Why Texas Freeways Have So Many Frontage Roads

One interesting topic and aspect of freeway transportation is the system of exits used. There are the common ones like diamond interchanges, which are used in most cases, especially in rural areas, cloverleafs, which are used on rural interchanges between two freeways, stack interchanges, used in urban areas with high traffic, and several more depending on where you are. There are so many unique designs and ways to get on and off of these large highways. One of the unique cases are frontage roads. In most cases, these frontage or access roads move along the edge of freeways, providing more direct access to buildings and developments. This can be used conservatively, but it can also be used very liberally, and one state that has an extensive system of frontage roads is Texas. In this state, nearly every mile of interstate and freeway comes with two frontage roads. There's an extensive history that comes with this though, which shows Texas' interesting planning history and what they find important. Before we get into that though, please consider checking out my merch store. I just hit 100,000 subscribers and we still have merch available for that. There's cheap t-shirts and sweatshirts for $100k specific that are on sale, and there's also other designs that I personally love. If you want to support me, consider checking those out and buying something to show you've been along for the ride. Thank you guys! So, let's start by looking at these frontage roads simply and what they look like in Texas. They're basically local roads that run parallel to freeways, being tucked on either side. In most cases, there will be frequent exit ramps that connect onto the frontage roads, working sort of like a diamond interchange in most situations. This road design's main intention is to provide access to local businesses and neighborhoods and allow them easier access to and from the main highway. Usually, the frontage roads are two-way in rural areas where traffic isn't as much of an issue, so you might as well allow them to go both ways. But in urban areas, you find that they're oftentimes three or more lanes wide and are one-way, attempting to carry a higher traffic volume. Now, you might be looking at your screen totally lifelessly, thinking to yourself that you know what a frontage road is. But the interesting thing about them in the state specifically is that Texas has by far the most miles of frontage road in the U.S., with over 6,500 miles covering basically every single limited-access highway in the state. I'm sure there's more, but the only place that I've found there to be no frontage roads is on I-10 in the western part of the state, where it passes by some rougher terrain and they didn't really have the ability to easily build them. Apart from that, they're absolutely everywhere. And the reason this is so interesting is that it's not just by random chance. It came from historic Texas law, which went along with the state's unique geography and situation. So, back in the 1940s and 50s, when everything in freeway transportation really started, Texas had a population around 6.4 million, and the state was beginning to absolutely explode with the introduction of modern suburban expansion tactics and air conditioning. Because who would want to live in Texas without air conditioning? At the time, extremely important infrastructural maniac DeWitt Greer was the head engineer of the Texas Highway Department, being tasked with the job of basically successfully creating an entire map of freeways across the state. So in this design process, there were two main legal factors that led to frontage roads. The first was a law that required property owners to have access to highways abutting their land. Now, I don't know if lawmakers realize this when they pass the law, but having a freeway exit for every single property is not really a viable option, unless we wanted Texas freeway designs to look even dumber than they already do. The other important statute was the 1925 law that authorized the state highway department to acquire the right of way directly. See, at this time, only counties and cities were able to do that, which made for a fairly chaotic and unconnected system. But giving the entire state the ability to do this led to the state taking advantage of it. We all know Texas' freeway system is massive, and part of this is because, once they started building freeways, they began acquiring extremely wide right-of-ways so they'd have no trouble building their big freeways and planning for the future. The state had money, with large tax amounts being shoved into the highway system at this time, and they intended to use it. So anyways, they're sitting here with wide right-of-ways and a law mandating them to serve any bordering landowners. So finally, good ol' DeWitt Greer had the idea for frontage roads. These routes would give access to every adjacent property, with frequent on and off ramps so they can easily use the freeway. This idea was expensive, but it reduced the need for exits and bridges, which ends up being pretty good. It did lead to a few problems, though. The biggest problems came in urban areas, because the system doesn't really work as well with 12 billion cars using it at one time. See, in these areas, they're one-way, so people would make U-turns under the highway all the time. They needed an easy and safe way to do this, and so, the Texas Turnaround was born from the frontage road system. This is technically used in a lot of places, but it's by far the most common in Texas, and it originated there. The system is basically little U-shaped turnarounds at freeway crossings that allow people to get to the other direction easily by getting into a special lane. In some cases, like at Foster Road and I-10 in San Antonio, for example, there's even a dedicated bridge built just for the turnaround. So boom, that little maneuver ends up costing them over one million dollars. Great stuff, guys. The other big problem we run into here is that when these roads have a ton of traffic, like we see in basically every Texan city, they don't run as well. They're chaotic, confusing, and end up having a ton of traffic because of their relation to the freeways. This can be seen especially with the Katy Freeway, which is a section of I-10 west of the downtown where the total highway has been expanded to as many as 26 lanes in some sections. These lanes include the main freeway, the tollway lanes, and then the frontage road, which gets up to as many as six lanes each. See what I mean about them being chaotic? Having six lanes in one direction for a surface road is crazy, and it just goes to show what they can become at their worst, or best, depending on why you watch the channel. Continuing on this idea of them being super chaotic, something I've found very interesting is how they look when going under large interchanges. Taking the interchange between the Katy Freeway and the Sam Houston Tollway as an example, the interchange ends up being several levels and placed entirely above ground, having its own chaotic design. But then we look on the ground level, and four large intersections of their own for the four frontage roads meet each other. It's like the little baby roads playing while the adults have big conversations up above. I think that's a really good analogy, guys. This is seen throughout the state, and it just makes the Texan Freeway interchanges, which are already massive and chaotic, even more massive and chaotic. I guess you can't blame them, since they're just trying to adjust the planning that came from a legal decision in the early 1900s, but my goodness do some of these get ugly. Also, there are still frontage roads for new freeways that have been constructed, so it doesn't just entirely have to do with the historic decision. Now, yes, frontage roads are seen everywhere, whether that be along large boulevards or freeways. One example I would mention is Phoenix, which has a pretty extensive system of these roads, especially along I-17. But Texas will always be unique in this, using them extensively across basically every interstate and pretty much every freeway in the entire state. Everyone always talks about how everything's bigger in Texas, and I would argue their freeway system is one of the best examples of this. The frontage road system is expensive and comes with a lot of negatives, but I'm sure it's very natural and homely to anyone who lives there. Thanks for watching. Thank you to the members this week, Richard Laws, Kusaga, the Autistic City Skylines fan Jake Huffs, Kazzy Man, Alexander Lichko, Laura Halladay, The Road Guy, Charles Watson, Pete Tedeschi, Aidan Kyle, Somnom Woods, KG, The Happy Hodegg, Reginald Wilkerson, Grant Dickerson, John Haywood, Julius Landry, Philip Monroe, Doug R., Davin Leatherwood, Midwest Railfan, Andres Quintero, DS, Richard Horwell, Mick Kastner, D, Steven Phillips, CJ Brick, Big Pasty, Resident Contrarian, Hosev the Wolf, Bunny, Brock Sanders, Steven Priestman, S.B. 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