Work has begun a massive highway plan to improve transit along a major east-west highway that cuts through the heart of North Texas.

I refer to U.S. Highway 380, which serves as a major thoroughfare to residents of and visitors to the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. There will be plenty of grumbles, profanities and obscene gestures to be seen and heard for what will seem like forever.

For my part, I will mutter the four-letter words under my breath in the sanctity of my pickup truck.

The Texas Department of Transportation has big plans for 380. It’s going to turn the four-lane highway into a six-lane jumbo road. One can see the concept of the new lanes being dug out at this moment. I live in Princeton and the evidence of work is everywhere in the form of those ubiquitous orange barrels and cones.

OK, so what’s the purpose of this blog? It’s merely to implore everyone to find that patience gene in our DNA and put it to work as we travel along the highway.

TxDOT unveiled some time ago an initiative that intends to reduce traffic along US 380. Part of that plan involves purchasing land in loops around communities that sit along 380. Princeton is one of them. The idea is to route through traffic off of 380, encourage motorists to take the loop and leave the existing highway to in-town/local traffic. The idea sounds doable. I will be anxious to see if works out as traffic planners envision.

That is, if I live long enough. I am not a young man. Indeed, I might be unable to drive myself when TxDOT announces it’s done with this massive project.

Well, I hereby pledge to mind my manners for as long as I can and for as long as it still matters.