Freeway crossing intervals

[vtk]

Okay, so I'm going to start off this thread with a ranting complaint, and I'm not really sure who is to blame.  When freeways are built through urban areas, streets of intermediate importance are usually not cut off by the new highway.  The highway can often be crossed at 1/2 mile intervals, more or less.  In rural areas, there might be a bridge every mile or so, or it might be three or four miles between crossings.  Unfortunately, when that rural area becomes suburban, new crossings often aren't built and the existing crossings become choke points.  Furthermore, if the existing crossings have interchange ramps with the freeway, then they become even more congested because they have to handle traffic getting on and off the highway as well as local traffic that just wants to cross the highway.  Quite often, these suburban interchanges are the only sensible choice for crossing or accessing the highway for several square miles of suburbia.  It seems like it would help a lot if only a few more minor arterials were built across the freeway without interchanges, but rarely have DOTs or developers stepped forward to do this.

Example: I-70 between Hilliard-Rome Rd and Wilson Rd, on the west side of Columbus.  The only crossing between those two interchanges is I-270, and that doesn't really count now, does it?

Any other examples where this is a problem?  How about examples where additional crossings were built?  Longest stretches of freeway with no way to cross?

[realjd]

Palm Bay, FL is the poster child for this. 100k population. 80% of them live to the west of I-95, while 80% of the jobs are to the east of I-95. Only four roads in the entire city cross, only 3 in a useful manner for most traffic patterns, and those are all almost right next to each other in the NE corner of the city.

[Alps]

The problem is suburban sprawl, really. If the infrastructure doesn't support the development, the development will eventually shut off. (Sorta like our world's food supply issue.) So I wouldn't point to any "problem" examples unless there were insufficient crossings built in the first place. (Like I-280 in Essex County, where there are no intermediate crossings between Exits 1 and 10.)

[JREwing78]

In Gaylord, MI, MDOT recently built an overpass connecting Milbocker Rd to McCoy road across I-75, roughly between the Bus I-75 exit on the south side and the M-32 exit on the west side of town.

The method they used was kinda unique - they rebuilt I-75 OVER the side road instead of building an overpass. I suspect it's because of close development on either side of the highway, and because parallel Dickinson Rd runs very close to the ROW's western edge.

[Chicagosuburban]

Chicagoland has seemed to avoid this problem, but if western McHenry County ever becomes suburban, then I-90 will definitely have this problem.

Chicagoland does, however, have this problem when it comes to river crossings.

[1995hoo]

Here in the DC area, I think the problem that develops is less with there being too few crossings across certain Interstates, although that situation does exist in a number of places. The bigger problem is that many of the neighborhoods are built with but a single way in or out so that the traffic is forced onto the few arterials that cross those Interstates with no way to get around the backup unless you go a fairly good distance out of your way (which is itself a problem at rush hour). While it's nice as a resident of a neighborhood when there is no way for thru traffic to get through your neighborhood, and while there are certain safety problems that arise when commuters are able to use neighborhood streets as cut-through routes, a single ill-placed accident can wreak havoc on your street system if it happens in just the wrong place at the wrong time on one of those roads that cross the Interstate.

The map linked below gives one illustration of that sort of street pattern:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Heming+Avenue,+North+Springfield,+VA&hl=en&ll=38.803062,-77.201014&spn=0.051036,0.132093&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=52.550571,135.263672&z=14

I dropped the placemark on Heming Avenue in North Springfield, Virginia. It comes down from Braddock Road and passes under the Beltway and then connects to Queensberry Avenue, which connects back to Braddock on the other side of the Beltway. But there's no other way out once you've crossed the Beltway because the railroad tracks there are a barrier–while there is another road on the other side of the tracks, you can't get there. To the east you can see Backlick Road, a street that passes under the Beltway and provides an important alternate to the highway during rush hour. Other than Heming Avenue, which doesn't go anywhere, Backlick is the only way across the Beltway between I-395 and Braddock Road (three miles of highway). That doesn't sound like much until you look at the map and see that if there is a wreck on Backlick that closes the road at the Beltway, in order to get around it your choices are: (a) Use the Beltway; (b) Take I-395 to Edsall Road and go across; (c) Use Old Keene Mill Road west to Rolling Road, north to Braddock, and then east (as you can see, Lake Accotink Park and Accotink Creek mean that none of the neighborhoods connect).

I'm not necessarily criticizing the design of that particular area, given the creek and the park. I'm just using it as an example of what I mean about how I think the limited number of roads that cross the Interstate don't necessarily become choke points simply because they cross the Interstate, but rather because traffic is forced to funnel onto those roads for fairly long stretches because you don't have any alternative to using those particular roads. Then when you add the usual problems of poorly-timed traffic lights, or inadequate turn lanes, or rude drivers who block the box, the problem snowballs.

