After widening was completed in 2008, a portion of the highway west of Houston is now also believed to be the widest in the world, at 26 lanes when including feeders. - (Wikipedia)
WTF
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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And despite the extra lanes, it's still gridlocked. Maybe they need just one more lane...
"I SWEAR BRO JUST ONE MORE LANE, ONE MORE LANE WILL BE ENOUGH!!!"
Unironically a single bike lane off to the side might have eased up traffic.
one more ~~lane~~ train rail
I e moved out of Houston but if i recall correctly they also removed the rail line that was adjacent to this highway for the expansion.
There was a killer hamburger place off like Gessner that i still miss.
Is Houston aware that some cities pay hundreds of millions of dollars to install a rail line to address this exact problem?
Disused rail lines are a RoW life raft for American cities. I cycle in a very hilly area and rail trails and trails along waterways have nicely mild grades compared to the rest of the state. Electric trams could easily co-exist with a cycle path next to them. I just hope we're smart enough to recognize these chunks of land as a gift from the past and not give them up or develop them inappropriately (aka freeway expansions)
Well that stretch of highway is called the “energy corridor” and all the big oil companies have their headquarters there… bp, chevron, conoco, etc.
So to answer your question: No. they seem unaware.
An old railway running along the north side of the freeway was demolished in 2002 in preparation for construction which began in 2004.
Form the wiki article linked above
That sounds like extremely bad planning. In essence they could have had several smaller highways that better suited the needs of the users without forcing them all onto this clusterfuck.
Highway planners are constrained by the fact that these roads can only be run through poor and usually black neighborhoods.
There's already another highway 4 miles north and 4 miles south of it. There's some 2-lane each way roads between, but anything bigger or more grade-separated would be further isolate communities, take away alternative transportation routes, and take away greenspace.
Includes the express lanes and the frontage roads. It really shouldn't, you aren't supposed to just drive the entire trip on the frontage roads.
Meaning it's even wider than 26 lanes because of the space between the feeder and the highway, the extra shoulders, and barriers to the express lanes.
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Houstonian of 30+ years here.
Even with the insane number of lanes available, driving anywhere inside beltway 8 between like 12 pm and 8pm is hell on earth. And outside those hours, you’re playing chicken with drunk drivers.
Before I started working remote, I used to clock my average speed to and from work. Most of the time it was 15-20mph on a 65mph freeway. Literally bicycle speeds. Without cars or gridlocked traffic, I could have commuted faster on a bike.
More than one person dies in Houston traffic every day on average. This is probably the shittiest and most expensive form of mass transit mankind will ever build. At least I hope this is as bad as it ever gets, lol.
It's absolutely insane how many people die every single day because we thought it was a good idea to let everyone operate multi-ton pieces of heavy machinery at hundreds of km per hour on the reg.
How the fuck is there more regular testing and training for people driving forklifts than Dodge Rams?
Simple, if you fuck up on a forklift you are damaging company property.
And as we all know, company property has more rights than people.
Last time I was in Houston I was driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic that was going 95 mph. I looked over to my right and saw a group of five cars pass me going at least 10 to 20 mph faster. This would not have been remarkable except that I was in the right lane and these cars were passing me on the shoulder.
This being Houston, though, that's still probably not remarkable.
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Imagine the insides of your lungs after years of that.
Air quality (or rather the lack thereof) is a problem in parts of Houston. If you ever want to go down an internet rabbit hole, google the Houston cancer clusters. Or the Brio superfund (not superfun) site. I try not to think about it when I'm outside taking a walk 🫠
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This will soon become top 100 most popular photos. Its synonymous with car dependency and post WWII American urban planning
Government offloaded transportation onto individuals and parking onto business, now everyone is worse off.
The Federal Highway Administration has a multi-billion dollar budget, and doesn't include the multi-billion dollar budget each state allocates to their state highway departments, or the multi-million dollar budget most large cities allocate to their streets and highways departments, and many cities unconditionally grant valuable street real estate to individuals to park for free.
It's not an anarchocapitalist conspiracy, it's a massive subsidy for motor vehicle owners.
bUt pUBliC tRanSpOrTAtiOn nEeDs tO mAkE a pROfiT
How common/usable is subway in bigger cities? Here in Prague we have an amazing public transport, even with priority lanes for buses at some places and most importantly a pretty decent subway. I've never had an issue getting anywhere around the city in a short time (I can get anywhere in the city within 1.5 hour max (that is including suburbs around Prague), around 30 mins to places around the center), and the cost of an unlimited year-long ticket is just 150EUR.
Oil and automotive companies literally tore most of public transport out in US way back when.
They would invest into the local tram companies, buy them out, then close and tear out the lines.
Public transportation in the US is at best, an afterthought. A lot of major cities have buses/trolleys but not many have trains/subways. Only the largest cities have a workable public trans system such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco.
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It's insanely bad. Hell, Canada has shown that public transit is viable with the North American development model, but the US simply refuses to invest money into public works.
Vancouver SkyTrain and Montreal REM/Metro are both fast, highly efficient subway systems that are able to navigate single-family housing development. Why can't the US?
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In the US, public transportation is pretty much unusable in bigger cities except for NYC.
America has this weird, masochistic relationship with cars that just gridlocks everyone. But "FreEdoM."
One potential reason posited by The 1619 Project is due to white Americans moving out of metro areas after WW2 in order to "escape" black residents. Then, they restricted expansion of public transportation development to those areas because making them more accessible and usable would potentially result in a influx of poorer, black residents who can't afford a car to commute to the suburbs.
The specific example they used is Atlanta, which has staunch racial lines, horrible public transport, and some of the worst traffic in America. They make a very compelling case.
Here is the relevant New York Times article about it and it's Chapter 16 in the actual book
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Not many U.S. cities have a subway. I think the only substantial subway system is in NYC. The city I live in has a very short commuter rail line that doesn't go to/from anywhere people want to go. Buses are gridlocked in traffic like everyone else, and have to make frequent stops, so it can take something like 2 hours to travel 10 miles. The low-wage workers I know without vehicles just spend $40/day on Uber to commute to work and back (which is a significant percentage of their pay).
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But you dont get it, managers need you at the office so they can feel important. You just need to lose 3 hours of your day, spend more money and pollute more, STOP BEING SELFISH!
Ah ha! I see the problem. It looks like more lanes may be needed.
I still can't get over how two lanes wide rail system can be more efficient than whatever I'm seeing now.
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That gave me a good chuckle.
It's odd how we've commoditized such selfishly resource hungry transportation. I like walking to stuff as long as where I live is safe.
This shit is pure madness
This is true. Commuting in an urban or suburban environment should be significantly easier than it currently is. Public infrastructure needs to improve and become less car-centric. That being said, if you live in a rural area or a small town where there is very little traffic, or if you need to pick up groceries for your family of 4+, cars are needed. People in anti-car communities do not like to hear this, but I do not think cars should be criticized for merely existing. Current infrastructure should be criticized for only considering them. I think that while holding on to the idea that car=bad is fun, it also sours people who genuinely rely on cars to the movement and limits what actual progress could be made by these communities to make walkable cities a reality. Thank you for listening to my ted talk.
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Just get a bicycle bro
Yeah, because biking 35km soon after waking up, then another 35km after work, is super easy for sedentary people /s
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in most parts of us that is not an option any sane person would choose
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> Me playing Cities: Skylines
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