Tag Archives: TxDOT

local news

Road woes persist in Amarillo

Some issues give me heartburn, particularly when they contain no easy solutions or options for those of us affected by them.

Highway, street and bridge construction fall into that category.

I’m hearing some grumbling about a major reconstruction project underway here in Amarillo, Texas, that is causing grief for motorists and business owners nearby.

The Texas Department of Transportation is knocking down a bridge that spans Interstate 40 at Bell Street. It’s causing serious traffic disruptions. The project will take months to complete. The bridge will be inoperable until November, according to the Amarillo Globe-News.

The state is spending more than $7 million on just that project alone! Oh, and then we have that Loop 335/Hollywood Road reconstruction project on the south end of the city.

How do the city’s residents and business owners cope with this madness and mayhem? With extreme patience, I venture to say. Whether this kind of work is being done in a mid-sized city such as Amarillo, or in a major metropolitan area, or even in a small rural community, someone, somewhere is going to get upset.

Just the other day, I was running an errand that took me from my southwest Amarillo home to a location near Sunset Center. I drove north along Coulter, hoping to catch the freeway east to Western Street. That’s when I discovered the work being done on I-40. Crews were diverting every vehicle off the highway onto the frontage road.

If I had been smarter and more attuned to what’s going on around the city, I would have taken Wolflin Avenue east from Coulter to my destination. I didn’t. I got stuck in traffic. Lesson learned for the next time I have to travel in that direction.

I tend to avoid getting too worked up over these highway and street projects. I try to see it as a glass-is-half-full deal. I like to look at the big picture, take the long view.

When it’s done, we’ll have a new bridge to cross when we travel north-south along Bell Street.

I just hope the new span will lend some aesthetic quality to the highway. Heaven knows the city needs it.

local news

Highways getting some attention?

Welcome aboard, Amarillo City Councilman Eddy Sauer, in the campaign to dress up our public rights-of-way.

Sauer recent went to Waco and then posted this item on social media: “I’m committed to cleaning up our highways and making our city more inviting. The I-40 and I-27 corridors are great marketing tools for Amarillo. We have a great city and a great opportunity and we need to take advantage.”

He was struck, apparently, by the appearance of a sign greeting motorists entering the city.

I drive through the I-40/27 interchange roughly once a week and my hair still bristles when I notice its shabby appearance. A former Texas Department of Transportation actually told me once that the state opted to let “natural” flora grow rather than spend money to dress it up and make it more visually appealing. I believe I laughed out loud when he told me that; he took offense at my reaction.

Mayor Ginger Nelson has vowed to work out an agreement between the city and the state for a joint maintenance project that dresses up these rights-of-way.

The mayor now appears to have at least one ally on the City Council. Maybe more of them will emerge. One can hope.

local news

Streets becoming major municipal campaign issue

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If I could take aim at a single issue for our municipal candidates to ponder, it would our streets.

Getting from Point A to Point B has become a bit of a struggle at times, even in Amarillo, the city I used to joke had its “rush minute” daily at 8 a.m. and again at 5 p.m. It’s not so funny these days.

I am hearing from one of the candidates for City Council speaking in general terms about street maintenance and — in a related matter — traffic control.

Ginger Nelson is running for mayor along with two other candidates. I’ve already commented on her pledge to work with state transportation officials to negotiate a maintenance agreement to improve and maintain the appearance of the public rights-of-way along Interstate 40 and 27. I’m all for it!

She is speaking also about “considering all transit options like buses and bicycles to meet the needs of citizens.” Good deal. She can start that effort by talking to Parks and Recreation officials about how they can complete a citywide bicycle network that is supposed to enable residents to get anywhere in the city on a bicycle.

I have been patient for many years now as I have sought to navigate my way through the city. Streets get repaved regularly. Crews tear up asphalt on major thoroughfares and put fresh surfaces down. They remain in pristine condition far too briefly before patching crews show up.

Nelson wants to spend “street improvement bond money wisely.” I hope she articulates her definition of “wisely.” I’m all ears.

Finally, she hopes to develop “a plan for long-term maintenance of our streets.”  Good. I’ll await that plan, too.

