I'm a little surprised more long distance trucks don't get off I-10 and take NM-404 to Chaparral and NM-213 down to the North side of El Paso to reach the North half of Loop 375. They would get around the busiest parts of El Paso, including the obsolete sections of I-10.
Some improvements are being made to I-10 near the new Loop 375 toll road. One widening project is most of the way complete between Executive Center Blvd and Sunland Park Drive. Does that fix any of the geometry issues with I-10?
Traveling via that route is essentially a bunch of "zig zags". However, there IS a significant fraction of truck freight using that zig zag, including fairly heavy turning movements at the newer rotary structure at NM 213/404 which is frankly awful. The route is quite circuitous as NM 404 begins to head ENE as it nears NM 213 from the W.
There needs to be a straight shot (interstate grade) from the 375 loop road, just E of the RR track (and Railroad Dr) with clearance and movement of the present Gun Club out of that area. A straight shot, up to the "saddle" of Anthony Gap, which is in New Mexico, where it would meet present two lane NM 404. 404 would be double barreled, W to current Exit 162, on I-10. This exit shows some foresight for such a possibility, the frontage on the W side of 10 has been moved back, to allow a possible future high speed ramp from 10 S towards a future facility. Am going to call this future facility Interstate 210, as that is what is should be named, and it denotes what design parameters it needs to meet. This route needs to have a variable width median, of minimum 88 feet, extending up to 150 feet, once it departs the El Paso environs several miles S of the NM/TX state line. All the way to Exit 162. Cheaping out, and building a "poor boy" or a "flush median" type of roadway is simply unacceptable.
Yes the "improvements" to 10 on the W side of El Paso are essentially finished. They did lock in a lot of the long standing geometrical deficiencies on 10 as part of this project. Curve and Hill. The idea may? have been with the 375 tollway, to provide "redundancy" to existing 10. Ironic, was under the belief the texdot was moving away from toll facilities. Indeed, there is still a "toll deferral" status on the thing. Have to wonder, if they do proceed to enact a toll, even minimal, will most of the traffic, now on the tollway, then go back to 10, leaving the tollway essentially empty?
My argument was that the long standing geometrical problems with 10 should have been fixed, via straightening and widening, and redundancy provided for with the addition of one way frontage, down to the N outskirts of the UTEP campus. Basically 12 to 16 lanes of total capacity, from Exit 11, Mesa Dr, to roughly MP 17 on the N end of the UTEP campus. The surviving Paisano Drive US-85, which hugs the border, would have been absorbed into this large facility. 10 also needs the downtown section opened up to a full eight lanes, and provisions made for an eight lane mainline all the way to Anthony Exit 0, so including the current one way frontage - 12 total lanes. This could have already been in place, instead of the piecemeal interchange replacements of the past twenty years.
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Topic: El Paso, TX (Read 4774 times)