Am i the only one who despises the TXDot's road system?

Started by ColossalBlocks, March 23, 2017, 09:55:18 AM

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kphoger

Quote from: thenetwork on January 25, 2021, 11:01:43 PM
The last time I drove around in the Dallas Metroplex, I had the option of driving on the Tollway, or just follow the free frontage road which paralleled the tollway.  The frontage roads were one-way roads and the speed limit was around 45 MPH, but I don't think I was ever able to make it through more than one traffic light at a time -- I think they purposely rigged it that way to get you to consider "paying" to bypass most of the frontage road.

Huh?  Does the toll road authority do the stoplight timing there?
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.


Bobby5280

Quote from: motorola870I think having frontage roads on the bypasses do lead to the towns moving out to the bypasses. Looking at the Midlothian Texas US 287 bypass it took about 10 years but now the city moved to the bypass so it no longer goes around Midlothian instead the city now goes several miles south.

It's only natural for new retail and residential development to sprout up alongside freeway quality bypasses around towns, particularly if the bypass is served by continuous frontage roads, as is the case along parts of US-287 and all of US-67 in Midlothian. That's where the traffic is traveling.

Frontage roads are key to preserving space for any future freeway upgrades. On the East side of Midlothian (where the frontage roads on US-287 end after Midlothian Parkway) it turns into a stupid mess. Businesses build right up next to US-287 rather than be set back an appropriate distance. There is a short freeway upgrade project in progress nearby, which will include a new exit for Walnut Grove Road. But when that project is finished there will still be a non-freeway gap with a couple at-grade intersections and driveways between the US-287 freeway in Midlothian and this new freeway segment.

There's numerous other examples of this poor zoning across the country. US-287 through Decatur is a disorganized joke. More freeway quality spot-upgrades are planned on both the North and South sides of Decatur. But in town it's a mess since businesses were allowed to encroach the space where frontage roads would have ran. The US-63 bypass around Bono, AR is another example of a poorly planned bypass. The South end of the bypass has been overrun with businesses. If I-555 was ever extended from Jonesboro to Walnut Ridge the Interstate would have to bypass the Bono bypass. It's a bypass of a bypass!

Of course now more and more towns just want to road upgrades built at all. They don't want an upgraded highway running through the town. But they don't want an Interstate quality route going around the town either. There's a good bit of that going on here in Oklahoma in some spots, like the US-69 corridor.

SkyPesos

Quote from: Bobby5280 on January 26, 2021, 12:06:03 PM
Frontage roads are key to preserving space for any future freeway upgrades.
On that note, sometimes, I wonder where all the ROW came from to upgrade the Katy Freeway from a 6 lane freeway to something that rivals ON 401 in Toronto in size.

Bobby5280

Quote from: SkyPesosOn that note, sometimes, I wonder where all the ROW came from to upgrade the Katy Freeway from a 6 lane freeway to something that rivals ON 401 in Toronto in size.

In the case of the massive Katy Freeway upgrade they had to bulldoze a whole lot of existing properties.

ethanhopkin14

Quote from: Bobby5280 on January 26, 2021, 01:03:47 PM
Quote from: SkyPesosOn that note, sometimes, I wonder where all the ROW came from to upgrade the Katy Freeway from a 6 lane freeway to something that rivals ON 401 in Toronto in size.

In the case of the massive Katy Freeway upgrade they had to bulldoze a whole lot of existing properties.

They also bought the MKT railroad right-of-way that used to run north of I-10.

ethanhopkin14

In contrast to the Texas frontage road system is California's exit ramp to some other road that you have to follow to get to the one you exited for.  I find that system a bit more confusing.   

J N Winkler

Quote from: SkyPesos on January 26, 2021, 12:11:48 PMOn that note, sometimes, I wonder where all the ROW came from to upgrade the Katy Freeway from a 6 lane freeway to something that rivals ON 401 in Toronto in size.

If you want a fine-grained look at the clearances that were necessary to accommodate the widening, HistoricAerials.com is a good place to start.

As an example, just west of the I-610 stack, 1995 imagery suggests much of the ROW was already cleared on the north side.  2002 imagery (color, better resolution), taken the year TxDOT began letting the large construction contracts, shows some commercial development (strip malls, etc.) on the south side.  2010 imagery shows this replaced by the relocated eastbound feeder and grassed-over parcels that are probably not economic to develop.  In fact, a comparison of 2002 and 2010 aerials along the corridor shows a number of commercial buildings on both sides of the freeway, some fairly large, that were torn down and replaced with grass even though they were not in the footprint of the freeway itself.  I suspect this happened because they lost nearly all of their parking to the freeway ROW, making them unattractive to retail tenants.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

jlwm

Quote from: J N Winkler on January 26, 2021, 04:17:33 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on January 26, 2021, 12:11:48 PMOn that note, sometimes, I wonder where all the ROW came from to upgrade the Katy Freeway from a 6 lane freeway to something that rivals ON 401 in Toronto in size.