Street repair and maintenance — along with developing routes for alternative transportation modes — is important at many levels.

We remain tied to automobiles in Amarillo. There’s little emphasis placed on using mass transit methods, such as the buses run by Amarillo City Transit. Maybe we can get more residents into our buses and out of their own motor vehicles. The fewer cars and pickups tooling down our streets, the less wear and tear on the pavement. Isn’t that a sensible outcome?

This election, I need to stipulate once again, is going to be a major event in the history of Amarillo. We’re getting a new City Council majority.

I want all the candidates to talk openly to residents about what they intend to do about our streets, upon which we depend to get from place to place.

One candidate for mayor at least is starting the conversation. For that I am grateful. Let’s develop it further.

local news

Xeriscaping … that’s the answer

EL PASO, Texas — I am in the mood to follow up on an earlier blog post relating to the terrible appearance of Amarillo’s freeway interchange.

I have a one-word potential solution: xeriscaping.

My wife and I have seen it in this city, where water is even rarer than it is in the Texas Panhandle. Interstate 10 and U.S. 54 come together in the middle of the city. We proceeded north on U.S. 54 and noticed that the xeriscape technique used to beautify the highway continued to the edge of the city.

Amarillo mayoral candidate Ginger Nelson has declared highway right-of-way appearance to be among her signature issues. She said she plans to “develop a plan for annual and long-term repairs and maintenance of streets, as well as the construction of new streets as the city grows.”

This isn’t rocket science. We ain’t reinventing the wheel. There’s not much genius required to provide Amarillo a better appearance to passersby who motor through the city en route to points hither and yon.

My wife were two of those passengers who blew through El Paso. We noticed right away the attractiveness of the right-of-way. We took that first impression with us, and we plan to remember it every single time we drive through Amarillo’s Interstate 40/27 interchange, which contains festering weeds and little else.

Xeriscaping can be done with virtually zero water use.

We live in a semi-arid climate, yes? If it’s too costly to maintain a right-of-way with greenery, then use tons of gravel and some sparse vegetation to dress it up.

It works in El Paso. It can work in Amarillo.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/03/fix-the-interstate-curb-appeal-please/

 

local news

Hoping the ‘loop’ becomes a loop for Amarillo

I have many wishes for the city where we live.

Amarillo is a wonderful city. It’s on the move. Its downtown district is undergoing a major makeover and will become a wonderful place to go for entertainment and business.

One of my wishes? It’s for Loop 335 to become an actual loop that circles the city of nearly 200,000 residents.

It is no such thing at the moment. It hasn’t been for, oh, several decades. Loop 335, aka Soncy Road on the city’s western border, has become just another busy street.

What is the state highway department planning for the loop?

Here’s what I understand.

The Texas Department of Transportation plans to extend the western corridor along Helium Road, about a mile west of Soncy. How far along is TxDOT in this endeavor?

My wife and I drove along Helium Road just the other day while running an errand. We found a gravel road from Hollywood Road north almost to Interstate 40. No work has yet begun on Helium.

Now, is there work ongoing on the loop? Yes. It’s occurring on the southern stretch of Loop 335 between Bell Street and Washington Street. TxDOT is turning the loop into what it calls a “limited access” highway.

The Soncy corridor needs lots of work.

We’ve been able to travel through a good bit of Texas during our three-plus decades living here. We’ve been to communities of Amarillo’s size and considerably smaller with actual loops that allow easy transport around those communities.

If a truck is eastbound on I-40 and must exit the freeway because it is carrying “hazardous cargo,” the driver must exit at Soncy — where he or she might choose to drive southbound through traffic that is choked often to a stop.

My wife and I will be long gone before the western loop extension is completed. We hope to return to visit frequently in the years to come. When we do, my hope is to see much of that interstate traffic diverted away from Soncy — and onto an extension that deserves the name Loop 335.

What we have now is nothing of the kind.

local news

Fix the interstate ‘curb appeal’ … please!

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Ginger Nelson’s campaign for Amarillo mayor sent us an item we received in the mail today.

