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Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

practical.engineering

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Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#201

Post by arcticfox »

34-9t6i wrote: post #189
xyst wrote: post #90

It’s a shame this country is so obsessed with cars. There’s so much land yet we devote it to destroying lush ecosystems (that help reduce effects of Mother Nature) and replacing it with massive highway projects that end up costing everyone more in taxes/indefinite maintenance costs. Then the effect is 10X’d when useless suburbs are built. More car dependence. More time spent on roads. Traffic slows to a halt as subur…

Houston is currently planning its fifth loop. They already have four, and they need a fifth, which mean converting many more square miles of marshland into pavement. Meanwhile there are hundreds of square miles of abandoned real estate in the middle of the city. It's cheaper to just buy and build new than the tear down the old building first. And they can't figure out why each hurricane season is more destructive tha…

I recently moved near the 4th loop and - it’s hard for me to imagine anyone crying for the land beyond it. There’s just nothing there. It’s like playing SimCity on an infinite flat map. I’d much rather they put another 2-5 million people here over the next few decades than try to sprawl out from Seattle or Boston or some of the other places I’ve lived.

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#202

Post by cozzyd »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #195
lelandbatey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US being huge has no bearing on the requirement that I have to own a car to get to work every day, or to go to the grocery store, or to take kids to school. I live in a more suburban area than I used to and having to pilot a huge deadly vehicle everywhere is vastly more stressful than just walking to handle my groceries. Note that the study you link to there is from 1994 and only controlled for the following crit…

Most Americans vote with their wallets and feet. They don't want dense apartment living and the majority run from it as soon as they can afford it. It is usually possible to rent small apartments near work in most metro areas, but instead they prefer 3000sqft places to 600sqft and supermarkets to corner stores. There is a huge amount that would have to change about the American dream and esthetic desires to enable ca…

Yes, this is why San Francisco, Boston and NYC have the cheapest rents in the US.

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#203

Post by p_j_w »

anonym29 wrote: post #200
felipellrocha wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have people not lived in those places in the past?

They have, but if you mean before the introduction of the automobile, it was in an era where nobody had to commute to get groceries because a majority of the population were subsistence farmers.

Do you know nothing about the history of the east coast? Do you ACTUALLY think everyone who lived there before 1900 was a subsistence farmer?

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#205

Post by p_j_w »

pc86 wrote: post #92
xyst wrote: post #90

It’s a shame this country is so obsessed with cars. There’s so much land yet we devote it to destroying lush ecosystems (that help reduce effects of Mother Nature) and replacing it with massive highway projects that end up costing everyone more in taxes/indefinite maintenance costs. Then the effect is 10X’d when useless suburbs are built. More car dependence. More time spent on roads. Traffic slows to a halt as subur…

I'm not sure what you think the alternative is. The US is huge compared to any similarly developed country. Is the answer huge cities right next to thousands of square miles of untouched nature? That hasn't happened in any society on the planet. It sounds like you just want everyone to live in a city and take public transit everywhere but cities are awful for your mental health[0] and most people in the US do not wan…

>I'm not sure what you think the alternative is.

We could start by making people who choose rural or suburban life pay the costs of such a life rather than foisting them on everyone else. Roads should either be toll roads or entirely paid for by gas taxes and vehicle registration costs. Gas taxes should have to include the cost of removing the pollutants from the environment.

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#206

Post by crest »

hoten wrote: post #138
nabla9 wrote: post #26

First time I visited the US it was Houston, Texas. My host was perplexed because I laughed out loud while we were driving. Experiencing highways and those massive gas stations felt like someone had made a state that mocked America by taking prejudices we have about the American traffic and making them 200% larger in real life. My mind was blown.

Houston native here. I still guffaw when I see a massively lifted truck (but with a pristine bed, no scratches - so not even a work truck). Everything's bigger in Texas, including egos.

Everything except that shriveled little thing that drove the buying decision.

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#207

Post by [deleted] »

101011 wrote: post #97
Groxx wrote: post #3

So... > Q: Why are Texas interchanges so tall? > > Frontage roads need grade separation, adding a layer. > Texas has lots of frontage roads. OK, I buy that Texas has more grade-separated interchanges on average... but I'm not seeing how that turns into "Texas has more higher interchanges" which is what it feels like that question is asking. Frontage roads don't generally exist where 3+ highways intersect, so that sho…

Completely random tidbit of information, in Houston (and only Houston) we call them 'feeder roads.'

[deleted]

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#208

Post by jdkee »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #164
xyst wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality having a car and traveling lots of miles every day is the cheapest variant for most people. Realistically, it's the _only_ way to get around the US.

That's because the US is built that way. In turn because every city that's not New York has just expanded horizontally with hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of detached house-driveway-backyard-frontyard suburbia. In most of the Old World, cities have existed for centuries—if not millennia—and were built for the human foot, not the car tyre. Hence most European and Asian city centres are dense, mostly walkab…

Most U.S. cities were located and built due to the geography of water, whether it is on the coasts or inland on lakes and rivers. The reason why the railways ended at the coastal cities is due to oceanic shipping.

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#209

Post by refurb »

xyst wrote: post #90

It’s a shame this country is so obsessed with cars. There’s so much land yet we devote it to destroying lush ecosystems (that help reduce effects of Mother Nature) and replacing it with massive highway projects that end up costing everyone more in taxes/indefinite maintenance costs. Then the effect is 10X’d when useless suburbs are built. More car dependence. More time spent on roads. Traffic slows to a halt as subur…

Most of the US is undeveloped in terms of highways and suburbs.

Whats the point of having all that room if you’re going to trap yourself in a small apartment tower?

Re: Why are Texas interchanges so tall?

#210

Post by next_xibalba »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #180
hoten wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houston native here. I still guffaw when I see a massively lifted truck (but with a pristine bed, no scratches - so not even a work truck). Everything's bigger in Texas, including egos.

> Everything's bigger in Texas, including egos. Crucially, Texans are highly aware of "everything is bigger in Texas" trope and take pride in it. My favorite example is that everyone knows that Texas State Capitol is taller than United States Capitol (92.24m vs 88m)... But nobody will ever tell you that Texas State Capitol is only 6th tallest state capitol. Source: lived in Austin for 2 years. https://en.wikipedia.or…

Texan here. My experience has been quite different.

I lived in Austin for 7 years and I had no idea about this fact.

Whenever the whole "everything is bigger in Texas" comes up, everyone smiles and rolls their eyes. I now live in Houston and its the same. People here think its kind of a joke. Though Texans definitely do take pride in Texas. I just don't think they take themselves as seriously as your comment suggests.

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