If you want a fine-grained look at the clearances that were necessary to accommodate the widening, HistoricAerials.com is a good place to start.

As an example, just west of the I-610 stack, 1995 imagery suggests much of the ROW was already cleared on the north side.  2002 imagery (color, better resolution), taken the year TxDOT began letting the large construction contracts, shows some commercial development (strip malls, etc.) on the south side.  2010 imagery shows this replaced by the relocated eastbound feeder and grassed-over parcels that are probably not economic to develop.  In fact, a comparison of 2002 and 2010 aerials along the corridor shows a number of commercial buildings on both sides of the freeway, some fairly large, that were torn down and replaced with grass even though they were not in the footprint of the freeway itself.  I suspect this happened because they lost nearly all of their parking to the freeway ROW, making them unattractive to retail tenants.

As a Houstonian, I can tell you that ROW clearance for the Katy Freeway expansion didn't start until the early 2000s. The MKT ran on the northern edge of the ROW from Post Oak Blvd. to Katy-Fort Bend Rd. in Katy. After the railroad was removed around 1996 or 1997, there was still ROW needed north of the railroad easement in some sections, except where it shifted to the south to avoid a cemetery. ROW clearance started in 2001. West of Beltway 8, there was more room to work with, and Old Katy Road which ran parallel to the Katy Freeway became the new westbound feeder road between the Beltway and almost to State Highway 6. Only a little stub of Old Katy Road survives to this day. This brought back a memory. I remember seeing a Home Depot being built before the project started and noticed it was WAY back from the freeway at the time, but it was built with the widening in mind. Construction started around 2004. 

Pictures of the old ROW from 2001: http://www.texasfreeway.com/Houston/photos/i10w/i10_right-of-way.shtml

rte66man

Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 26, 2021, 03:21:58 PM
Quote from: Bobby5280 on January 26, 2021, 01:03:47 PM
Quote from: SkyPesosOn that note, sometimes, I wonder where all the ROW came from to upgrade the Katy Freeway from a 6 lane freeway to something that rivals ON 401 in Toronto in size.

In the case of the massive Katy Freeway upgrade they had to bulldoze a whole lot of existing properties.

They also bought the MKT railroad right-of-way that used to run north of I-10.

The latter accounted for the vast majority of the increased RoW. In some places on the south side, businesses were bought out, but I don't remember many being bought on the north side.
When you come to a fork in the road... TAKE IT.

                                                               -Yogi Berra

Scott5114

Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 25, 2021, 02:47:39 PM
Then I said, I guess businesses don't have interstate highways as their addresses then.  All the business are on the intersecting road?  That's weird. 

Oklahoma has a fair number of frontage roads, but these tend to have their own names, so businesses along them don't just use the interstate as part of the address. For instance, the I-35 service road in Norman is "Interstate Drive", so Red Lobster is at 302 N. Interstate Dr., not 302 N. I-35. Likewise, in parts of Oklahoma City, the service roads take the name of whatever street was there before the interstate was built, so the I-240 service road is SW 74th Street.

In the event that a service road doesn't have a unique name, it will be explicitly referred to as "I-35 Service Road" or "I-35 Frontage Road" and this will be part of the address.




A thought I had from the thread title, that ended up not being the content of the thread itself, is that I do kind of dislike TxDOT's highway classification system. Other than interstates, all of the road classifications give you little to no indication of what sort of road you're going to be getting on. State highways, loops, spurs, FM/RMs–it doesn't matter, any of them could be something from a two-lane road with at-grade intersections all the way up to a full blown freeway and you'll have no idea until you get there. You'd think having as many route classifications as they do that they'd have one of them for state route freeways (of which Texas has dozens), but nope.
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ethanhopkin14

Quote from: Scott5114 on January 26, 2021, 06:04:52 PM
Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 25, 2021, 02:47:39 PM
Then I said, I guess businesses don't have interstate highways as their addresses then.  All the business are on the intersecting road?  That's weird. 

