Mind-Boggling Highway Segment Removal at Guthrie, Texas

[Brian556]

This is mind-boggling. Why would they remove the segment of the old highway that is needed to connect the town to the new highway on the northwest side? If you look at the guide signs, the one on EB US 82/SH 114 says "Aspermont/Guthrie". So, rather then leave the old highway segment in place for easy access to the town for traffic coming east on US 82/SH 114, they now expect people to go a long ways out of the way, and get on US 83 northbound south of town, and backtrack. I don't think I've seen anything like this before.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6205313,-100.329883,1508m/data=!3m1!1e3

The big picture:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6153904,-100.3028463,12065m/data=!3m1!1e3

[lordsutch]

Looks like they can use 14th Street to access town. It's about a half-mile diversion, worst-case.

[kphoger]

It looks to me like they simply removed an at-grade intersection in favor of a grade-separated interchange.  The old location appears to have been inadequate for the interchange due to nearby ranching property.  Doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.  Or, as was mentioned, there's always 14th Street.

[aboges26]

This is mind-boggling. Why would they remove the segment of the old highway that is needed to connect the town to the new highway on the northwest side? If you look at the guide signs, the one on EB US 82/SH 114 says "Aspermont/Guthrie". So, rather then leave the old highway segment in place for easy access to the town for traffic coming east on US 82/SH 114, they now expect people to go a long ways out of the way, and get on US 83 northbound south of town, and backtrack. I don't think I've seen anything like this before.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6205313,-100.329883,1508m/data=!3m1!1e3

The big picture:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6153904,-100.3028463,12065m/data=!3m1!1e3

Well for one, they were not about to put an interchange out there so I am glad there is not an additional intersection on a 75 mph roadway.  Out here in west Texas, its not that big of a deal to drive down to the interchange.  Nobody is in much of a hurry anyway on Texas Time!

[usends]

It seems a little extreme to me, but I imagine the town of Guthrie chose this option over some other alternatives... maybe trying to keep truck traffic out of town? 

I also wonder if there will be a second phase, where US 83 traffic north of town gets redirected to the same western bypass, and the old highway becomes a business loop.

[Bobby5280]

I drove through Guthrie on US-82 a few times earlier this Spring going back and forth to New Mexico. I agree it's strange TxDOT removed the original chunk of US-82 that connected directly to the North side of town. Anyone driving Eastbound would have to backtrack to get into Guthrie. Going 65mph or 75mph it would be hard to see the 14th street at grade turn and slow down enough to make it. Most would have to get off at the US-83 exit. Unfortunately most people would just keep going to the next down.

My guess is TxDOT didn't have enough ROW (or funding) to make a 2nd exit on US-82 for Guthrie's North side. The previous US-82 route hugged pretty close to developed 6666 Ranch property. So any new exit would have had to be built just a little farther South.

The other baffling thing is how they routed the West end of the Guthrie bypass back onto the old US-82 2-lane route which splits between 6666 Ranch buildings and the 6666 Ranch airport. One would have to bypass the new bypass to get a big four lane or freeway quality road built through there.

[Sykotyk]

It seems clear there wasn't room for there to be an interchange there. And, given traffic volumes between the two roads, one interchange was probably more than enough. I've driven US83 through there, but never US82. Based on where SB83-WB82 or EB82-NB83 traffic would be heading, there seems to be other routes that fare much lower on mileage except for very local traffic, which would be minimal given the area.