I moved from the Chicagoland area to Houston a little over a decade ago. The roads did confuse me at first, but after driving on them for a few weeks, something simply clicked one day and everything immediately made _perfect_ sense. I absolutely love the way Texas does its highways.
The highway planning is pretty good here. Outside of the cities, almost all exits are on the right and there's a uturn lane for specifically reversing direction under most bridges just after an exit even in cities. It's pretty nice.
It's pretty difficult to get lost in Texas, since you can easily turn around if you miss an exit. Plus, while out traveling, services are usually placed on the frontage roads, so you'll never have to venture too far from the highway to get gas or snacks.
Same. I’m up in The Woodlands having moved from Greater NYC area, and at first I was bit uneasy….then like you, it clicked. I realized if I make a mistake or miss an on ramp or exit…no worries. Began to understand when to get in that right lane, and to be patent getting on the Frontage Rds. It’s an incredible sight to see around Beltway 8 and 610…but it’s brilliantly designed.
@@lolbuster01 Meanwhile, construction of these highways is happening in EVERY major city right now and it's been taking forever to get anything done, causing so much traffic.
@@OzzyTheGiant Well, that's to be expected when there is major road work being done. It is worth it when it is done, however. I live In the Cypress area of Houston and the 290 expansion started a couple years after I moved down here. The traffic was hellish already on 290 at the time, which I suspect is why they opted to expand 290 in the first place. This construction of course made traffic even worse - nightmarish. It probably took 3 or so years, but once it was finished the result was so worth it for somebody like myself that is served directly by this highway.
I've lived in Texas my whole life and didn't know that most states didn't have feeders. I'm glad you gave the warning about staying away from the left and HOV lanes, most Texans use the speed limit as more of a guide. If you aren't doing 10-15 mph more, you will be run over.
Texas is the one state where reckless driving is solely at the discretion of the officer regardless of speed- and drivers absolutely abuse the hell out of it. Because it has to be, to quote 545.351: "more speed than is reasonable and prudent under the circumstances then existing." TX drivers out there making TN and FL drivers look like grandmas. I'm brave, I've driven all 3!
@@buffcode I've lived in knoxville TN for a combined total of 6 years with 3 of them being with my license. Also, was born in Corpus Christi. Can confirm: Texas drivers make Tennessee crackheads look sober.
@@wifelikecow It's all fun and games til some Knoxville crackhead drops their needle and swerves all 3 lanes trying to pick it up and snashes the median barrier! I'm not even making that up, it happened right in front of me! You stay safe out there!
@@buffcode Absolutely not. I never understood this point about how fast we go. Try going from Houston to Dallas at 90 and tell me you don’t get at least one or two tickets. Speed limit is 75 when it’s rural. 80 is okay. Anything more, don’t cry about tickets. Texas state troopers DO NOT PLAY
I've read that that is the most common name in Houston. There was an old study of regional naming ... it was a quiz, I think, and at the end it would make a heat map of your origin. Sometimes it was funnily accurate! (One of the interesting questions was what you called this road, multiple choice. Several things pinpointed your location within Texas!)
We had feeders in Canada. I have travelled frontage roads in Houston and Austin, the Texas turn arounds confused me a bit. But now I really like avoiding traffic lights
It's nice having all of the services right next to the highway and having an easy way to turn around if you miss an exit. It's pretty difficult to get lost in this state, imo.
@@AllAmericanGuyExpert Native Houstonian here, I can confirm that 'feeder' is probably more popular of a term here. I have always called them feeder roads. Frontage road sounds formal to me and access/service road both sound to me like the on/off ramp itself and not the frontage road.
I also came from Illinois to Texas and discovered frontage roads in all thier glory. What I think are really cool and smart are the turnarounds built underneath the highways. Texans are fiercely proud of their state and right they should be!
Salute my guy. My dad grew up in the Chi and I heard stories growing up. Never understood why he loved it here so much but now at 31, he makes sense to me lol.
Being from the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, I can't imagine most highways without frontage roads. I thought that was a normal thing. I only left the state twice in my lifetime.