Oklahoma has a fair number of frontage roads, but these tend to have their own names, so businesses along them don't just use the interstate as part of the address. For instance, the I-35 service road in Norman is "Interstate Drive", so Red Lobster is at 302 N. Interstate Dr., not 302 N. I-35. Likewise, in parts of Oklahoma City, the service roads take the name of whatever street was there before the interstate was built, so the I-240 service road is SW 74th Street.

In the event that a service road doesn't have a unique name, it will be explicitly referred to as "I-35 Service Road" or "I-35 Frontage Road" and this will be part of the address.




A thought I had from the thread title, that ended up not being the content of the thread itself, is that I do kind of dislike TxDOT's highway classification system. Other than interstates, all of the road classifications give you little to no indication of what sort of road you're going to be getting on. State highways, loops, spurs, FM/RMs–it doesn't matter, any of them could be something from a two-lane road with at-grade intersections all the way up to a full blown freeway and you'll have no idea until you get there. You'd think having as many route classifications as they do that they'd have one of them for state route freeways (of which Texas has dozens), but nope.

Texas freeways have names too, and those names will appear on addresses, but sometimes they don't so 2900 N I-35 is possibly an address as well as 15042 N Stemmons Freeway.

That has always been a gripe of mine.  I hate how Texas highways can be anything.  It makes planning a trip, especially for and RVer, more difficult because it can be any variety of highway. 

kphoger

Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 25, 2021, 02:47:39 PM
I guess businesses don't have interstate highways as their addresses then.  All the business are on the intersecting road?  That's weird. 

Of course the businesses don't have the Interstate as their addresses:  you don't get to them from the Interstate!  Can you imagine if every property fronting Interstate r/o/w had an Interstate address, yet you had to get to all of them from other streets?  Disaster!  No, trust me, you want the address to match the street you actually enter the business from.

In areas without frontage roads, though, most business lots don't front the Interstate r/o/w.  A lot of that land is either green space or residential neighborhoods.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

ethanhopkin14

Quote from: kphoger on January 26, 2021, 06:31:28 PM
Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 25, 2021, 02:47:39 PM
I guess businesses don't have interstate highways as their addresses then.  All the business are on the intersecting road?  That's weird. 

Of course the businesses don't have the Interstate as their addresses:  you don't get to them from the Interstate!  Can you imagine if every property fronting Interstate r/o/w had an Interstate address, yet you had to get to all of them from other streets?  Disaster!  No, trust me, you want the address to match the street you actually enter the business from.

In areas without frontage roads, though, most business lots don't front the Interstate r/o/w.  A lot of that land is either green space or residential neighborhoods.

Yes, I was speaking how I did when the lightbulb went off that not all states have frontage roads like Texas.  Before I realized it, having an interstate as an address was common place. (Example: 2015 S IH 35, Austin, TX 78741 is an actual address, because there is a frontage road there)  When it finally dawned on me that there isn't always a frontage road along a freeway, I was shocked that the town I was in's Walmart wasn't on the interstate per-se.  Instead, I had to turn on the cross street to get to the Walmart, instead of ridding the service road and turning at the driveway.   Trust me, it's more of a juxtapose going from a frontage road plenty society to a place that has none than you would think. 

roadman65

What I do not like about Texas is the fact that US 77 and US 67 are poorly signed along the interstates in the DFW area.  Plus US 90 is another one in Greater Houston where the Katy Freeway took over the old US 90 arterial.

In San Antonio you have US 87, US 90, and 281 all signed greatly there and the companion routes for I-27 in the Panhandle, but in those areas it is not at all signed.

I know CO and NM as well as AR does it, but its all over! In Texas its in different areas of the state just as traffic signals vary in that state in installations (horizontal to vertical, black to yellow colors, and even two red arrows to one red arrow left turn signals).  I usually like a line drawn for consistency in areas even in Florida as lately each county is now using its own method of signalizing intersections as before all the state pretty much used concrete strain poles and span wire installations except in downtown areas of the big cities, is a little annoying.
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

SkyPesos

Quote from: roadman65 on January 26, 2021, 06:52:54 PM
What I do not like about Texas is the fact that US 77 and US 67 are poorly signed along the interstates in the DFW area.  Plus US 90 is another one in Greater Houston where the Katy Freeway took over the old US 90 arterial.

In San Antonio you have US 87, US 90, and 281 all signed greatly there and the companion routes for I-27 in the Panhandle, but in those areas it is not at all signed.

