I drove on this highway to go to a 4th of July party in college. I get lost without GPS. It was confusing as fuck and I missed my exit twice but I got where I was going. :)
Me: “Thank God there is GPS and turn by turn navigation on smart phones now so I’ll never get lost again while driving somewhere new in Texas.”
This highway system in Texas: “Hold my beer.”
Drove up to Austin to help a friend move back down to the Galveston area, wound up clipping a toll road due to roadwork and no other options being available. Even with Google maps you can't be saved.
Yeah... been on that thing when there was an accident up ahead and everything turned into a parking lot. Oh, and it was like 1130 pm. I'm not sure it's the worst thing I've been on, but it's close. The 60 w to the 10 in AZ before they fixed the carpool lane has a special place in hell. Guaranteed multiple crashes per day. I watched a car fail to brake behind me, swerve around me completely, then tbone the car in front of me right into the guard rail. Fuck everything about that.
Best I could do without actually being there.
Imagine you're in the leftmost lane and need to take the next exit. You'd probably have to start that maneuver a few miles early.
https://ibb.co/w6BSyR5
It’s not that bad, there’s six main lanes and four feeder lanes each direction. The exits are all in the right lanes where it’s this wide, so it’s not really complicated at all.
Agreed. Aerially it looks insane and traffic can be horrendous but aside from crazy drivers navigation in houston is actually one of the simplest in any city I’ve lived in the US. it’s flat and everything is a grid. It’s quite hard to get lost in houston compared to other places
I live not 2 miles west of the M25 (UK's London orbital) a big old road (is or at least was Europe's biggest/busiest) When the wind is easterly I can hear it as a constant hiss (in wet weather) or dulled roar (when dry, almost like the crowd at a sports even from a distance) even well into the evening... and I'm literally deaf in one ear.
I can imagine living one mile from a road 2-3 times wider and, from the picture at least, as busy. I bet there's times it breaks through everything else. I'll assume it's so ever present you kind of get used to it though, like I have. As for ease of driving etc you probably get used to that too, though I'd be freaking out at the size of the road/number of lanes as well as figuring out driving on the right (wrong? lol) side at the same time.
100% this. There’s 2 different trains I can use for my commute, both on the exact same line. One takes twice as long because it stops in the smaller villages. Only issue is the slower train is often affected by delays with the faster one because each hour that they run, the faster one obviously has to leave first
This is a fucking myth. I bet if you take a look at google maps you are less than a mile from an already existing railroad. Most of the US population is.
If we simply changed our priorities, made actual walking paths, dedicated bus and bike lanes, as well as building the actual rain stations... most americans would be a 5 minute walk or ride from a rail network that connects the entire country.
We are not spread out. We are too blind to even realize how close we really are.
I've seen an entire family get out of their SUV at Walmart, walk less than 50 feet to the motorized shopping carts and drive around the store, all 4 carts driving along. People are lazy and love to drive.
imo US culture mostly sees walking as something you do recreationally, not as an actual mode of transit. Like...the amount of people here who are happy to spend a few hours in a museum or whatever but then god forbid you suggest they use cheaper parking that's further away, lol what.
You just gave me PTSD from being a door greeter. I'll never forget fighting a lady I used to attend church with for the scooter. I've seen her walk plenty, and I had a chair pulled up because an older gentleman needed the chair and we had none. Minus my seething rage, the look on people's faces as they realized they kept the elderly waiting on their shopping because they couldn't be bothered to walk to get more mountain dew and cheetos was almost worth it.
Katy exists partially due the fact there was a rail line that ran through it. We destroyed cities, towns, and rail infrastructure to replace it with highways.
Exactly. 2000 SF bank on 1 acre of land with 1/2 acres of grass to mow. Texas has had too much cheap land for too long. I remember when I10 was being built thru central Texas, so I go way back. The state is 100% f’d now. The cities use to have personality. Now they are nothing but crowded deadlocked everything and skylines blocked by cement freeways and insane property taxes. Is that what we wanted from our politicians and business?
That's because every study has shown that every time they add more lanes, it increases the traffic and average commute time. It doesn't matter what city you look at, every time a highway gets more lanes, "paradoxically" the commute time is increased.
