Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Wait, when we're saying 16 lanes, are we talking one way or both ways? Because if it's one-way, that's insane. 32 lanes of traffic is complete insanity.
Most urban freeways worldwide are 2 lanes one way. Even the pre-1950 U.S. parkways are mostly 2 lanes, though some were widened to 3.
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7-8 main lanes in each direction, 14-16 total.
5-6 frontage lanes in each direction, 10-12 total.
Texas freeways are deliberately (and stupidly) designed to run down the middle of what are essentially large boulevards.
If people want to take issue with something, take issue with the fact that Texas still insists on building frontage roads. If they didn’t have those, they wouldn’t ve expanding the right-of-way.
Why do they call it a right-of-way? Because there is a communitarian right to be able to move freely without trespassing against private property. In other words, we collectively (and as a result individually, because of the nature of this particular right) have a right to make our “way” to wherever we want. In the U.S. constitutional regime communitarian rights can and often do, within certain bounds, take precedence over individual rights (in this case property ownership). The tool used to ensure that the communitarian right of freedom of movement remains viable: eminent domain.
For most of our history we have exercised eminent domain principally to ensure that the freedom of movement of people via public rights-of-way. In fact, the use of this principle for this purpose is so uncontroversial historically that it wasn’t until governments starting using the tool for movement of goods (railroads) rather than people that it became controversial. Hell, at least this is a PUBLIC use and not the shenanigans that New London pulled seizing land to give to a developer and then arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that it was in the public’s broader interest…
Guess who won: New London.
This thread is exactly the same thing as when TxDoT released the newest schematics for Austin’s I-35 reconstruction where, just like here, so many people seem to miss the forest for the weeds. So what a few people are being displaced and being justly compensated for their property? Like hella benefits are coming with that project:
1. Significant capped parkland and much wider bridges for pedestrian use.
2. Burying the highway beneath grade and reconnecting the adjacent neighborhoods.
3. Reducing the number of, extending the remaining, and declining the grade of entrances and on ramps.
4. Adding managed lanes.
5. Cantilevering the access roads over the freeway in places to reduce RoW acquisitions.
6. Bringing the overall design of the freeway up to current interstate standards. This stretch of freeway was built under the original standards that are long since obsolete and do not function well with the vastly superior modern technology on our roads today.
7. Improved signage.
8. Aesthetic improvements to the freeway.
9. Adding lanes in both directions in all categories and maximizing the use of existing right of way by removing concrete embankments and choosing to instead use vertical retaining walls (again, and I cannot say this enough, thereby further minimizing additional RoW acquisition).
All of these things are also true of Houston’s freeway project.
Missing. The. Forest. For. The. Weeds. People.
p.s. I am calling them weeds instead of trees because y’all are finding a few bad details and ignoring all the good ones. The good ones are the trees and if you were looking from above rather than from on-the-ground you’d see the forest and not be so focused on the couple of weeds.