Road – it’s all the rage!
This commute is killing me. A couple of nights ago it took me an hour and 40 minutes to get home from work. For a 20-mile journey, on a single stretch of motorway – the infamous I-10 (a.k.a. the Katy Freeway). That’s an average of 12 mph – which just shows that the police are taking the piss by putting up “65-mph” speed limit signs.
And 12mph is an average. For the last 5 miles of the journey I was hurtling along at closer to 80mph. Yes, that’s over the limit, but I dare the bastards to pull me over and risk a mouthful of my barely-contained road-rage. The police have started ticketing people based on their calculated average speed between two points, even if they don’t actually catch them speeding. If they can do that, then I’m going to use an average speed between two points as my defence. It’s got to cut both ways. Plain and simple.
Anyway, if the last 5 miles were at 80mph then the first 15 must have been at less than 10mph (my rough mental calculations backed up by the fact that I didn’t get out of first gear). The weather was fine, visibility good, and there were no accidents. There weren’t even any police cars sat on the hard shoulder with their lights flashing just as a ‘traffic-calming’ measure. (Man, that pisses me off!) So why the difference? Simple.
The Texas Road Authority are in the process of upgrading the I-10. This is a 6-year project costing in excess of $1.4 billion (U.S. billions – $1,446,000,000), and involves significantly widening the road and reworking just about all of the intersections. The last 5 miles of my journey have already been upgraded, the first 15 haven’t. That’s the difference. Bit it’s not that roadworks are messing things up – the contractors have committed to making at least three lanes available in each direction at all times. It’s just the sheer volume of traffic using the road.
The old Katy Freeway is three lanes wide in each direction, plus one central lane for HOV (high-occupancy vehicles – cars etc. with at least three people in them). The new freeway is six lanes on each carriageway, plus three lanes of service road each side, plus another four lanes (two in each direction) of HOV/toll road in the middle. That’s 22 lanes of traffic wide, and it sits like a great big black ribbon plonked down across the ‘countryside’. Actually, there wasn’t a lot of countryside left even before they started the upgrade – it’s pretty much built up to within a couple of feet of the road – although there are still a surprising number of trees on most areas not already covered by roads or buildings. The new I-10 is a big 200-metre wide stretch of blacktop you can probably see from space (if you can see the Great Wall of China, then I’m sure you can see this), and it’s beautiful.
Sure, trees and grass are nice, but when I’m driving home to see my kids (and play in a nice, tree-shaded garden) I’d rather put up with 20 minutes of concrete whizzing by than 100 minutes of trees going by so slowly I can see the leaves sprouting. The I-10 upgrade can’t happen fast enough for me, and the sooner the Texas Road Authority gets out and starts bulldozing those last few trees out of the way, the better.
Screw the tree-huggers. Tarmac the world, I say!
 Email This Post
|
 Print this post
|
Pingback from interrobang » Blog Archive » Back in the Saddle
Time 9 August 2008 at 11:01 PM
[…] The main reason for me moving, however, was not just to get my own office. This building is only 10 miles away from my house (vs. 22 at my previous office), which means that I can cycle in, and avoid the hell that is the I-10 construction (which is actually nearing completion – typical!). So this morning I dutifully donned the spandex, flipped on the halogens, and cycled into work. […]