KTRK-13’s Miya Shay reports that the Southwest Freeway expansion and spur reconstruction project is ahead of schedule:
TxDOT engineer Quincy Allen says the entire project is actually ahead of schedule, though you might not see it in the traffic flow.
“We’re about six months ahead of schedule,” Allen said. “But we’ve got a lot of things that’s got to be done behind the scenes.”
[snip]
TxDOT officials say if they remain six months ahead of schedule, most of the lanes should be open to drivers by late next summer.
Of course, it’s television reporting, so Shay had to go sit in traffic for exciting visuals of a traffic jam:
We wanted to see how long it would take us to get from the downtown spur through the 59 construction zone. It’s just before 5pm and traffic is already backed bumper to bumper Driving through what looked like horrible rush hour traffic only took about 10 minutes, and I wasn’t the only driver surprised.
There’s a much easier way to find out such information. Just click here (normal) or here (for mobile devices, but more useful in some ways).
I have various urls from the mobile site bookmarked on my cell phone, because I make the commute from the Galleria to midtown on 59 about 4pm each day. Thus, when the morons at Transtar are running this sort of information on their road signs, I’m not left totally blind as a result. For anyone else who’s making that drive — always exit at Buffalo Speedway and take Richmond if the travel time from Newcastle to Downtown is 15 minutes or longer on 59. Research from your blogHOUSTON traffic team has found that surface streets will be faster.
