Not ALL of the roads around Austin are bad, and the roads that ARE bad aren't always bad everywhere - it's usually just a few bad spots that manage to screw up traffic - sometimes for miles, sometimes in both directions. Maybe it's an intersection that backs up every day, maybe it's a stretch of freeway that's affected by an entrance or exit ramp that gets much more traffic than it can handle, maybe it's just bad design - the point is, if these "hot spots" would be taken car of, there would be a noticeable improvement in traffic flow on the roads they affect, and if enough of them are fixed, traffic flow around the whole are would improve. There are quite a few of these "hot spots" around town, I'll list a few I know of and what needs to be done about them.
* Ben White/71 at Riverside *
Seriously - why the HELL hasn't an overpass been built there yet? Why wasn't one built YEARS ago? Ben White is a wonderful, wide, smooth, fast freeway all way across the south end of town, from just east of of Oak Hill (we'll get back to that in just a moment), past Mopac, past Lamar, past Congress, past I-35, past Montopolis...and then, just before Riverside, it stops. Traffic on Ben White regularly backs up at the red light at the Riverside intersection for MILES - in BOTH directions. What's even crazier is that just on the other side of Riverside, there's an overpass that takes Ben White over 183, and 2 more overpasses at the entrance to the airport. The only bad spot for miles is...Riverside.
BUILD A DAMN OVERPASS! Holy crap, a BLIND man can see it needs one there, and it's needed one for YEARS.
Put an overpass there, extend the Ben White freeway at least to the airport (preferably a few miles further east to the 130 toll road), and watch traffic FLOW!
* 290/71/Ben White at the "Y" in Oak Hill *
What a joke. Again, the geniuses built a nice, wide, smooth freeway out towards Oak Hill, and then just..quit. You're tooling along at 70 mph, come over a bridge, and have to slam on the brakes because of the traffic backed up for miles east of the "Y". The freeway throws traffic onto a skinny surface street with a TRAFFIC LIGHT for a side road! How stupid can you get? A few hundred yards west, everybody has to sit at the light at William Cannon, then another few hundred yards to the "Y" itself, where traffic has to sit through several cycles of the light just to get through the bottlenecked interesction.
The "Y" needs an interchange, and it needs it BAD. It's needed it for years - DECADES, even. I live in Oak Hill, been here for 20 years, attended night school for my degree at Southwest School of Electronics back in the mid-80's - even back then, the "Y" was a bottleneck. With all the growth out this way (mostly the large, upscale housing developments between Oak Hill and Dripping Springs), traffic has increased dramatically...but the roads haven't.
* Southbound Mopac, south of the river, Bee Caves entrance ramp *
I've already talked about this in detail in an earlier post, but it still needs mentioning - and it NEEDS TO BE CLOSED. Blocked off, dug up, planted over, forgotten about. Traffic on the southbound frontage road can go through the light at Barton Skyway and use the nice, long, gentle entrance ramp and merge lane just on the other side, between Barton Skyway and the exit for 360/Barton Creek Mall.
Every single damn day, southbound traffic on Mopac comes to a screeching halt due to cars on the frontage road diving down that steep, short entrance ramp just before Barton Skyway, with no room to merge. It's a BAD design, it's a safety hazard, it's not even needed, and it should disappear. NOW.
* I-35 northbound frontage road, between 290 and St. John's. *
If you've got a death wish, this little stretch of road is made for you. You've got traffic coming north on the frontage road itself, traffic coming from 290 (east AND west), traffic coming around underneath I-35 making U-turns, and don't forget traffic exiting I-35 itself, flying down the exit ramp at 70+ mph. Throw in a couple of hotels, several restaurants, a side street or two, and, of course, the entrance ramp for northbound I-35 AND 183, and you've got a recipe for a constant stream of wrecks. Honestly, park in the Crowne Plaza parking lot facing west and watch - it's truly entertaining.
To fix that "hot spot", first there needs to be a flyover built for eastbound traffic on 290 to get onto I-35 northbound - that'll take a good portion of traffic out of that intersection and off the frontage road. Second, the St. John's exit ramp from I-35 down to the frontage road needs to be closed - every car coming down that ramp is traveling at 65-70 mph, they all think they have the right of way, and the vast majority of them try to force their way across all 3 lanes so they can pull into the parking lots of the few restaurants there. Third, the entrance ramp from the frontage road leading to northbound I-35 needs to be closed, or at least moved to the north side of St. John's - traffic using that ramp now conflicts with traffic on I-35 that's trying to get over to use the flyover for northbound 183. The entire area is a classic example of how NOT to design a stretch of road.
That's just a few - there are plenty of others. We'll tackle some more next time.
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