I-35 / I-240 Exchange

[gopokes88]

And way too few pontificating under/near the capitol's rotunda are not in th dark on that difference. Some are so buried in the dark that two hands and a flashlight wouldn't help at all.

I get the argument a Republican makes on a national level and agree with it. We are way way too deep in debt on an unsustainable path and deep painful cuts are going to have to be made. However, for some reason that has transferred to the state level. Our state's budget is pretty healthy. Debt levels are low. So there isn't really a need to go on this we can't spend any money craze. We're doing just fine.

[bombermwc]

If you got rid of the shields ramps completely it should avoid the conflict.

You're thinking the wrong direction. There it's an Offramp to shields. I don't think you would want to close that one if you had an option. The traffic would be forced back to the other side of Santa Fe and it already backs up both lanes of the service road back past the offramp from the shields light. What would happen there is what happens on westbound May, traffic starts backing up onto the highway so you end up with a whole other ballgame of accidents waiting to happen. Sometimes May backs up on the highway all the way to the Penn onramp...and on the service road, about half that same distance. It's crazy!

I don't mean to keep throwing complaints on it, Im just passing on the traffic flow I see on a normal day. If you aren't on 240 every day, its easy to miss the crazy amount of traffic that flows on that highway. It doesn't take much to cause a backup of several miles long.

[venture]

You're thinking the wrong direction. There it's an Offramp to shields. I don't think you would want to close that one if you had an option. The traffic would be forced back to the other side of Santa Fe and it already backs up both lanes of the service road back past the offramp from the shields light. What would happen there is what happens on westbound May, traffic starts backing up onto the highway so you end up with a whole other ballgame of accidents waiting to happen. Sometimes May backs up on the highway all the way to the Penn onramp...and on the service road, about half that same distance. It's crazy!

I don't mean to keep throwing complaints on it, Im just passing on the traffic flow I see on a normal day. If you aren't on 240 every day, its easy to miss the crazy amount of traffic that flows on that highway. It doesn't take much to cause a backup of several miles long.

No I'm quite familiar with the setup since I drive it every day.

At the end of the day, the design for the interchanges off of 240 are severely out of date and can't handle the capacity they are forced to deal with. Maybe the option is to have a secondary overpass for a combined Santa Fe/Shields exit that has one lane drop down for Santa Fe and then continue over to Shields.

[bombermwc]

That was my thought too. I've been on several of these in North San Antonio and they work wonderfully.

[Plutonic Panda]

I-240/I-35 Interchange Project Looms Big

[ljbab728]

i-240/i-35 interchange project looms big

huh?

[Thesaurum]

News | The Moore Daily "I-240/I-35 Interchange Project Looms Big".

[Plutonic Panda]

huh?

Sorry, I forgot to include the link. Thesarum posted it though. Too much school and work = not enough sleep

[ljbab728]

Sorry, I forgot to include the link. Thesarum posted it though. Too much school and work = not enough sleep

Go to bed then, plupan.

[s00nr1]

I got a good laugh out of the timeline and 6-year estimate for completion of a basic interchange. Dallas laughs at such a thing.

[Snowman]

I got a good laugh out of the timeline and 6-year estimate for completion of a basic interchange. Dallas laughs at such a thing.

Like most ODOT projects it is probably that it takes at least six years to fund it

[Plutonic Panda]

They need to amend the law the bans ODOT from taking out loans. We would get road projects done so much faster.

[Snowman]

They need to amend the law the bans ODOT from taking out loans. We would get road projects done so much faster.

Unless something changes at the federal level, it probably will not make much difference anyway.

[Plutonic Panda]

Unless something changes at the federal level, it probably will not make much difference anyway.

Why? If they took out a loan, they could just get the whole project going tomorrow and have it done in less than two years.

[bchris02]

This interchange has been needed for a long, long time. It's hard to believe the original interchange is still in use. There was talk back in the early 2000s of replacing it with a 4-level stack but that never went anywhere. Good to see that they are going to do something about it. Its a shame it has to take 5 years though.

[Snowman]

Why? If they took out a loan, they could just get the whole project going tomorrow and have it done in less than two years.