It was a mailer containing a list of some of her top priorities if she wins the mayor’s race on May 6. One of them jumped right off the page; it stuck out like an orange “Road Work Ahead” sign — if you get my drift and I am sure you do.

Nelson pledges to “negotiate an enforceable maintenance agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation to clean up and improve curb appeal along I-40 andI-27.”

Can I hear an “Amen!”?

Interstate right-of-way curb appeal has been a recurring theme of this blog.

My take on it? The freeway interchange stinks! It looks like hell. TxDOT did a lousy job of landscaping it and there’s been next to zero  upkeep on it since the highway department rebuilt the interchange more than a decade ago. I-40 in either direction from the interchange looks shabby as well, as does I-27 southbound toward Loop 335/Hollywood Road.

Thousands of motorists pass through the interchange daily and many of them are passing through, perhaps never to see Amarillo ever again. I’ve long believed that it is important to at least present something of an attractive appearance to those passing through.

That’s not what pass-through motorists are getting when they zip through our city.

How does the mayor “negotiate an enforceable maintenance agreement” with TxDOT? Surely the mayor can find some common ground that somehow splits the cost between the city and the state agency. How about placing a phone call to our neighbors in, say, Albuquerque and Oklahoma City? Have you seen the interchanges in those cities?

I get that improved curb appeal doesn’t necessarily provide for better service to our city. We still have to pay for cops, firefighters, water and sewer service and trash pickup; we still need street lights that work properly and we need parks where we and our children and grandchildren can relax safely.

Interstate highway appearance, though, does matter at some level.

It matters to me, at least. I’d bet real money it matters to other Amarillo residents, too.

The rest of Nelson’s campaign mailer today contained routine boiler plate stuff: creating jobs and cutting red tape. Who doesn’t support all of that?

Improving the looks of this city to those who blast through ought to take a little higher place on the city’s political pecking order.

To that end, I wish Ginger Nelson well in that effort if she becomes our next mayor.

business news, local news

Patience, please, as city remakes itself

Whenever I venture into downtown Amarillo — which isn’t too terribly often these days — I remind myself of what I’ve thought for as long as I can remember.

It is that no matter the inconvenience we experience today, we’ll be paid off at the end of it all.

I think of such things whenever the city decides to tear up its streets and repave/rebuild them. I grumble at the sight of those construction cones and the orange detour signs. Then I remember that there’s always an end to it.

So it is with this downtown reconstruction effort that’s well underway in many instances.

Buchanan Street is cluttered with construction gear; streets leading from Pierce onto Fillmore and Buchanan are closed off. The city, truth be told, looks like a giant construction zone, which isn’t very pretty.

Chain-link fences have gone up around the ground floor of several long-abandoned retail outlets, signaling the start of construction of something shiny, new and — for my money — rather exciting. Tenth Avenue has some new loft apartments, with more on the way.

And, oh yes, we have that highway construction under way along Interstate 40, with the new direct-access ramp being built onto I-27; TxDOT crews are widening and improving the freeway east and westbound. Yep, it’s a bit of a mess out there — for the time being.

I’m kind of reminded more or less of the old Vietnam War saying about how U.S. troops occasionally had to “destroy a village in order to save it.” Perhaps that’s overstating it a bit, but I trust you’ll understand what I mean, which is that the city needs to erect these  obstacles temporarily while crews work to create something brand new.

Progress sometimes isn’t pretty. Amarillo’s progress is proceeding at what seems like an accelerating pace, which I hope means a quicker end to the ugliness that will precede what we all hope will be a gleaming new central business and entertainment district.

I’m willing to wait for as long as it takes.

local news

Thanks again, TxDOT, for keeping the trees

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ROBERTS COUNTY, Texas — You don’t see many of these around this part of Texas.

They’re trees, man.

But in this rural county, and over yonder just east of here in Hemphill County, they have a relative abundance of them along U.S. 60 and U.S. 83, which intersect in Canadian.

Think of what might have happened to a lot of these beauties.

The Texas Department of Transportation came up with a cockamamie idea some years back to cull a good number of trees from U.S. 60. They posed a “hazard” to motorists in some locations, TxDOT suggested.