I’m on the other end of that spectrum: I grew up in western NC and we have roads like this that run parallel to the interstate to provide access to local businesses and homes; however, ours are two-way and it wasn’t until my family and I went to College Station for my little sister’s soccer tournament in 2016 that my siblings and I had seen one-way frontage roads like this (which I think is genius for all the reasons given in this video and may or may not have influenced some of my builds in Cities: Skylines). I’ve seen and read about other states implementing/proposing one-way frontage roads like this, but it’s mostly just been to prevent weaving between two interchanges that are very close together and NCDOT’s proposed I-26 Connector project in the Asheville area is a good example of this. Personally though, I think these should be built wherever possible due to their practicality
That is very understandable, for example every tram of interstate highways (69C and interstate 2) in McAllen has frontage roads, and these are not that much chaotic, because they are not two way roads, they are one way roads, depending on which side you are, unlike some other parts of Texas that have two way roads on each side which is confusing so you could say Rio Grande frontage roads or atleast in McAllen ar pretty practical. but i feel that, atleast the only ones that I know that are from Rio Grande Valley area, they take too much space, good thing they don't make congestion because exits have auxiliary lanes
@@LoneWolf1493 I also think one way frontage roads are way superior and better than two way frontage roads, because the intersection does not only generate unnecessary congestion but it is also dangereous
Having been born and raised in Texas, I can tell you that the lack of frontage roads outside of this state can cause confusion for us, too. With the ubiquity of frontage roads, it's easy to fall into the trap that missing an exit isn't a big deal, since you can just do a U-turn at the next one. It was quite a shock to me the first time I went out of state, and ended up going 10 miles out of my way because I missed an exit.
Tell me about it. When I moved to WA it took years for the sense of "wrongness" when driving near highways to go away just due to the lack of frontage roads, and still i'm annoyed by that lack.
Frontage/Service roads makes sense especially for the business that run parallel. I've seen exits in NJ,CA,NY that ends practically into someone's living room(?) I know I have found following the GPS is not always correct... 😀
I grew up in Colorado, learned to drive in Texas, and live along the I-20 corridor through DFW, so I'm really used to both. A lot of communities along 20 didn't want the interstate when it was put in, and they couldn't block the interstate itself, but they *could* passive-aggressively block the frontage road, so the I-20 frontage road is inconsistent in my area: there are a lot of traditional-style exits straight to cross streets, and a lot of weird things done to frontage roads.
You can tell which part of Texas you're from depending on what you call these roads. Here in San Antonio, we call them access roads. Last year when my husband and I were visiting a friend in Houston, we got caught up in traffic on I-45, and our friend told us to exit onto the "service road" to dodge the traffic. And my husband had absolutely no idea what he was talking about until I explained it to him!
@@Zach27727 "Frontage Roads" seems to be TxDOT's preferred term. The road signs here will usually call them that regardless of which region of Texas you're in.
We call them "service roads" up here in North Texas (Dallas/Fort Worth). Once you get into Waco, they seem to use the term "frontage road" more than "service roads" but I guess it's a regional preference.
As someone who was raised in DFW, I was absolutely shocked to learn other states don't have access roads, I intend to live in Charlotte NC and the lack of frontage roads showed tons of traffic issues.
Despite being born and raised there, it took me a while once I moved to other states to realize that those frontage roads or easy U-turns on Texas freeways are just specific to Texas
Lived in Mississippi for a few years before moving to Texas. Got my first taste of Frontage roads when i took trips to Arkansas. I was skeptical for a while even after moving to Texas, but the turn around makes them 10000% worth it. No state does highways as good as Texas.
@@andrewsloan3754 , Jug handles, I spent some time in NJ a couple years back, they have them on US Route Highways like US-1 for example. To go left on a lot of those roads you have to stay to the right lane if you want to enter a road that you would’ve otherwise entered with a left turn in left lane in other states.