BTW, I can think of other places in Northern Virginia where the limited number of crossings does not pose a problem precisely because there ARE multiple routes that connect those crossings without requiring you to go way out of your way. There are two crossings of the Beltway between I-66 and Nutley Street, for example–Gallows Road and Cedar Lane–and there are roads that parallel the Interstate a short distance away on both sides–US-29 to the south is a 40-mph arterial with some traffic lights, and Cottage Street to the north is a 25-mph residential street with a lot of stop signs. But because the options exist, I've found that Cedar and Gallows don't back up the way Backlick does. The link below shows where this all is; it's centered on the corner of Cedar and Cottage. I should also mention that a lot of that is an older area than many suburban areas and so the developers' ideas on how to lay out the roads surely changed over the years in favor of the "closed-off" subdivisions and away from the interconnected areas like these.

http://maps.google.com/?ll=38.882281,-77.245646&spn=0.025489,0.066047&z=15

[Brandon]

Chicagoland has seemed to avoid this problem, but if western McHenry County ever becomes suburban, then I-90 will definitely have this problem.

Chicagoland does, however, have this problem when it comes to river crossings.

Obviously you've never been along I-55 in Will County.  No crossings between Lockport (Airport) Road and Weber Road, none between Weber Road and IL-53, none between there and I-355.  Then we have the one major working river in Chicagoland...

[Revive 755]

I-55 through Jefferson County, Missouri, has this issue just south of Arnold.  There are not any overpasses between the Richardson Road and Imperial Main Street interchanges, which has lead to heavy traffic through the Richardson Road interchange.  There are however a couple of roads that could be reconnected across I-55 to fix this problem.

A lack of between interchange interstate crossing could also become a problem on I-55 between Route M and Route Z in Jefferson County should the county population continue to increase.

[Zmapper]

When the interstates were first built, was there a universal standard of some sort for how often local roads should cross them?

[Chicagosuburban]

Chicagoland has seemed to avoid this problem, but if western McHenry County ever becomes suburban, then I-90 will definitely have this problem.

Chicagoland does, however, have this problem when it comes to river crossings.

Obviously you've never been along I-55 in Will County.  No crossings between Lockport (Airport) Road and Weber Road, none between Weber Road and IL-53, none between there and I-355.  Then we have the one major working river in Chicagoland...

I forgot about that one. But Veterans Pkwy does cross between Weber and IL-53. But I know what you mean, a town like Romeoville having four places to cross an interstate that borders two sides of it....cutting off 143rd St/Taylor Rd didn't make any sense.

[hobsini2]

Chicagoland has seemed to avoid this problem, but if western McHenry County ever becomes suburban, then I-90 will definitely have this problem.

Chicagoland does, however, have this problem when it comes to river crossings.

Obviously you've never been along I-55 in Will County.  No crossings between Lockport (Airport) Road and Weber Road, none between Weber Road and IL-53, none between there and I-355.  Then we have the one major working river in Chicagoland...

I forgot about that one. But Veterans Pkwy does cross between Weber and IL-53. But I know what you mean, a town like Romeoville having four places to cross an interstate that borders two sides of it....cutting off 143rd St/Taylor Rd didn't make any sense.

I wish that Schmidt Rd had a crossing.  This was even prior to the Bolingbrook Hospital (which is on Schmidt) being built.
And it doesn't help that Bolingbrook and Romeoville seem to feel the need to get rid of the frontage roads along I-55.

[Brandon]

Chicagoland has seemed to avoid this problem, but if western McHenry County ever becomes suburban, then I-90 will definitely have this problem.

Chicagoland does, however, have this problem when it comes to river crossings.

Obviously you've never been along I-55 in Will County.  No crossings between Lockport (Airport) Road and Weber Road, none between Weber Road and IL-53, none between there and I-355.  Then we have the one major working river in Chicagoland...

I forgot about that one. But Veterans Pkwy does cross between Weber and IL-53. But I know what you mean, a town like Romeoville having four places to cross an interstate that borders two sides of it....cutting off 143rd St/Taylor Rd didn't make any sense.

I wish that Schmidt Rd had a crossing.  This was even prior to the Bolingbrook Hospital (which is on Schmidt) being built.
And it doesn't help that Bolingbrook and Romeoville seem to feel the need to get rid of the frontage roads along I-55.

The frontage roads are a so-what issue with Remmington and Crossroads replacing them.  But, Schmidt needs a bridge, IMHO.  It's more of an issue now with the new hospital.

[NE2]

Although it's not a freeway, SR 99 (Aurora Avenue) in northern Seattle seems to have very few crossings.

[yakra]

When I-95 (now 295) was built in Freeport ME, practically every road that would have crossed it was cut off, and Mallett Dr. was constructed, to carry routes 125 & 136 over the highway to US1 & downtown; most all cross traffic was shunted onto that. It's beginning to show signs of its age IMO...