I know CO and NM as well as AR does it, but its all over! In Texas its in different areas of the state just as traffic signals vary in that state in installations (horizontal to vertical, black to yellow colors, and even two red arrows to one red arrow left turn signals).  I usually like a line drawn for consistency in areas even in Florida as lately each county is now using its own method of signalizing intersections as before all the state pretty much used concrete strain poles and span wire installations except in downtown areas of the big cities, is a little annoying.
You'll like Missouri's signage then, and their cookie cutter mast arms design used at most intersections. Not a bad thing though, as I think they're as good as California's signals setup

Bobby5280

Quote from: Scott5114A thought I had from the thread title, that ended up not being the content of the thread itself, is that I do kind of dislike TxDOT's highway classification system. Other than interstates, all of the road classifications give you little to no indication of what sort of road you're going to be getting on. State highways, loops, spurs, FM/RMs–it doesn't matter, any of them could be something from a two-lane road with at-grade intersections all the way up to a full blown freeway and you'll have no idea until you get there. You'd think having as many route classifications as they do that they'd have one of them for state route freeways (of which Texas has dozens), but nope.

I don't mind Texas having state highways that are Interstate quality. Even the "Spur" and "Loop" sub-sets of Texas state highways don't bother me when they get blown up into full blown freeways. FM/RM roads that turn into an Interstate quality thing are more odd.

Usually the Farm/Ranch to Market roads start out as modest highways and then just get upgraded and upgraded again as development alongside the road and nearby grows. I'm guessing when TX DOT made the original FM/RM designation they didn't count on the road possibly needing a lot of upgrades later.

There is always lots of ideas and requests for various freeways and toll roads in Texas named after state highways or even FM/RM roads to be re-named as Interstates. Many of us already know this: changing a highway's route number and/or designation type has consequences. Businesses alongside an existing highway really dislike any naming changes because it affects their advertising costs and ability for customers to reliably find their location. Then there's the risk of it goofing up mail delivery and other services.

bwana39

#66
Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 26, 2021, 06:12:06 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 26, 2021, 06:04:52 PM
Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 25, 2021, 02:47:39 PM
Then I said, I guess businesses don't have interstate highways as their addresses then.  All the business are on the intersecting road?  That's weird. 

Oklahoma has a fair number of frontage roads, but these tend to have their own names, so businesses along them don't just use the interstate as part of the address. For instance, the I-35 service road in Norman is "Interstate Drive", so Red Lobster is at 302 N. Interstate Dr., not 302 N. I-35. Likewise, in parts of Oklahoma City, the service roads take the name of whatever street was there before the interstate was built, so the I-240 service road is SW 74th Street.

In the event that a service road doesn't have a unique name, it will be explicitly referred to as "I-35 Service Road" or "I-35 Frontage Road" and this will be part of the address.




A thought I had from the thread title, that ended up not being the content of the thread itself, is that I do kind of dislike TxDOT's highway classification system. Other than interstates, all of the road classifications give you little to no indication of what sort of road you're going to be getting on. State highways, loops, spurs, FM/RMs—it doesn't matter, any of them could be something from a two-lane road with at-grade intersections all the way up to a full blown freeway and you'll have no idea until you get there. You'd think having as many route classifications as they do that they'd have one of them for state route freeways (of which Texas has dozens), but nope.

Texas freeways have names too, and those names will appear on addresses, but sometimes they don't so 2900 N I-35 is possibly an address as well as 15042 N Stemmons Freeway.

That has always been a gripe of mine.  I hate how Texas highways can be anything.  It makes planning a trip, especially for and RVer, more difficult because it can be any variety of highway.

Most cities in Texas have significant rules for changing street addresses (as does the USPS). While HWY XX may reroute, 37th Avenue remains basically the same.

The Stemmons Freeway USED to be US-77. Now it is I-35E.  The street addresses along the frontage roads addresses remained the same in spite of the renumbering.  As a caveat RL Thornton Freeway follows US-67 which  I-30 followed to downtown, but south of downtown is I-35E. So following RLT does not mean you stay on I-35E going north of downtown.
Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

Scott5114

Quote from: Bobby5280 on January 26, 2021, 10:55:48 PM
There is always lots of ideas and requests for various freeways and toll roads in Texas named after state highways or even FM/RM roads to be re-named as Interstates. Many of us already know this: changing a highway's route number and/or designation type has consequences. Businesses alongside an existing highway really dislike any naming changes because it affects their advertising costs and ability for customers to reliably find their location. Then there's the risk of it goofing up mail delivery and other services.