Very well worded video. As a transplant to Texas a decade ago. Frontage roads confused me all the time. Having gotten used to them and navigating all the different types as you state (u turns, one ways, two ways etc)now, i wouldn't have it any other way. The other thing you didn't mention is how to Texas tell the DOT where a new exit is needed. We call it the "Texas Off Ramp". Basically you just go off roading through the grass divider onto the frontage road. :)
There’s ups and downs to the system, coming from a MO transplant. They are fantastic in midsized cities and suburban areas. In rural areas, they’re often two-way like the outer roads in every other state, except Texas decided to put the exit and entrance ramps right off of these to make them a “frontage road” still. And to a transplant at least, it’s unnecessarily complicated. In larger cities, they’re problematic due to backups at intersections, but that’s likely because the queue distance isn’t long enough since the cities have grown since the roadway was built. That said, I’m in Lubbock. The system works great here except for about an hour in the evening. The U-Turn system should be standard on every highway. Saint Louis has attempted to do something like this in some places, but none of the people involved have obviously not ever been to Texas because their implementation sucks worse than what they had before - “backage roads”.
A Con I haven't heard yet. Half of the addresses are on the side of the highway you're not on, meaning: those businesses get reduced traffic and shoppers.
We've always had them in MI. We have them on the Interstate in the Urban areas. Particularly around Detroit and Flint. It is why you have exits at just about every mile.
Thank you for your commentary on the Texas frontage roads. I learned to drive in SoCal, and spent much of my adult life there. I often wondered why frontage roads were so rare, and why they didn't work well where they did exist. Most of the frontage roads in SoCal (where they exist) are two-way roads, and are generally not accessible from the main roadway, except at the diamond interchanges. About 10 years ago, I spent some time in Houston, and stayed at a place right near the 610 Loop. With the one-way frontage roads, it was very easy to get in and out of the hotel, and onto the highway (if I chose), or just down the road a bit, if desired. It took me almost no time at all to learn to navigate and to appreciate the advantages of the frontage roads in Houston. Having spent quite a bit more time driving in Texas since that time, I've learned to appreciate the frontage roads along the highways of the state. Those "Texas Turnarounds" are great, unless you're behind a semi that is trying to follow Google's prompts, by turning where it won't fit... Of the many traffic "solutions" I've seen along our nation's highways, the Texas frontage roads are, in my opinion, one of the best solutions in use today. I've seen crossover lanes on some highway interchanges, and they do make sense to a degree, but are complicated and confusing for drivers that aren't familiar with them. Roundabouts work well in theory, but, from what I've seen, are almost always built too small, so traffic in the circle becomes too congested. I applaud Texas for building its highways with frontage roads the way they do. From my experience they work reasonably well for keeping the highway traffic moving while providing relatively easy access to nearby businesses and neighborhoods.
Also having grown up in SoCal, I have a slightly different take. Frontage roads are both a blessing and a curse. Blessing in the areas where they are consistent: one direction only with those glorious Texas U-turns. Horrifying curse where they are not: bi-direction with the freeway on and off ramps requiring crossing *over the opposing direction of traffic that only has a YIELD sign on the frontage road* with almost never a suicide lane in the middle to prepare your turn in and a 50/50 chance there’s a stop sign shortly after exiting. Add the sometimes wonky freeway signage (would be lovely if they could figure out that “exit only” on the same lane approaching the first exit for two consecutive exits should mean the lane continues on to end at the second exit rather than the lane to the left of you that suddenly becomes the 2nd exit’s exit only lane right as the first exit is peeling off) and it can get somewhat frustrating at times. SoCal freeways have their own issues, but at least they are much more consistent in this regard. (Dallas/Ft Worth, PLEASE get some consistency) As to why SoCal doesn’t have them for the most part: space. Texas has it in spades while SoCal does not. In the rare spot where there was some space, you’ll see an attempt at frontage roads, but they’re so uncommon they’re treated more like normal surface streets rather than freeway companions. I’m not sure where you’ve seen frontage roads only accessible from diamond interchanges, but I concede that likely does exist somewhere. With the blessing of space, I do like how Texas builds its freeways: plunk down your right of way, then build the frontage roads. The frontage roads can start serving traffic while you take your time to build the freeway in the middle. The 114, 170, and the northern terminus of the 360 were like that here in DFW and I thought that made so much sense (again, when you have the space to be able to do that).
I've lived my whole adult life in Texas but I've traveled all over the country. I'm pretty neutral on most aspects of this question, but I do often find myself getting very frustrated when I'm in an area that doesn't have fairly frequent exits/turnarounds, plus easy access to nearby businesses. We're heavily conditioned to have high expectations about those things.