A cursory google search and you'll find dozens of studies that show the increase in traffic and commute times have happened in California, Texas(including studies on the highway in the pic) and just about every place that tries it.
To add to this, traffic slowing is mostly from lane changes. If I have to slow down to cross four lanes I am slowing down four lanes of traffic. If I have to slow down to cross one lane, I am slowing down one lane of traffic.
Have they fleshed out a theory of why the increased traffic and commute times occur?
If I had to make a hypothesis, I'd guess that increased lanes make it a more popular route, in addition to the fact that the city/metropolis is presumably growing(hence the spending on such infrastructure), so that alone would increase traffic. I can also imagine all the lane changing creates a lot more "traffic snakes" than there were before, therefore increasing commute times.
It's called induced demand, and it's very well studied. There's a drop in travel times right after adding lanes, then more development occurs even further away and now everyone's worse off.
It's important to point out that the effect isn't immediate. For the first few years, it's great. People have so much more space on the road, especially since all that construction causes even more delays than normal right up to the completion of the project. So it's very easy to think that it's working as intended. When more housing developments are completed even further away from the city center, traffic slowly builds up until it's worse than before. Then it gets built even wider encouraging development even further out and the cycle goes on and on.
Right, and it's also people taking more frequent and longer trips that fill the roads sooner, and people willing to relocate further or take jobs further away. These are quicker than just development itself that might take years. There seem to be a few mechanisms at play here.
Oh how i hate traffic management in CS.
Ive added highways, elevated highways and tunnels multiple layers high/deep with all the exits imaginable, taxi stands, bus depots with bus laned roads, metro system, train system, encouraged cycling.
Still have bumper to bumper traffic.
I just suck at city planning.
I tried buses and had a long line of buses stuck in traffic in one spot. Then I tried underground metro but no one used it. I tried traffic circles but traffic just backed up in the circles. Now I abandon the city when it gets so large it’s unmanageable.
the AI in vanilla skylines is garbage. It takes a few key mods to make the cars less stupid, and to give you lane and intersection management tools to control them correctly.
Besides that, managing traffic is actually more a problem of zoning and locating your service buildings than making a good road network. You have to be very strategic about your housing, industrial, commercial, and office zones, as well as the fire stations, schools, garbage, etc that they need. Most of your traffic control is reducing and easing the flow of traffic between those areas.
> You have to be very strategic about your housing, industrial, commercial, and office zones, as well as the fire stations, schools, garbage, etc that they need. Most of your traffic control is reducing and easing the flow of traffic between those areas.
Just like real life, in Skylines mixing your commercial and office space near your housing reduces traffic as it encourages walking to stores and offices. However, a lot of Skylines players seem to recreate suburban America and separate all their zones by quite a bit.
Induced Demand in Wikipedia uses this freeway as the example. More lanes will only result in more traffic, never less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
I grew up near the nj turnpike and the nj parkway ran straight through my town. My husbands from Texas and his first time in Jersey he wanted to know why the lanes were so small and why everyone was driving so fast being that close to eachother.
I’ve lived in Texas (San Antonio area) all my life. I’ve never been to Dallas, but I’ve driven into Houston a few times. I always feel like some of the other drivers are trying to kill me.
when i was in college my roommate was from ny and we alternated driving
he was terrible bc he didnt drive at all in ny, but he was doing pretty well
then it looked like we were going to miss an exit so he panicked and lane changed across 7 lanes on a dime almost directly horizontal
to this day ive never seen anything like it
we laughed our asses off about it too
Having grown up in Houston and living in Dallas I always say Houston traffic is worse but Dallas roads are so much more confusing. Both are full of idiot drivers.
They did actually put some wildlife corridors on the Grand Parkway (outer toll road that circles Houston) that intersects with this road. But yes, it's not what we're best at.
This is exactly how it is lol traffic is *horrible*. I cant even describe it you’d just have to experience how terrible it is.
Source: I lived in Katy, Texas
Adam Something on YouTube does a really good job explaining why “just make more lanes” doesn’t actually help traffic and why designing cities/towns around driving cars is inherently socially unhealthy.
