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I have driven on every East-West interstate through Texas and have seen many of their stacks.
Texas has an outstanding DOT and loves to build roads and stacks.
There is growing worry that they don't factor in future maintenance costs however, and their situation is becoming one like unfunded future pension liabilities.
Texas is not very beautiful to me, and I think the lack of trees combined with so much concrete infrastructure is why.
The flyover stacks are now considered not the best use of limited tax-payer funding.
Today, spaghetti junction would cost at least $1 billion, and when there's enough room, these flyover-style interchanges are being replaced by cheaper turbine interchanges.
In a nutshell the expensive flyovers are replaced with larger radii loops closer to the ground resting on soil except immediately when going over opposite direction lanes.
Charlotte is home to one of the first turbine interchanges at I-85/I-485 (2nd interchange East of downtown). Georgia is building one in Savannah too.
California does have some new interchanges like on the I-110 between airport and downtown, but I'm thinking of so many old ones out in San Bernardino and Riverside Co. that were built during California's big road-building effort in mid 20th century.
When I lived in SoCal in the 90's California's highway exits including interstates didn't have a single exit number on any of them.
When finally forced to add them, they defied standards again by not "tab-mounting" them, and rather used whatever free space was available on the short/wide box truss supports.
The end result is the "California cool" factor was preserved despite the old & rickety condition of California's road infrastructure.
Thank God we have the beautiful style of Spaghetti junction and everything else designed in the 80's "freeing the freeways" initiative.
Because although the I-75 North recent project looks ok...
what GDOT pumps out these days like the new Capt. Herb Emory flyover from GA400 to I-85 North looks like a*s with its use of straight, precast beams to form a curve and its coat of paint to hide all the dirty details.
I certainly am not seeing Texas move to these types of interchanges. In my time here the High Five (intersection of US 75 and I-635) has been rebuilt and makes Spaghetti Junction look like child's play. The Mixmasters in both downtown FW and Dallas have been rebuilt. A high flyover was just completed for the Sam Rayburn Tollway and US 75 here in McKinney as well as Sam Rayburn and the Dallas Tollway. Currently the interchange between US 75 and the Bush Tollway is under construction and being widened. All of these are high flyovers. The one rebuild that did not employ a lot of flyovers was the convergence of 121, 114 and I-635 at the north end of the DFW airport, but there was tons of right of way left for this. The other intersections I mention have a lot of development at all corners.
A bit concerned about these stacks of bridges and overpasses. They look like they've seen better days. The ramp that takes you from I-285 East to I-85 North has a huge chunk that fell onto the embankment where the wall used to be and has been replaced by a temporary barrier. Everytime I see those bridges fully loaded with cars stuck in traffic sitting atop them I can't help but wonder how much longer those bridges are going to last. I believe they are at, or very close to their lifespans ontop of which handling over double the traffic they were originally intended to handle.
I am wondering, if / when it comes time to replace them, what they will replace them with and how they will do it given the limited space.
IMO the single worst ramp on Spaghetti Junction is 285S-to-85N.
Before you get on the flyover you are traveling on what has to be one of the most dangerous stretches of interstate highway in the whole state. Evening traffic going onto this ramp backs up for miles, while the southbound 285 traffic almost always clears up much sooner. That means you have people in the left lanes going 60, 70+ while people in the right lanes are barely moving. Worse, some of them cut over at the last second. I guarantee you this is a source of many of the wrecks in this area. And did I mention that the antiquated Buford Highway interchange is right in the middle of this?
Then there's the flyover itself. It's steep both up and down, and it has a sharp curve at the top. Not good for trucks, who have to slow down, also backing up traffic.
And then you get to the bottom of the flyover with a VERY quick merge-weave with the exits to Northcrest and Pleasantdale. Then it's a merge onto 85, where our ramp shrinks to one lane right before finally merging with I-85!
A mess. An absolute mess. If nothing else, the ingress to and the egress from this ramp need reworks.
However, as if this all weren't bad enough, both the 285/20 interchanges have problems that are even worse!
IMO the single worst ramp on Spaghetti Junction is 285S-to-85N.
Before you get on the flyover you are traveling on what has to be one of the most dangerous stretches of interstate highway in the whole state. Evening traffic going onto this ramp backs up for miles, while the southbound 285 traffic almost always clears up much sooner. That means you have people in the left lanes going 60, 70+ while people in the right lanes are barely moving. Worse, some of them cut over at the last second. I guarantee you this is a source of many of the wrecks in this area. And did I mention that the antiquated Buford Highway interchange is right in the middle of this?
Then there's the flyover itself. It's steep both up and down, and it has a sharp curve at the top. Not good for trucks, who have to slow down, also backing up traffic.
And then you get to the bottom of the flyover with a VERY quick merge-weave with the exits to Northcrest and Pleasantdale. Then it's a merge onto 85, where our ramp shrinks to one lane right before finally merging with I-85!
A mess. An absolute mess. If nothing else, the ingress to and the egress from this ramp need reworks.
However, as if this all weren't bad enough, both the 285/20 interchanges have problems that are even worse!
And you've got all the arterial street exits mixed in where you take 85 S or stay on 285 as well.
285 eastbound to 400 isn't quite as bad, but its a mess too. Too many exits too close together. Heavy traffic and poor lighting at night.
ROW appears to the be the biggest challenge for Turbine Interchanges, would not work well in urban settings.
Agreed.
And the Spaghetti junction type don't work in northern states where they would be iced up too often. I remember one time in Houston seeing an 18 wheeler start sliding backwards down the ramp towards me. I did get by.
IMO the single worst ramp on Spaghetti Junction is 285S-to-85N.