One thing is that for many newly built highways, especially tollways, the frontage roads are actually built first, oftentimes years before, and the main high speed lanes are built oftentimes purely based on traffic demand. You’ll see just frontage roads in some places with an immensely wide median between them that is really where the future main lanes will be built, which isn’t even guaranteed
I've lived in Texas most of my life but also California. I think frontage roads are a net positive in cities because access to retail is so convenient and the commercial strip on each side of the freeway functions as a sound barrier for residential. In California the freeways feel like tunnels because of high sound walls close to the roadway. Despite this there are adjacent "freeway houses" which have so much noise pollution they are nearly uninhabitable (90 Db in the backyard). Caltrans hides all the ramps pretty good too!
I find it opposite, because it’s terrifying to pull out in traffic going 50-60 mph. And if you miss your store, you have to drive alllll the way around, and if you wanna cross the street, you’re screwed
I think your points about the advantages and disadvantages are well-reasoned and -explained, with the exception of "unusable parcels." They're not unusable, they just require different routing to access them and their "front" will be facing away from the highway. In the case of GA-400 mentioned at 3:05, I live in Alpharetta and know that what you have highlighted in yellow as "unusable parcels" are required buffers, which reduce visual clutter and noise noticeably. Contrast this to Dallas, TX where my son lives. We met a friend in the parking lot in the 9300 block of the North Central Expressway (where Total Wine and Cavender's are) and we had to raise our voices significantly so we could hear each other because of the traffic on the expressway and frontage road, neither of which had any sound-absorbing features between them and the parking lot.
@@ShawnD1027 I think the point they were trying to get at was that the commercial businesses themselves are the buffer for more residential areas. Of course, as you pointed out, this means that these businesses don't get to have their own sound buffer. How bad the sound is definitely depends on which highway(s) they're next to though.
Another disadvantage of frontage roads is that they are a disaster for pedestrians trying to walk under an interstate bridge. You have so many more points of conflict with drivers. And none of the drivers are looking out for pedestrians or even yielding when they should. You have to cross two extra roads in addition to going under the interstate.
@@LWoodGaming People were already spread apart, because this was agricultural land. It wasn't until like a century ago that most people lived in cities. And the availability of cheap land naturally encouraged more impressive roadworks than elsewhere. And again, for like 9/12 of the year, you just don't want to go outside. It's miserable, bordering on swamp or desert. For those of us who prefer more humane climates, and really only go outside when they vacation in the mountains of Colorado, the proliferation of highways in Texas is pretty self-explanatory as well.
@@marius2k8I dropped my car off for service at the intersection of the SRT and DNT, and there were restaurants caddy-corner across that intersection. It was a 10 minute walk each way, but thanks to two 6-lane highways and multiple flying ramps, at least I wasn’t in the sun long.
People weren’t already spread apart-cities like Dallas and Houston were very dense a century ago, and only got hollowed out by highways since WW2. Of course the agricultural areas aren’t dense, but that’s not what anybody is talking about.
Grew up in Texas and then moved to the West Coast, in my 30s. Married a Washington woman and we ended up moving to Texas for a job I got. She'd never seen a frontage system like that, and she loved it! I was used to them, so I kind of shrugged.
I moved to TX with my family when I was still young, and I remember my mom and dad being really confused by frontage roads and especially turnarounds. However, after getting used to them, we love it. It is way more convenient than other states. I cringe every time I need to turnaround on a vacation outside of TX and have to wait at 2 lights just to go the other way.
One of the other problems with using Google Maps to navigate to a specific business on the frontage road is that often times the directions will instruct you to exit the freeway about 200 feet before the business driveway. This makes it virtually impossible to switch 3-4 lanes in time. One example of this is accessing Micro Center from SB 75 in Dallas or the Costco in Plano in the NB direction. To avoid this, i'd recomend taking the frontage road a mile or so before your directions tell you to hop off the mainline. I also love the idea of right-in-right-out for high volume commercial. While it can be a bit confusing at first, I never find myself stuck at shopping centers in Texas like I did everywhere else i've lived. Great content! Welcome, from McKinney!