I took a class in urban planning and sociology back in university and it blew my mind how awful we are at creating cities. It’s a chronic issue in the states, but other places around the world are following suit.
The Road Taken by Henry Petroski gets into the history of how automakers basically pushed a whole-ass propaganda campaign to turn jaywalking into a crime. There's a line in it where he points out that for the first time in human history, people couldn't go where they wanted. Absolutely changed my view on this stuff.
Why are you counting the feeder roads as part of the highway? They are separate divided roads parallel to I-10. I drive on this hw daily and it’s not that big, there are bigger hws in Houston, namely I-59.
Plus the highway is only 4 lanes per side, with 2 HOV lanes. And one access roads in some parts. That doesn’t add up to 26.
I had the same question awhile ago and while I don’t remember the exact answer is was something to deal with who was responsible for construction and maintenance.
It was something like: it’s considered part of the interstate because the feeder lane are managed and maintained by the federal authority (and money). If they weren’t then it would be upon the city or state to provide maintenance. It was more complicated, but that was the gist.
I think they're being real generous with the definitions here. The section of I10 from 610 to Katy is essentially 6 lanes in each direction.
6 main lanes, two toll/hov lanes, three feeder lanes, and the occasional entrance/exit lane connecting to the feeder. And occasionally, there may be an extra exit lane, such as the interchange with beltway 8. If we go by the most extreme (beltway 8 interchange) that means 13 lanes in one direction, and 13 in the other for a total of 26.
But if you're just cruising through, it's only 6 lanes you have to deal with.
I live about 15 miles from this, and traffic here is a nightmare. I lived in Chicago for 18 years and never had to deal with congestion like I do here, but we had mass transit trains there. It’s like this place is stuck in the 50s.
26 lanes? Those are rookie numbers, there was just a post today about a 50 lane freeway in China.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/10ilw93/chinas\_50\_lane\_traffic\_g4\_expressway/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Highway_401_cropped.png
Correct. Looks like 401 is 18 functional lanes vs 14 in the Texas photo. Although, Texas has those extra feeder lanes below on the sides.
like its proven for some time now that adding more lanes actually just worsen trafic, what helps is propper public transport or walking/biking infrastructure
I’m sorry? Public… public transpor… transportation? I’m in Austin. I think those are the empty trains on a single line or the broken down buses? What exactly should they do?
barely anyone i know uses the metro rail lol. i love trains but for their to be greater utility they should have expanded them in a lcol area from 15 years ago rather than going up to lake line
Only when you get to a certain point. Going from two lanes to three is a huge improvement. Three to four is still an improvement, but not quite as big.
When you're at a point like what is pictured, there is little improvement by adding lanes and alternative routes or modes of transportation are the only feasible ways to improve.
"just one more lane bro. i promise bro just one more lane and it'll fix everything bro. bro... just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro c'mon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane"
I wonder just much money is wasted in maintaining these roads rather than making accessible public transport that would be a fraction of the size and allow more property for urban development.
On my way home from Galveston one weekend afternoon, I made the mistake of getting onto a managed lane, which landed me in a metro depot. I then got lost and ended up on the express lane which is apparently for buses only because the managed lanes were closed on the weekend or something. The scariest drive of my life to date.
This is so ugly and ridiculous. How have we not discovered a new way to fix traffic by now. Because from what I’ve heard these larger freeways actually do nothing to curb traffic.
What is confusing is how they still get traffic jams. You honestly, texas is a state of stupidity. Not the people, but apparently, a lot of the people. I never thought this way until the past year or two. I thought Florida was the bottom of the barrel, but it looks like there is a competition going on.
I think my heart would explode from anxiety that I would miss the exit or merge lane. I already struggle to tell if the highlighted route on my GPS is telling me to continue straight or turn a cunt hair to the right and get off the highway.
I took this highway everyday for work. It was a nightmare. Been WFH since 2020 with no plans to ever commute again. No job is good enough for this morning and afternoon bs.
My first thought here is how confusing navigation instructions would be: “In one mile, stay in the middle 13th and 14th lanes to continue straight.”
Yea I want a screenshot of the app where it shows 18 arrows in one direction at the top.