The state share of building/maintaining interstate highways is generally only around 10% of the cost and the fund for federal highways that covers the other 90% is already at the point of insolvency (It was actually insolvent in 2013 but congress did vote for a short term stopgap). In recent years Oklahoma has not been a donor state like it was at points in the past, so even if we multiply what the state is willing to put forward it seems unlikely that we would get similar multiples of federal funds.

[Plutonic Panda]

The state share of building/maintaining interstate highways is generally only around 10% of the cost and the fund for federal highways that covers the other 90% is already at the point of insolvency (It was actually insolvent in 2013 but congress did vote for a short term stopgap). In recent years Oklahoma has not been a donor state like it was at points in the past, so even if we multiply what the state is willing to put forward it seems unlikely that we would get similar multiples of federal funds.

That sucks. I didn't know that. Hopefully something will get done at federal level, but that's probably wishful thinking.

[venture]

That sucks. I didn't know that. Hopefully something will get done at federal level, but that's probably wishful thinking.

The federal highway budget has been broke for years, no one is in any rush to fix it. It is too powerful of a negotiating object. This is why you have seen several of us advocate for either fewer highways or different funding options (tolls). The vast majority of all highway construction is funded by the fed. There just isn't the money to do some of the projects you've advocated before. Thankfully you now understand why we've been saying what we have. The Fed pick up somewhere between 60-85% of the cost of the I-40 project.

[Plutonic Panda]

So angry about this it isn't even funny. This sucks. It really sucks. I hate this crap. Why are there cloverleafs????? Makes no damn sense. There doesn't need to be any cloverleafs AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why can they not do this the right way? I don't understand it. For a department that unfairly gives highways over walkable areas, they sure suck at building nice highways.

News | The Moore Daily

[venture]

Why are there cloverleaf ramps still? Probably due to space restriction judging on which ones keep them.240 EB to 35 NB doesn't seem to have enough room anywhere for a flyover ramp. 240 WB to 35 SB roughly the same issue, but could probably but in a very high flyover to make it work. However, I think the cloverleaf ramps still make some sense there.

The big improvements here though are removing the big conflict points - No on ramp from Shields to 240 EB, off ramp from 240 WB to Shields starts before entering traffic from 25, and 240 WB to 35 NB loop no longer has to yield to 35 NB to 240 WB traffic which causes back ups. It may not be the most flashy, but it'll probably work out pretty well.

[warreng88]

The biggest issue I still see is the EB 240 to NB 35 cloverleaf. Now, I hate cloverleafs as much as the next person, but I understand like what Venture said, it might be due to space restriction. The biggest problem with this particular cloverleaf is everyone stops when merging on to 35 NB when there is a straight shot to the access road but they stop due to people going NB 35 to WB 240. It is the same issue with the 44/235/77 interchange.

[bombermwc]

We've talked this one to death, but here we go again:
1- it's a new cloverleaf that is almost double the size of the old one on both portions. That means it can hold more traffic to prevent it from stacking up in the through lanes.
2 - if you look at the design, there is no matching cloverleaf on the same through lane, so that means no crossing traffic for on/off ramps like we do in a traditional 4 part clover.
3 - if you look at the design, you'll also note that the 35NB portion of the clover leaf does NOT interfere with any other traffic like it does today. That's because, again, there's no other leaf on that side so there's no merging below the 240 bridge for 240WB and the 35NB folks.

So the bottleneck places for the leafs simply don't exist like they do today. Just trace the lines of traffic in each direction and you'll see how they flow.

[jn1780]

The main purpose of a second layer of flyovers is to allow the service roads to pass through. I would say the second purpose is to eliminate the sharp curve of the cloverleaf. (but as Bomber mention above the clover has been enlarged). This design does significantly make it easier to merge which is a plus.

The biggest downside is not allowing service roads to pass through. Is this worth double the cost?

[warreng88]

Bomber, thanks for the correction. Does the cloverleaf merge onto the highway or an access road? I can't tell from the renderings.

[jn1780]

Bomber, thanks for the correction. Does the cloverleaf merge onto the highway or an access road? I can't tell from the renderings.

The "access road" is essentially gone since only EB240 to NB35 is using the onramp which will be a lot longer then before. NB35 to EB240, EB240 to NB35, NB35 to WB240 all shared the same access road.