Before you get on the flyover you are traveling on what has to be one of the most dangerous stretches of interstate highway in the whole state. Evening traffic going onto this ramp backs up for miles, while the southbound 285 traffic almost always clears up much sooner. That means you have people in the left lanes going 60, 70+ while people in the right lanes are barely moving. Worse, some of them cut over at the last second. I guarantee you this is a source of many of the wrecks in this area. And did I mention that the antiquated Buford Highway interchange is right in the middle of this?
Then there's the flyover itself. It's steep both up and down, and it has a sharp curve at the top. Not good for trucks, who have to slow down, also backing up traffic.
And then you get to the bottom of the flyover with a VERY quick merge-weave with the exits to Northcrest and Pleasantdale. Then it's a merge onto 85, where our ramp shrinks to one lane right before finally merging with I-85!
A mess. An absolute mess. If nothing else, the ingress to and the egress from this ramp need reworks.
However, as if this all weren't bad enough, both the 285/20 interchanges have problems that are even worse!
Braided ramps would improve the interchange very much.
IMO the single worst ramp on Spaghetti Junction is 285S-to-85N.
Before you get on the flyover you are traveling on what has to be one of the most dangerous stretches of interstate highway in the whole state. Evening traffic going onto this ramp backs up for miles, while the southbound 285 traffic almost always clears up much sooner. That means you have people in the left lanes going 60, 70+ while people in the right lanes are barely moving. Worse, some of them cut over at the last second. I guarantee you this is a source of many of the wrecks in this area. And did I mention that the antiquated Buford Highway interchange is right in the middle of this?
Then there's the flyover itself. It's steep both up and down, and it has a sharp curve at the top. Not good for trucks, who have to slow down, also backing up traffic.
And then you get to the bottom of the flyover with a VERY quick merge-weave with the exits to Northcrest and Pleasantdale. Then it's a merge onto 85, where our ramp shrinks to one lane right before finally merging with I-85!
A mess. An absolute mess. If nothing else, the ingress to and the egress from this ramp need reworks.
However, as if this all weren't bad enough, both the 285/20 interchanges have problems that are even worse!
If you really look at the design of Spaghetti Junction, you realize just how badly designed it is. It's almost as if they were trying to make it turn into a bottleneck. There are numerous spots where a lane exits, then splits, and you can merge back onto the lane you just exited from while traffic from an entrance is trying to merge at the same time. But that 285E/85N is the worst. The ramp to Chamblee-Tucker absolutely does not need to be right there, splitting the ramps to north and south 85, then also re-merging again with 285. The ramp alone is over a mile long, and all of this is to serve the entrance from Buford Highway.
But all over the place, we have two exits which merge to one lane, immediately merge with the highway, then close the lane. 285 to 20W on the west side is a horrendous example of this. It's an extremely heavy truck route. The ramps from both 285S and 285N merge together, close down to a single lane less than 1/4 mile later, then merge onto I-20 500' later. Then a mile later, that lane exits. So, two lanes worth of heavy truck traffic must merge together then merge in with existing traffic in less than 1.25 miles. It's no wonder that exit jams up all the time.
If you really look at the design of Spaghetti Junction, you realize just how badly designed it is. It's almost as if they were trying to make it turn into a bottleneck. There are numerous spots where a lane exits, then splits, and you can merge back onto the lane you just exited from while traffic from an entrance is trying to merge at the same time. But that 285E/85N is the worst. The ramp to Chamblee-Tucker absolutely does not need to be right there, splitting the ramps to north and south 85, then also re-merging again with 285. The ramp alone is over a mile long, and all of this is to serve the entrance from Buford Highway.
But all over the place, we have two exits which merge to one lane, immediately merge with the highway, then close the lane. 285 to 20W on the west side is a horrendous example of this. It's an extremely heavy truck route. The ramps from both 285S and 285N merge together, close down to a single lane less than 1/4 mile later, then merge onto I-20 500' later. Then a mile later, that lane exits. So, two lanes worth of heavy truck traffic must merge together then merge in with existing traffic in less than 1.25 miles. It's no wonder that exit jams up all the time.
In 1988 it received awards for engineering excellence from the American Consulting Engineers Council of Georgia and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), District 10.
It's the amount of vehicle traffic increased past it's design, AKA Induced Demand.
I just find it to be so interesting to hear Spaghetti Junction (understandably) being criticized as being poorly designed when the interchange and much of the Interstate system that was redesigned and rebuilt during the massive 'Freeing-the-Freeways' reconstruction project of the 1980's was initially received so much critical acclaim from observers both domestic and aboard after it was completed in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
But then again, as of the late 2010's, Spaghetti Junction along with much of the rest of Interstate system in metro Atlanta is probably handling upwards of nearly twice the amount of traffic that it was designed to handle even after the massive 'Freeing-the-Freeways' reconstruction project of the 1980's.
I think that much of the 'Freeing-the-Freeways' reconstruction project probably started to become outdated by the turn-of-the-Millennium when metro Atlanta experienced a massive population growth spurt immediately after the conclusion of the 1996 Olympic Games.
It's not that is was badly designed, in fact in won awards in 1988 It's the amount of vehicle traffic increased past it's design, AKA Induced Demand.
LOL, there's a lot of irony in the title of the article that you linked to, "Tom Moreland Interchange Cures Atlanta Traffic Woes."
Also, the "booming metropolis of 2 million" that they referred to Atlanta as being in the 1980's is now a booming mega-metropolis of nearly 7 million people as of the late 2010's... Which probably explains why an interchange like Spaghetti Junction is seemingly so outdated more than 30 years after its completion.
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