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Texas Department of Transportation has good idea, questionable implementation
Driving in to work the other day on I30, I noticed that the TXDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) had changed the message on its billboard-thing to read “Travel time to I35: 5-7 minutes.”
At first, I said to myself, “What a great idea!” But then I realized it was a good idea… sort of.
To you Dallasites, this explanation will probably make sense. To you outsiders, probably less so. But I’ll try to paint the picture.
The sign is located at westbound I30 and Munger — which is 2 exits before downtown Dallas, and about 2 miles away from downtown. I35 is on the west side of downtown, which is probably a mile and a half or 2 miles wide. So this sign is located about 4 miles from I35. In bad traffic, 4 miles can take forever — and such a sign is a good idea.
The problem here is that there’s really not much of an alternate route to I35 from that spot. You could exit; go into downtown (not via the service road; I30 has no service road around here — just onramps); fight the one way streets, constant bus stopping, pedestrian traffic and general mess of rush hour downtown Dallas; and then come out on the other side, where I35 is. Of course, since the sign is saying “6 hours to get to I35″, so will everyone else — making the traffic even worse.
If you want to get to I35 from I30, there’s two ways to do it — I30 to I35 or I30 to US75 to Woodall Rogers to I35. But whenever one of those is clogged, the other gets clogged with people avoiding the clogged one — so there’s no real benefit one way or the other.
Essentially, the sign is useless. But it’s good information. I feel they should put a similar sign as you exit downtown onto US75 that gives an estimate for how long it will take to get to Loop 635. That’s a 7 mile hike with alternate routes (Hillcrest, Greenville, or even Preston or the Tollroad) that’s probably just as heavily trafficked.
Lunar Adventures, solving your traffic problems every day. Or sometimes. Or rarely. Whatever.
Wed April 12th, 2006 3:21 pm
Filed under Dallas
4 comments
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But there IS another route from I-30 to I-35 — exit I-30, meander south to Loop 12, take Loop 12 all the way around to the OTHER side of 30, come back in from the west, and get on I-35. Easy. Especially during rush hour.
Traffic delay signage on 75 = good idea.
Oooh, the ole 635 trick. An extremely effective one if you have 9 hours to kill!
I bet you really miss Dallas traffic out there in Jacksonville, eh?
they’ve got those types of signs all over out here in socal…i don’t think the point of it is so that you can make different travel plans, rather, so you can tell your work how late you’re going to be that day.
Oh.
Well that makes sense.
Eric, I’ve come to rely on you to point out things that make sense. I just don’t think of things that make sense on my own..