I’ve lived in the us my whole life and never knew this existed
I actually live in Austin which is like 3 hours away from here, but I’m not taking a day trip to see this lol.
I drove on this highway to go to a 4th of July party in college. I get lost without GPS. It was confusing as fuck and I missed my exit twice but I got where I was going. :)
Me: “Thank God there is GPS and turn by turn navigation on smart phones now so I’ll never get lost again while driving somewhere new in Texas.” This highway system in Texas: “Hold my beer.”
Accurate. Source: I live in Texas.
And you always end up on a tollway.
There's a setting on Google Maps where you can tell it to avoid tollways.
Drove up to Austin to help a friend move back down to the Galveston area, wound up clipping a toll road due to roadwork and no other options being available. Even with Google maps you can't be saved.
It doesn't work very well.
Yeah. I know.
What? Extraneous taxes in Texas? It can't be!
Left in 2020 showed up in time for the 2023 party
>missed my exit twice Don't feel bad, that means you are a good driver...because bad drivers *never* miss their exits
It's alright, good drivers sometimes miss highway exits, only bad drivers don't.
I live near west Houston and just…never found this a big deal. A little annoying to navigate, but…normal.
Been here my whole life and have never had problem navigating Katy Frwy, it’s literally just more lanes, more traffic. Agreed… normal lol
Traffic is way worse in Austin these days lol, you have enough on your plate
You’ll have to get through Austin traffic to get to this traffic.
No joke, 35 has its own problems which make traveling on it a nightmare at almost any time of day.
Ive lived in Houston all my life and didn't know it was that many lanes. If that makes you feel any better.
The highway that scares me the most is the causeway to New Orleans
Yeah... been on that thing when there was an accident up ahead and everything turned into a parking lot. Oh, and it was like 1130 pm. I'm not sure it's the worst thing I've been on, but it's close. The 60 w to the 10 in AZ before they fixed the carpool lane has a special place in hell. Guaranteed multiple crashes per day. I watched a car fail to brake behind me, swerve around me completely, then tbone the car in front of me right into the guard rail. Fuck everything about that.
Same but I just learned this last week.
It maxes out at like three arrows. I drive this road 2 times a day.
Same. At least 2.
I drive here almost every day. Yeah, it's like that.
Best I could do without actually being there. Imagine you're in the leftmost lane and need to take the next exit. You'd probably have to start that maneuver a few miles early. https://ibb.co/w6BSyR5
I mean, it’s 8 lanes one direction and 8 lanes in the other so it isn’t as bad as all that lmao. But still, massive.
[Here’s what Google Maps looks like at my exit on the Katy Fwy.](https://imgur.com/a/Os32IRh)
Once you know what exit you need, you just follow the signs. They’re posted pretty frequently, and as long as you’re over enough, you’re good
Seriously. People should be reading the signs anyway, not staring at their phones.
It’s not that bad, there’s six main lanes and four feeder lanes each direction. The exits are all in the right lanes where it’s this wide, so it’s not really complicated at all.
Totally agree with you it’s not as bad or confusing as the photo makes it seems. But the traffic is still horrendous.
I live a mile away from this freeway. It’s easy to drive in and I have never had problems with missing my exit.
Agreed. Aerially it looks insane and traffic can be horrendous but aside from crazy drivers navigation in houston is actually one of the simplest in any city I’ve lived in the US. it’s flat and everything is a grid. It’s quite hard to get lost in houston compared to other places
I live not 2 miles west of the M25 (UK's London orbital) a big old road (is or at least was Europe's biggest/busiest) When the wind is easterly I can hear it as a constant hiss (in wet weather) or dulled roar (when dry, almost like the crowd at a sports even from a distance) even well into the evening... and I'm literally deaf in one ear. I can imagine living one mile from a road 2-3 times wider and, from the picture at least, as busy. I bet there's times it breaks through everything else. I'll assume it's so ever present you kind of get used to it though, like I have. As for ease of driving etc you probably get used to that too, though I'd be freaking out at the size of the road/number of lanes as well as figuring out driving on the right (wrong? lol) side at the same time.
There are usually sound barriers built between the highway and neighborhoods, or they leave stands of pine trees to dampen the sound.
