electricron wrote:Whereas I understand why some would prefer minimizing the width of the interstate highway to make room for more or save more land for neighborhoods, TXDOT needs at the same time as much room as necessary for the safest highway possible.
Balancing one over the other should not be in political debate. TXDOT should take as much land as possible for safety, but not one square foot more, imho.
That’s a fair point, buried under the weight of all this, is safety. I feel that I-30 is remarkably curvy or meandering for the speeds most cars drive at today. That might have been fine 50 years ago when cars were slower, but definitely not today. The curves/meander I’m talking about are near Ferguson and Fair Park. And that is one of main aims of the redesign, to smooth out the meanders. Which is probably why they widened it (circled in pink) by increase the width inside the curve. Which is better than the alternative, buy the adjacent land to move the highway, which certainly wouldn’t fly in deep ellum/fair park. I marked this in red on this map.
The I30 presentation leave a lot to be desired in terms of communication. So i made this by overlaying the existing highway plan over the proposed. You can do this by opening both in separate tabs, zooming at the same magnification, and simply flipping between the two. I overlayed the screenshots Then I just used my iPad to delete anything outside the current highway width to see below the proposed expansion. This helps illustrate how widening inside the curve helps with meandering and how it affects the surrounding properties which is circled in green
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Also given the highway’s current width, there is no room whatsoever for a left shoulder on the highway! Mostly because of the HOV lane. Which makes for an incredibly dangerous situation if something happens to your car on any lane other than the right hand lane.
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That’s also something I hope they do in Oak Cliff on I30 and I35E. Straighten out the meanders and add room for a proper left hand shoulder for flat tires, etc.
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