Under construction since February 2005, the newest segment of the ever-growing Dallas North Tollway opened to drivers on September 29, 2007. With the 9.6-mile extension, the toll road travels 32 miles between downtown Dallas and U.S. 380 at Frisco. Traveling over the new Texas 121 freeway along the northbound lanes of the Dallas North Tollway. Texas 121 is part of a future freeway/toll road under construction to link [...]
Denied before, North Carolina again sent their request to add an Interstate designation to a stretch of U.S. 264 and U.S. 117 between Wilson and Goldsboro at the recent AASHTO Annual Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This time, the application was approved. Among the benefits of a new Interstate for Goldsboro, North Carolina, the designation allows trucks exceeding 48 feet in length to legally drive the U.S. 117 freeway between the [...]
An inside joke, sort of... The fact of the matter is that Maine @ AARoads is once again up to date with all our existing coverage that includes a short excursion in the Kittery and York areas as part of our July-August New England road trip. That joins Maine with Arkansas as the only two of the lower 48 states without existing coverage in the queue for future AARoads updates! [...]
New South Carolina State Highway Sign Design. Graphic created by AARoads. Just caught this on a recent Southeast Roads Yahoo! Group post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seroads/message/7077; on June 22, 2007,1 SCDOT unveiled a new highway shield design to replace the current black and white box shields used throughout the Palmetto State. The state follows Oklahoma (2006) and Vermont (1995) as states that changed from a drab shield design. A grandfathering [...]
Have you seen this rendering? It is the megasized symmetrical stack interchange currently under construction at the eastern junction of Interstate 95 and 695 at Baltimore, Maryland! Construction began in 2006 on a multi-year project that will bring express toll lanes to the busy corridor. Presently Interstate 95 carries eight lanes between Interstate 895 and Maryland 24 (Exit 74). This project expands the overall lanes to 12 with the addition [...]
Since our friends decided to leave early, we followed suit and made a day out of it on the way back south. Decided on Interstate 89 south to check out the Barre Connectors first, both of which appear as freeways on maps sometimes, but really are expressway-like roads with no private driveways. Vermont 62 spurs east from Exit 7 into northern Barre, complete with a connector leading to U.S. 302. [...]
Spent our final full day in Vermont visiting Burlington and the University of Vermont. As always with this trip, we took convoluted routes to see more of the area. Departing Interstate 89 south via Exit 16 (U.S. 2 & 7), we traveled through Winooski, an old mill town situated along the north banks of the Winooski River. Redevelopment of the downtown area is phenomenal when compared to previous visits in [...]
Spent Day 7 driving around the Lake Champlain Islands and then down a combination of U.S. 7 and Interstate 89 among other routes to Burlington and back. U.S. 2 travels north-south through the Lake Champlain Islands, passing through small towns such as South Hero, Grand Isle, and North Hero. The roadway carries only two lanes with the exception of a brief four-lane section just northwest of the Sandbar at South [...]
This is a look at the Texas trunk highway system. It's an offshoot of the governor's crazy Trans-Texas corridor http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/index.php/trans-texas_corridor scheme, but makes more sense. The idea is to connect huge parts of the state with expressways, building freeway bypasses of almost every populated place. Click images for larger versions. Munday's (pop. 1,500) new bypass This view shows the bypass at Seymour (pop 3,000), which [...]
Lubbock, Texas is a city of about 250,000 smack on the middle of the Caprock - an oil and agricultural rich perfectly flat region in West Texas. The city is also in the process of getting its third freeway, named for retired Texas Tech basketball coach Marsha Sharp. What's the deal with naming freeways after people who are still alive? I thought you weren't supposed to do that. Click any [...]