The ridiculous lane crossings to exit to frontage roads is a huge issue! In my opinion it is the single greatest disadvantage of this road design as a driver. It is not just shopping centers and businesses that I have trouble cutting over to in time. Sometimes the exit designs still make you cross 3-4 lanes in very little space even just to reach the particular intersecting road that the signs on the interstate signal you to "exit here" for! Very dangerous quick-merges these frontage road designs create!!! (or at least when they are poorly designed)
@@carolinavatorThat's why the access roads used to always be required to yield to the ramp. They're getting away from that, but they're also moving the exits further back from the roads they're intended for.
Spent over 7 months in Houston and have always been living in the Ozarks. They are called feeder roads. Roads like these are really needed because traffic is far too bottlenecked around traffic signals when there are roads running parallel to the highway with various businesses.
In Texas they are called feeder roads. I grew up in Houston, and "frontage road" was only something I saw on road signs. People call them feeder roads.
The name changes depending on the area. Tell someone from here in San Antonio to get on the feeder road and they probably won't know what you're talking about. Tell that same person to get on the access road and they'll get it.
I think biggest disadvantage of a frontage road is they encourage speeding. They’re basically drag strips encouraged by high speed traffic on the interstate. And unlike interstates, high speed can have disastrous consequences on a frontage road if another driver turns out onto the road from a business.
I think one major disadvantage that was missed was how these can affect the walkability of urban areas, as they make crossing freeways on foot (already not super fun) even more difficult and uncomfortable for anyone not in a car. NotJustBikes has done some neat videos about Texas (and American) roadway design. It really leads a lot of Texas cities to feel even more unwalkable than they already are, aside from perhaps Downtown Austin/Domain and areas near the Riverwalk in San Antonio.
This is a strawman argument. Only a lunatic would cross an actual freeway on foot, one should be crossing at the grade seperated cross streets. These service roads allow a multitude of cross streets without interfering with the freeway.
@@seanbohannon How far between are these cross streets, from a walkable perspective? And how safe are they for walking across? Just by lookin on this video, the traffic was going sub highway speeds on these frontage roads.
@@seanbohannon only problem is, it would be a problem for people to climb the stairs and wheelchair users to climb up and down ramps. The minimum gradient is 1:14 but 1:20 or more is ideal. If you need to climb 17 feet, that is 250 feet of distance . But since you are going down, that is another 250 feet. 500 feet of extra distance. It would be like going up a 3 story building and down again. In the UK, this will only be necasary to cross a large fast busy road or motorway.
When I first relocated to Texas from California the frontage roads confused me. But after stepping back and thinking about it for a little bit I realize what good idea they were. In California you had to know every road that had an access to the freeway. Otherwise you would find out you were on the wrong road as you passed over the freeway. With an Access Road you just need to get on the access road and sooner rather than later would be able to get on the freeway.
I lived in the Fort Worth half of the Metroplex and learned how to drive in that area. I was about 25 when I moved out of state, and after 29 years, I still miss the hell out of those frontage roads. One thing that really made sense about them was how the exit and entrance ramps were all in the same place. We have very little of that in CT. Several highways around here might have an off ramp, but then when you need to get back on, you don't always have a choice about which direction. You could be traveling East on a highway, exit at a given place, then you can't turn around and go West for a return trip home. Or you can't get back on in the same direction. Others may have an off ramp for only one side of the highway, but not for the traffic on the other side of the highway. And this is in suburban and rural areas too, where there is plenty of room to install the additional ramps. It's even worse as you start approaching actual cities. Not kidding either... CT's highway system is a complete cluster fuck.
I am from McAlester Oklahoma and I love the frontage roads. In fact in McAlester a section of Hwy 69 has been rebuilt like the Texas frontage roads and it was the best thing that could have been done. The traffic is safer thinks to the change,
Not necessarily worse for pedestrians. Sidewalks along frontage roads allow pedestrians to walk to businesses along freeways. In a sense, they're kind of worse for drivers, since you *have to* change lanes to get on or off the freeway
@@noahgarcia7599 A: you don't cross the freeway, you cross at the cross street same as any busy road. B:Most frontage roads are perfectly walkable, more walkable than your typical stroad.
Also, some of the frontage roads in Texas were former alignments of highways. An example of this is I-20 between Weatherford and Ranger where the north side access road was a former alignment of US 80 (noted by older-style bridges).