TxDOT then put the word out to the public that it was considering getting rid of several thousand trees.

What do you suppose was the reaction in the affected area? Give up? Of course you know! It was an expression of outrage. Residents didn’t want TxDOT messing with them trees, you know. I was writing editorials for the Amarillo Globe-News at the time and the newspaper expressed its extreme displeasure with what TxDOT had in mind.

To its great credit, this state agency listened to the calls. It revised its tree-culling plan, which resulted in a serious reduction in the number of trees it would remove.

The photo attached to this blog was snapped this afternoon right next to the Miami Cemetery in Roberts County. Very soon, the leaves will turn colors.

Motorists who drive along U.S. 60 between Pampa and Canadian will be able to treat themselves to some fall foliage splendor that is about as pretty as it gets.

Thanks, TxDOT, for keeping the roadside eye candy for us to ogle.

local news

Enough with the highway weeds … already!

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I have just traveled through much of southern and western Amarillo along the city’s two interstate highways.

I want to scream at the top of my lungs.

The rights-of-way in both directions — north-south and east-west — are in hideous condition!

It’s the weeds, man! They’re everywhere!

Along the shoulder of the Canyon E-Way. Throughout the interchange with Intestate 40. Head west along I-40, you see more of them. Weeds are standing tall along the expanse of supposedly “landscaped” areas adjacent to the highway.

I keep hearing rumors and whispers about Amarillo working out arrangements with the Texas Department of Transportation to clean up, dress up and improve the appearance of the interstate highways that course through the city.

That’s all they are. Rumors and whispers. Nothing gets done. Ever!

TxDOT sends mowing crews out now and then. They whack the weeds down, but then they’re left to grow back. Which they’ve done quite nicely, thank you very much.

The issue is money. TxDOT doesn’t have it to spend on aesthetics. Neither, apparently, does the city — which long has passed the buck on highway upkeep to the state, given that it’s within the state’s purview to do that job.

I know I need not remind y’all that thousands of people travel through Amarillo every day. Many thousands of those travelers are seeing the city for the first — and likely only — time.

Many of their impressions are drawn by what they see while zipping along the highway at 60 mph. I understand fully you cannot judge a community completely by the appearance of its public rights-of-way.

But holy crap! Can’t we get the powers that be even moderately interested in getting off their duffs to do something about the appearance of our highways?

environmental news, local news, State news

Why not dress up our highway interchange?

Texas Freeway road art - Lone Star State on abutment wall with landscaping June 2014 I-10 pic

My wife and I — along with our dog Toby — have just returned from a week on the road.

Our travels took us south, then west, then north and back home. Along the way we zoomed through three substantial cities: Tucson and Phoenix, Ariz., and Albuquerque.

Tucson and Albuquerque are about the same size, roughly 550,000 or so residents; Phoenix is home to more than 1.5 million folks.

What do they have in common, other than fairly picturesque landscapes?

They all have highways that are attractive to the eye. Moreover, they are attractive to those of us who are just passing through. They leave us with a smattering of good vibes about the city and the care the leaders there take in dressing up their highways.

Whenever we see such things on our travels around the country, the same question keeps popping back into my pointed head: Why can’t Amarillo dress up its lone major freeway interchange?

One of these days — maybe soon — I intend to get to the bottom of this dilemma.

The Texas Department of Transportation rebuilt the Interstate 40/27 interchange just a few years ago. It reversed the over-under ramps of both highways. It built new structures and then painted the concrete in Palo Duro Canyon colors, with green trim. It painted those Amarillo Chamber of Commerce boots on the side of the overpasses.

Then it decided to plant a few native trees.

That’s it.

TxDOT hasn’t done much to spruce up the appearance of the interchange. I visited once some years ago with the TxDOT officials who oversaw the landscaping of the interchange and he told me — in response to a question about the then-shabby appearance of the interchange — that the state was allowing “native flora” to take over. My reaction was, well, laughter.

The state can do much better than it has done with this highway “beautification” effort.

If other cities and states can make their public rights-of-way attractive to visitors passing through, why not Amarillo?