Is there a reason that every interchange.. (Austin, Manor: house, school)

[neddy]

that I have come across while driving seems not to have been finished for some reason so therefore( it seems to be always the direction that I want to go) I have to get off, sit thru a light a couple of times then back on to the other freeway? I am used to freeways taking forever, from SA where we are the king of the long drawn out freeway projects but the flyovers that are missing are strange to see with no men or trucks or anything around! And why is loop 360 called that when it only goes around half the city?

Thanks

[ivy_trick_mess]

Complain to TXDOT...the more complaints they get, the faster they should get on it...let's hope anyway

[love roses]

I remember while we were living in Denver, they had a "loop" that didn't go around the city. Right before we left, they were working on finishing it, but it had been unchanged for many years before that.

[TX-Griff]

We had one of those sorts of projects in New Haven... a "major" expressway that was all of two exits for the whole of my 20+ years living there.

Of course, the INSTANT I put my house on the market, they started work on it. Wow, what power I have!

Mebbe I can get up a collection to get me to leave Austin that'll get all the unfinished projects done?

TX Griff

[Trainwreck20]

An overly simply answer....Austin is still a mid-sized city and only receives a certain amount of priority when receiving highway funding - the money will only come so fast, so although there are a huge number of projects that need to be done, they can only do a few at a time.

Regarding the partial projects: the funding issue is one reason. The city (state) determined which were the most important interchanges and finished those before moving on to other more important interchanges to finish with the limited budget. The second reason is a more entertaining story. The new airport was going to be out toward Manor or somewhere further east, I think. The highway planning based projects on that assumption. Then, at the last minute, the USAF moved out of Bergstrom and the new Austin airport went there, throwing all the highway planning off. You would not believe the bureacracy needed to change projects, but some did, which left others half finished.

More entertaining was the land speculators that got crushed by the airport's last minute location 'change' (although none had been officially selected).

[southaustingal]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

More entertaining was the land speculators that got crushed by the airport's last minute location 'change' (although none had been officially selected).

LOL! I remember that. What a hoot to hear the speculators try to rationale why the airport should be built in Manor instead of simply moved to an already fine location at the base. A few politicians and land-grabbers lost out on that deal, but perhaps they recouped with the growth of Austin.

[neddy]

Thanks everyone!

Train, you esp! I sometimes feel so lost here since I only know half of Austin's history! My mom and her family is from here so I know Austin, sort of that way and sort of just by living in SA!

[Trainwreck20]

What a hoot to hear the speculators try to rationale why the airport should be built in Manor instead of simply moved to an already fine location at the base

Hehe...I was thinking about that exactly. All the radio ads and even some TV ads on why Bergstrom was a bad idea. It was very funny, because there were so few even plausible reasons that it should not go there. I wish I could remember some of the excuses - they were so far fetched - but I remember thinking "these people must be desperate to spend money trying to convince me of that!".

Back on to highway funging - for those new to Austin, it is often 'picked on' in the legislature because it is so 'liberal' in politics. You can argue that it deserves the picking on that it gets or that it doesn't, but the result is that sometimes Austin ends up with the short end of the stick come time to hand out money.

[TheHarvester]

Originally Posted by ivy_trick_mess

Complain to TXDOT...the more complaints they get, the faster they should get on it...let's hope anyway

Amen to that! TXDOT has to be the most incompetent bureaucracy I've ever encountered, and I live close enough to their offices that I should be down there picketing every day.

Freeways are designed so ineptly in Austin, it's hard to imagine what was going on in the minds of the people who designed them.

But in defense of TXDOT, I think a big part of the problem is the Texas state legislature. They're scared to death of taxing gasoline at a higher rate, or expanding public works projects, and they all hate Austin because we're too liberal. There have been many state legislative actions taken against Austin because they don't want us to have control of our natural environment, and they seem to want to punish us for refusing to vote with the hyper-right-wing majority of the rest of the state.

[fil]

After reviewing the engineer profiles on TXDOT, most of the staff started school but never finished...