the junction of the US 281 freeway and Interstate 410. The two busiest [...]
Bluegrass, Mint Juleps, and Hal “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that” Rogers Parkway
Speaking of places that aaroads does not cover in too much detail, we'd like to introduce a new Kentucky page. So far, only I-64 and Lexington's New Circle Road are posted but all Louisville area freeways, and a few other roadways in the "Golden Triangle" area of the state are coming soon. Edit: They're all up now! I'd like to especially thank the Louisville Courier-Journal for the use of their [...]