I just moved to Texas last year from Mississippi and I must say that I do like the frontage roads. And especially like the Texas turnarounds that make it easy to double back to a business on the one-way frontage roads.
Oh, and TXDOT has changed their philosophy with entrance/exit ramps in recent years. Here in San Antonio they're basically redoing all of TX1604 on the west/south side of town. The philosophy is to have exit ramps just after the interchange and then the entrance ramps ahead of intersections. In addition, the highway gains a temporary far-right lane which serves as the on-merge and exit-only lane easing merge and exit traffic!
The other downside to feeder roads is that they can cause lots of traffic accidents because of people not indicating that they are turning into a business access or swerving to making multiple lane changes to get onto the freeway, especially when the feeder road's speed is relatively high compared to side streets.
What's interesting is that frontage roads as well as Texas u-turns are very common in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which makes me wonder if the original highway engineers were Texans or studied in Texas. Riyadh even has high stack interchanges
I'm sure with a strong petrochem industry in both Houston and Middle East, there's bound to have been some cross pollination of socio-civil engineering ideas.
I know the TXDOT has a very large amount of Texas A&M alumni working for them and there is a Texas A&M campus in Qatar. Could be part of the reason for that, or maybe just a coincidence.
Cheap fuel and cheap land remove disincentives for these. Not that they're very safe: I have to drive an extra kilometer or so south every day to get to work here in Saudi, and then drive a kilometer north to get to the office. Often cars stack up in the U-turn lane and overflow into the left lane. Oncoming northbound drivers drive 110 km (68mph), and drivers making a U-turn must choose their gaps. It's a good thing we pray five times a day!
I really enjoyed this video and agree with many of your points. However, there are several I strongly disagree with. Most particularly, I disagree with the idea that at 3:55 that frontage roads are a "less stress" option to being on the freeway. I find the feeders bring plenty of stress because lanes are constantly disappearing, turning into on-ramps, or turn lanes. This causes me to have to change lanes which I don't like to do. Another safety concern is that motorists on feeders frequently drive at speeds nearly as fast as the freeway itself, and much higher than the posted speed limit. This makes it hard to turn onto a feeder from a side street. I find that feeders are detrimental to safety on the freeway itself, particularly when feeder on-ramps are back-to-back. It basically makes the far right lane unusable as through lane. Yes, this is a problem throughout the U.S., esp. in urban contexts, but much so here in Texas. A good example of this is I-45 in north Harris County, (the "North Frwy"). Probably the thing I hate most about feeders is seeing an extra slab of pavement off to the side and all the big box stores with their signs right up against the freeway. I am not an anti-big box type, but they are undoubtedly ugly. Driving on Texas freeways is a clearly hideous option compared to driving on freeways elsewhere in the country and are so even when compared to states with similar scenery.
In South Carolina, I 85 Business which was the original I 85 has Frontage roads. Business 85 was built on a old routing of U.S. 29 around Spartanburg so there were businesses on adjacent land. It was one of the first parts of I 85 to be built in the state.
I was born and raised in San Antonio, have driven in DFW, Houston, Austin. I learned how to drive as a teenager on these frontage roads as they were being expanded/built! This is a great comprehensive overview of one of my favorite Texas-patented pieces of infrastructure.
One other disadvantage to access roads is that they're dependent on flat geography, and wouldn't be practical in any mountainous or nearby areas. Tennessee is a great example of a state that couldn't use access roads, even if they wanted. If you ever drive through the state's highway system, you'll notice hundreds and hundreds of areas where a large rock face is seemingly adjacent to the highway... that is due to the extensive blasting the state has to do when constructing their roadways. This is prevalent all the way from the Appalachian mountains themselves to nearly Memphis/Mississippi river. Not only would creating an access road be exponentially more expensive as it would require much more blasting to clear out hill sides... it would be for nothing. Due to the geography, no businesses could take advantage of an access road. You simply cannot develop long stretches of restaurants, gas stations, service centers..etc along the highway due to the foothills of the smokies.