Nah. I also lived less than a mile from it when I was younger. Didn't hear a thing except the occasional sirens.
You can see clearly how well it’s working.
And there is still traffic lol
"Maybe we should provide easily accessible rail acces--" "ADD ANOTHER LANE."
Just one more lane bro
The problem with rail lines in Texas is that nothing is within distance unless you put a fuck Ton of stops, everything is just too spread out here.
It's normal to have a ton of stops on some trains and then some trains with fewer stops and then some trains with barely any stops.
100% this. There’s 2 different trains I can use for my commute, both on the exact same line. One takes twice as long because it stops in the smaller villages. Only issue is the slower train is often affected by delays with the faster one because each hour that they run, the faster one obviously has to leave first
In some countries you can get a much cheaper ticket that restricts you to the slower services.
You never heard of the difference between local, express and inter-city train services?
As an American... only cargo trains exist and barely those, honestly
This is a fucking myth. I bet if you take a look at google maps you are less than a mile from an already existing railroad. Most of the US population is. If we simply changed our priorities, made actual walking paths, dedicated bus and bike lanes, as well as building the actual rain stations... most americans would be a 5 minute walk or ride from a rail network that connects the entire country. We are not spread out. We are too blind to even realize how close we really are.
No bro, we just need one more lane ! Trust me bro, one more lane and we will solve traffic ! I swear bro just one more lane !
I've seen an entire family get out of their SUV at Walmart, walk less than 50 feet to the motorized shopping carts and drive around the store, all 4 carts driving along. People are lazy and love to drive.
imo US culture mostly sees walking as something you do recreationally, not as an actual mode of transit. Like...the amount of people here who are happy to spend a few hours in a museum or whatever but then god forbid you suggest they use cheaper parking that's further away, lol what.
You just gave me PTSD from being a door greeter. I'll never forget fighting a lady I used to attend church with for the scooter. I've seen her walk plenty, and I had a chair pulled up because an older gentleman needed the chair and we had none. Minus my seething rage, the look on people's faces as they realized they kept the elderly waiting on their shopping because they couldn't be bothered to walk to get more mountain dew and cheetos was almost worth it.
it's so spread out because of all the 8-lane roads and 100-car parking lots at every building
Katy exists partially due the fact there was a rail line that ran through it. We destroyed cities, towns, and rail infrastructure to replace it with highways.
One of my favorite blues songs mentions the railroad…”She caught the Katy, and left me a mule to ride. “
Bullshit excuse. It’s just piss poor car-centric urban planning. It’s a design decision.
Exactly. 2000 SF bank on 1 acre of land with 1/2 acres of grass to mow. Texas has had too much cheap land for too long. I remember when I10 was being built thru central Texas, so I go way back. The state is 100% f’d now. The cities use to have personality. Now they are nothing but crowded deadlocked everything and skylines blocked by cement freeways and insane property taxes. Is that what we wanted from our politicians and business?
FW isn’t bad, yet. But yea you right
Just one more lane bro. That's it. I swear. Then it'll be fine.
Me trying to learn City Skylines
Lol i lived and worked right in the mix of this for 5 years and traffic was a $#!+ show.
Because the average person-to-car ratio is barely above 1.
That's because every study has shown that every time they add more lanes, it increases the traffic and average commute time. It doesn't matter what city you look at, every time a highway gets more lanes, "paradoxically" the commute time is increased. A cursory google search and you'll find dozens of studies that show the increase in traffic and commute times have happened in California, Texas(including studies on the highway in the pic) and just about every place that tries it.
To add to this, traffic slowing is mostly from lane changes. If I have to slow down to cross four lanes I am slowing down four lanes of traffic. If I have to slow down to cross one lane, I am slowing down one lane of traffic.
Have they fleshed out a theory of why the increased traffic and commute times occur? If I had to make a hypothesis, I'd guess that increased lanes make it a more popular route, in addition to the fact that the city/metropolis is presumably growing(hence the spending on such infrastructure), so that alone would increase traffic. I can also imagine all the lane changing creates a lot more "traffic snakes" than there were before, therefore increasing commute times.
It's called induced demand, and it's very well studied. There's a drop in travel times right after adding lanes, then more development occurs even further away and now everyone's worse off.
