Amarillo Transportation Plan from 1968

[Revive 755]

Finally refound the Amarillo urban transportation plan 1965-1968 report, which includes a map showing a planned connection between today's I-27 and the US 87/287 freeway on Page 38, entitled the 1985 plan:


A note on the side of this map says the locations are general, not exact.  The map also does not differentiate between expressways and freeways, it only has an expressway classification.  It still looks like there could have been weaving issues with the design of the connector route, especially between I-40 and the 'southern fan' into downtown.

The other main deviation from this plan is the expansion of TX 335 to kind of a full loop for the area; the map only shows an expressway from I-40 along Lakeside, curving to head westerly along St. Francis, and ending at Western.  The northern part of the loop appears at the top of the map excerpt.

This particular reports mentions that a new study was going to be done to analyze the effects the opening of I-40 had on the Amarillo area.

[MaxConcrete]

That's very interesting. I surveyed the corridor on a recent visit to Amarillo to try to determine if it ever was feasible to build the freeway through downtown along one of the streets currently serving the traffic. Now I see from the map that they proposed going well to the east to minimize impact and cost.

[txstateends]

I wondered about that...it would be much easier to have a connection to the east if you didn't want to upgrade or change the downtown one-way pairs.  Of course, nothing's been done and now there's a plan for a ballpark in conjunction with civic center improvements and related additions on the table, which would cut into any eastward freeway plan--if that kind of progress were still in motion.