I just watched a BigRigTravels or Big Rig Travels video called "U.S. Highway 287 going though downtown Amarillo" (or something like that) also U.S. 87 and U.S. 60. (The same road) I got to see the trench (northbound carriageway, either Buchanan or Filmore) that goes under the edge of the rail yard. It looks very nice and provides an example of what the rest of the highway would like if it was trenched. It's too bad. If they are going to dig two of the carriageways under a rail yard (and the other two carriageways are bridges going over the railroad) instead of bypassing the rail yard, then they ought to have trenched everything else.
Even if that would involve approximately 88 additional grade separations (4 carriageways going under or perhaps over 22 streets, 11 streets north of the rail yard, 11 streets south of the rail yard) or just 44 grade carriageways because frontage roads aren't supposed to be grade separated from traffic lights. would never ever happen, unless Amarillo's population reaches one million.
Also I noticed on the maps, that the bridge-over-the-rail-yard carriageways (southbound carriageways, Pierce and Taylor) already go over some of the streets closest to the rail yard. (1st and 2nd Street) which means that there are less more grade separations than I thought. ... if they would only Just Keep Going and build the rest of them.
At least Loop 335 upgrades will be completed ... perhaps when Amarillo reaches population of 500,000 then the loop upgrades will be completely completed.
Post Merge: November 19, 2016, 05:17:29 AM
And upon closer inspection of the map, I am now very annoyed.
It looks like when they built the bridge over the rail yard, it appears they actually built the bridges ON TOP OF BUILDINGS!! This is the first time I have seen that. Do they really build bridges on top of buildings?! So if they really do things like that, then they could extend the bridges over the rest of the 20 of 22 streets. (1st and 2nd street have southbound bridges going over them.)
Or, perhaps the buildings were built after the bridge was built. Who would want to build a building under a bridge?
Since the remaining buildings are far enough from the roads: If anybody objects to any bridges being built too close to their buildings, then TXDOT could say "well, at least your buildings are not under the bridges!"