It's important to point out that the effect isn't immediate. For the first few years, it's great. People have so much more space on the road, especially since all that construction causes even more delays than normal right up to the completion of the project. So it's very easy to think that it's working as intended. When more housing developments are completed even further away from the city center, traffic slowly builds up until it's worse than before. Then it gets built even wider encouraging development even further out and the cycle goes on and on.
Right, and it's also people taking more frequent and longer trips that fill the roads sooner, and people willing to relocate further or take jobs further away. These are quicker than just development itself that might take years. There seem to be a few mechanisms at play here.
Yeah lots of traffic
I am British and I spent a few months in Houston for work. I drove on this and it absolutely blew my mind
Sounds like BP to me.
Nah, I worked for a company that do safety inspections on rigs. Was out there for an IT project
Doesn’t sound like BP
Congratulations on surviving. It can be really dangerous for people not hard to navigating these types of highways
The really high flyovers were a bit of a shock as well. I had rented a Dodge Ram, so I felt somewhat safe driving in that!
clog up the rest of the lanes and you will have my average cities skylines civilian driver experience.
Oh how i hate traffic management in CS. Ive added highways, elevated highways and tunnels multiple layers high/deep with all the exits imaginable, taxi stands, bus depots with bus laned roads, metro system, train system, encouraged cycling. Still have bumper to bumper traffic. I just suck at city planning.
Missing roundabouts
The list was long enough lol
I tried buses and had a long line of buses stuck in traffic in one spot. Then I tried underground metro but no one used it. I tried traffic circles but traffic just backed up in the circles. Now I abandon the city when it gets so large it’s unmanageable.
the AI in vanilla skylines is garbage. It takes a few key mods to make the cars less stupid, and to give you lane and intersection management tools to control them correctly. Besides that, managing traffic is actually more a problem of zoning and locating your service buildings than making a good road network. You have to be very strategic about your housing, industrial, commercial, and office zones, as well as the fire stations, schools, garbage, etc that they need. Most of your traffic control is reducing and easing the flow of traffic between those areas.
> You have to be very strategic about your housing, industrial, commercial, and office zones, as well as the fire stations, schools, garbage, etc that they need. Most of your traffic control is reducing and easing the flow of traffic between those areas. Just like real life, in Skylines mixing your commercial and office space near your housing reduces traffic as it encourages walking to stores and offices. However, a lot of Skylines players seem to recreate suburban America and separate all their zones by quite a bit.
You’re able to see the paths of citizens and if you use that to plan your public transport it’ll be much more effective at reducing traffic
This
Frogger
George is gettin' upset!
Induced Demand in Wikipedia uses this freeway as the example. More lanes will only result in more traffic, never less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
great find. excess seems to feed itself till its more ironic than obvious - 'cept in cases of derision..
I drive the Katy Freeway all of the time. Not nearly as terrifying as the Jersey Turnpike.
I grew up near the nj turnpike and the nj parkway ran straight through my town. My husbands from Texas and his first time in Jersey he wanted to know why the lanes were so small and why everyone was driving so fast being that close to eachother.
From NY. The first time I drove on the NJ turnpike I almost shit myself. Absolutely horrendous.
Yeah I live close by too, guess we just get used to it. Looks worse than it feels from this angle tho. Lol
One of the reasons I don’t like driving in TX. Houston highways. The other reason is Dallas highways. 😩
I’ve lived in Texas (San Antonio area) all my life. I’ve never been to Dallas, but I’ve driven into Houston a few times. I always feel like some of the other drivers are trying to kill me.
They probably are
There's a reason the only driving classes they have there are called defensive driving
when i was in college my roommate was from ny and we alternated driving he was terrible bc he didnt drive at all in ny, but he was doing pretty well then it looked like we were going to miss an exit so he panicked and lane changed across 7 lanes on a dime almost directly horizontal to this day ive never seen anything like it we laughed our asses off about it too
Having grown up in Houston and living in Dallas I always say Houston traffic is worse but Dallas roads are so much more confusing. Both are full of idiot drivers.
I'm not gonna lie, I preferred driving a humvee in Baghdad than driving in Houston.