The thing is, Texas already has so many classes of highway, all of which are allowed to duplicate one another, that adding another wouldn't really affect much. You could change all the freeways from "State Highway 130" to "Freeway 130" or whatever, keeping the same numbers, and directions and addresses using "Highway 130" wouldn't necessarily have to change. The only thing that would really change is the shield and codes in the TxDOT database going from "SH" to "FW" or whatever.
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bwana39

Quote from: Scott5114 on January 27, 2021, 02:13:29 PM
Quote from: Bobby5280 on January 26, 2021, 10:55:48 PM
There is always lots of ideas and requests for various freeways and toll roads in Texas named after state highways or even FM/RM roads to be re-named as Interstates. Many of us already know this: changing a highway's route number and/or designation type has consequences. Businesses alongside an existing highway really dislike any naming changes because it affects their advertising costs and ability for customers to reliably find their location. Then there's the risk of it goofing up mail delivery and other services.

The thing is, Texas already has so many classes of highway, all of which are allowed to duplicate one another, that adding another wouldn't really affect much. You could change all the freeways from "State Highway 130" to "Freeway 130" or whatever, keeping the same numbers, and directions and addresses using "Highway 130" wouldn't necessarily have to change. The only thing that would really change is the shield and codes in the TxDOT database going from "SH" to "FW" or whatever.

I agree BUT. The problem is when it is a freeway part way and then not a freeway the rest. I agree particularly like SPUR 366 (Woodall Rogers FWY) SH183  (Carpenter / Airport Freeway 183/121) or US-80 from Terrell. All of these have freeway to freeway continuity. On the other hand, US175 from I-45 to I-20 fits. US-175 to past Kaufman is all freeway, then somewhere past Kaufman, it transitions to a 4-lane arterial without grade separation, eventually having stretches as two lanes before it gets to its endpoint in Jacksonville. How would you define that leaving I-20 going east?
As goofy as this sounds, I once saw a dead end sign 26 miles from the dead end.  There was no access past that point, but...

Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

Scott5114

I am specifically talking about state highways. US highways you can't really do anything about without changing the number to an Interstate. If it were really necessary to explicitly show it as a freeway, you could make a state freeway designation and run it concurrent with the US route for that portion, although I think that's probably excessive.

As for state routes that are partially freeway and partially not, you could change the freeway part to a freeway designation and then leave the rest as a state highway, the same way many states have state route extensions of Interstates. So for example, in Corpus Christi, the Crosstown Expressway would become FW 286. When the freeway ends, the original SH 286 designation would continue past that.
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kphoger

Quote from: Scott5114 on January 27, 2021, 07:10:46 PM
I am specifically talking about state highways. US highways you can't really do anything about without changing the number to an Interstate. If it were really necessary to explicitly show it as a freeway, you could make a state freeway designation and run it concurrent with the US route for that portion, although I think that's probably excessive.

As for state routes that are partially freeway and partially not, you could change the freeway part to a freeway designation and then leave the rest as a state highway, the same way many states have state route extensions of Interstates. So for example, in Corpus Christi, the Crosstown Expressway would become FW 286. When the freeway ends, the original SH 286 designation would continue past that.

Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Plutonic Panda

I love the frontage road system. I wish all states would incorporate it where possible.

In_Correct

Some thing I can add to the discussion of State Roads and F.M. Roads being Freeways: The fact that the State Roads and F.M. Roads ever being freeways when there are plenty of U.S. Highways is what confuses me. For example: My often mentioned U.S. 377 has taken for ever to even be considered for added lanes. It still looks like an old worn out Service Road ... A Service Road for the nearby B.N.S.F. line.
Drive Safely. :sombrero: Ride Safely. And Build More Roads, Rails, And Bridges. :coffee: ... Boulevards Wear Faster Than Interstates.

J N Winkler

Are there any freeway mainlines that actually have status as FM or RM roads (as opposed to frontage roads being classified as FM or RM, as with Westheimer Road/FM 1093 and the Westpark Tollway)?
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

nolia_boi504

Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on January 26, 2021, 03:23:15 PM
In contrast to the Texas frontage road system is California's exit ramp to some other road that you have to follow to get to the one you exited for.  I find that system a bit more confusing.
I recently spent some time in the SF Bay Area, and holy crap was I frustrated. Entrance/Exits on opposite sides of the freeway often were not at the same cross streets. You have to drive to the next major cross road to get on the freeway to go the opposite direction. Took a bit to figure it out and holy crap is it a terrible design.

There is no comparison to a Texas feeder road interchange with dedicated u-turn lanes.

Pixel 4




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