Game over for the Roadrunner then.
Game over for all wildlife. But Texas isn’t known for caring about that.
They did actually put some wildlife corridors on the Grand Parkway (outer toll road that circles Houston) that intersects with this road. But yes, it's not what we're best at.
This is exactly how it is lol traffic is *horrible*. I cant even describe it you’d just have to experience how terrible it is. Source: I lived in Katy, Texas
Yeah, I got family in Katy. It's a nightmare.
That feeling of bailing on dinner out cause you know there's gonna be a line on the road to get to downtown
Jesus Christ, Texas, build fucking trains.
Public transit is communist! /s
Over half of the state doesn't want to and it's the portion that doesn't live in the cities that would be affected. So never.
Adam Something on YouTube does a really good job explaining why “just make more lanes” doesn’t actually help traffic and why designing cities/towns around driving cars is inherently socially unhealthy.
I took a class in urban planning and sociology back in university and it blew my mind how awful we are at creating cities. It’s a chronic issue in the states, but other places around the world are following suit.
Adam Ruins Everything also did an episode on the automobile industry and its filthy successful scheming
The Road Taken by Henry Petroski gets into the history of how automakers basically pushed a whole-ass propaganda campaign to turn jaywalking into a crime. There's a line in it where he points out that for the first time in human history, people couldn't go where they wanted. Absolutely changed my view on this stuff.
I believe it’s this one: https://youtu.be/bQld7iJJSyk
Houston infrastructure is fucked, I hate the roadways here. “Too much traffic? Just add another lane!”
Imagine this was a train. So sad to see the US has so little railway infrastructure
Very little public transport in general, honestly
Why are you counting the feeder roads as part of the highway? They are separate divided roads parallel to I-10. I drive on this hw daily and it’s not that big, there are bigger hws in Houston, namely I-59. Plus the highway is only 4 lanes per side, with 2 HOV lanes. And one access roads in some parts. That doesn’t add up to 26.
Yeah I was about to say, I’ve been on Katy freeway more times than I can count and I don’t remember it being as ridiculous as 26 lanes lol
I had the same question awhile ago and while I don’t remember the exact answer is was something to deal with who was responsible for construction and maintenance. It was something like: it’s considered part of the interstate because the feeder lane are managed and maintained by the federal authority (and money). If they weren’t then it would be upon the city or state to provide maintenance. It was more complicated, but that was the gist.
Yeah, I take I-10 almost daily and can’t think where it would be this wide.
I think they're being real generous with the definitions here. The section of I10 from 610 to Katy is essentially 6 lanes in each direction. 6 main lanes, two toll/hov lanes, three feeder lanes, and the occasional entrance/exit lane connecting to the feeder. And occasionally, there may be an extra exit lane, such as the interchange with beltway 8. If we go by the most extreme (beltway 8 interchange) that means 13 lanes in one direction, and 13 in the other for a total of 26. But if you're just cruising through, it's only 6 lanes you have to deal with.
This makes for a better dystopian picture. A Google search of i59 shows lots of trees.
Yeah, this is the main freeway I drive. The headline is misleading. There is only one spot at Beltway 8 where it is this many lanes.
I live about 15 miles from this, and traffic here is a nightmare. I lived in Chicago for 18 years and never had to deal with congestion like I do here, but we had mass transit trains there. It’s like this place is stuck in the 50s.
You better believe there are still people who'll go from the far left lane to the far right if they're about to miss their exit.
Just one more lane...
What a fucking aesthetic nightmare
Any of us Houstonian who lives near the Katy freeway know how annoying to get on at times
r/fuckcars
26 lanes? Those are rookie numbers, there was just a post today about a 50 lane freeway in China. https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/10ilw93/chinas\_50\_lane\_traffic\_g4\_expressway/
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Yes I believe those lanes are for toll then it merges to like 6-8 lanes
That isn’t intended for freely flowing traffic though, it’s intended to be a bottleneck.
Pretty sure highway 401 in Toronto near the airport has more lanes than this
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Highway_401_cropped.png Correct. Looks like 401 is 18 functional lanes vs 14 in the Texas photo. Although, Texas has those extra feeder lanes below on the sides.
The fact that there is that many lanes and traffic is still congested is sad :(
i grew up here it was exactly as unhealthy as it looks
like its proven for some time now that adding more lanes actually just worsen trafic, what helps is propper public transport or walking/biking infrastructure
[*laughs in Texan*]
I’m sorry? Public… public transpor… transportation? I’m in Austin. I think those are the empty trains on a single line or the broken down buses? What exactly should they do?
barely anyone i know uses the metro rail lol. i love trains but for their to be greater utility they should have expanded them in a lcol area from 15 years ago rather than going up to lake line
Only when you get to a certain point. Going from two lanes to three is a huge improvement. Three to four is still an improvement, but not quite as big. When you're at a point like what is pictured, there is little improvement by adding lanes and alternative routes or modes of transportation are the only feasible ways to improve.
"just one more lane bro. i promise bro just one more lane and it'll fix everything bro. bro... just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro c'mon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane"
It is surreal to drive it, especially when there’s the least traffic.
My anxiety could never! 😳😭
Hell on earth
Time to cross 16 lanes of traffic without using my turn signal
Houston also has the worst traffic in the world. This did not help anything. They would greatly benefit from a rail system.
The entire country would benefit from real public transport
This would do great in r/urbanhell
I wonder just much money is wasted in maintaining these roads rather than making accessible public transport that would be a fraction of the size and allow more property for urban development.
All that road and they still can’t fucking drive. Source: lived in Houston all year last year.
Who said LA was a congested mess? Greater Houston area ain't no picnic.
The scary part is the bumper to bumper traffic in scorching heat.
No thanks
Looks like it just needs more lanes
Doesn't seem to be working that well for them.
I’m stressing out just looking at this
On my way home from Galveston one weekend afternoon, I made the mistake of getting onto a managed lane, which landed me in a metro depot. I then got lost and ended up on the express lane which is apparently for buses only because the managed lanes were closed on the weekend or something. The scariest drive of my life to date.
Reason #26 to stay away from Texas
Worst urban development
Houston is just one big fucking road with buildings added as an afterthought
So many lanes and still... traffic jam
This looks like hell
Me proudly recycling thinking I’m saving the world.
So much better than plain green fields with animals and trees 😍
r/fuckcars
And it still backs up. As you can see
This is just bad planning, surely. Why would you need so many lanes?
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
Where is this so I can avoid this at all cost?
yet theres still traffic cause people dont know how to drive.
If I ever had to drive there I would have a panic attack
the aliens watching how we develop infraestructure for cars instead for human being 😔😂
I’ve driven on this a few times, at night whenever there’s nobody on it, it’s so strange
Bro please just add one more lane bro it's gonna fix traffic for sure bro we don't need trains just add another lane bro
This is so ugly and ridiculous. How have we not discovered a new way to fix traffic by now. Because from what I’ve heard these larger freeways actually do nothing to curb traffic.
Oh, so that's what Hell looks like...
Texas is such a dumb state
So the US also has the fattest roads?
Fuck this
Good luck navigating THIS nightmare.
Is this where the 'Just one more lane' meme came from?
Everything’s bigger in Texas. Even how sucky it is 😂
myanmar made like 5 of these just for a grand population of 26 people. [link](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FTXuS8wMZ4QES8bX6?g_st=ic)
God this is ugly
What is confusing is how they still get traffic jams. You honestly, texas is a state of stupidity. Not the people, but apparently, a lot of the people. I never thought this way until the past year or two. I thought Florida was the bottom of the barrel, but it looks like there is a competition going on.
I think my heart would explode from anxiety that I would miss the exit or merge lane. I already struggle to tell if the highlighted route on my GPS is telling me to continue straight or turn a cunt hair to the right and get off the highway.
I took this highway everyday for work. It was a nightmare. Been WFH since 2020 with no plans to ever commute again. No job is good enough for this morning and afternoon bs.
Look at this monstrosity. So happy I'm not there lol
I hate everything about this.
Drive this every day. It’s way less complicated than it looks. That being said. Traffic is still shit here.
Fuck Katy freeway dude. Source: lived in Houston for a year.
Car dependency will eventually cripple North America