I think I can also think about another advantage, knowing that rural Texas have a lot of agricultural industry. So for example, if you would have to use a road to drive a tractor 🚜? I mean I think that thouse alternative path can come in handy as you would be able to drive 30 mph without making anyone angry. And since highways are limited access areas, you wouldn't probably be able to enter them in the first place and would have to search for alternatives, that could be uncomfortable to use as they would not run along the important corridor like an interstate road. I'm sorry English isn't my first language, I'm just judging from the area where I live anytime a tractor goes on the busy highway it's often a traffic jam. So correct me if I can be wrong.
@@MileageMike485 also second possible way revealed to me in a dream yesterday: Horses. You can ride horse on the side of a street but not the highway obviously.
I’ve lived in Texas for nearly ten years (a mix between Austin and San Antonio) and I’ve spent most of my years before that living in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Kentucky and South Dakota. And I have to say that I hate the frontage roads here. Having a plethora of business off an interstate or freeway is a major distraction and I think it adds to the traffic and congestion. Also, exits are usually intended to get you to a cross street and many times the ramps for them are located 1 or two miles before you actually cross that road as the exit ramp just dumps you onto the frontage until you eventually cross that street. Its like having to always get on an extra street to get to the actual street you want to be on. In the Phoenix metro, everything (businesses, housing areas, side streets) are all located off the major arterial streets so there’s never a need to access anything along the freeways themselves and the exits are never closer than a mile apart as the major arterials are all exactly one mile apart. To me, they have the best freeway/road network in the country as they built most of it after the interstate boom and they’ve learned from a lot of the mistakes that older cities have made. That’s just my take. I think the frontage roads look cool and it makes an area seem very happening when you see all the businesses directly off of it. But you also end up merging with traffic to you right rear of your vehicle when you use the Texas turnarounds. Non frontage freeway exits using SPUI (Single Point Urban Interchange) or diverging diamond interchanges, so basically the same thing as the Texas turnaround.
Being a Houston native and having traveled outside of Texas before, I remember being on the 285 in Atlanta and thinking "man, a frontage road would be nice"
Being an Atlanta resident and having traveled to Houston, I am usually on 285 thinking it would be nice to have a few more ring highways like Houston has done...
@@BabyBang17datruth The US, and Texas in particular, is proof positive you can't build your way out of traffic problems. There needs to be a fundamental shift in mindset. As a European, the concept of a bar with a large dedicated parking lot is absolutely nuts...
The feeder/service/access roads in the urban areas in Texas turn into busy, congested , backed-up city streets with traffic turning into and out of commercial driveways and strip malls. Traffic often backs up for a mile and onto the exit ramps and freeway. They are disasters but TXDOT seems to love them at the expense of drivers time and gas
Road Guy Rob has done a video on these a couple of years ago, and despite being a road enjoyer, he called such usage of frontage roads as "great designs leading to terrible roads", due to the so-called "area of influence" around an interchange which ends up being the entirety of Texan frontage roads. This makes the environment around the highways to be the same everywhere, with the frequent exits makes the sprawl greater, which is not a good thing especially in the Houston area, getting more and more susceptible to hurricanes every year. There will be more Hurricane Harveys.
Another thing about driving in TX is you are expected to make a right turn into another road/parking lot from the shoulder (if it exists and is safe to do so) to avoid slowing down the main lanes of traffic. Got ticketed in LA for doing this. We also used to be known for slower traffic temporarily moving onto the shoulder so faster traffic could pass on 2 lane highways and farm roads, but I haven't seen that in a long time.
I was recently on an FM in central Texas and had someone move to the shoulder to let me pass. And on the same trip, someone in oncoming traffic flashed his lights to let me know I'd be passing a cop soon. It felt like a blast from the past.
lol im TX born and i got pulled over in a suburb of Las Vegas for not stopping turning left in a curbed and grassed median. it was like 3am and we had been driving all night, and i was watching the GPS. i didnt even know that was a thing. luckily i only got a warning, but i had just assumed it was a obvious yield. (too be fair there was an obvious stop sign)
People still go onto the shoulder to let people pass all the time in my area. (To be fair, I live in a very remote, rural part of the state where most roads are only two lanes. I'm sure that makes a big difference.) You'd be considered deeply rude and inconsiderate-or maybe assumed to be from up north or the west coast, which unfortunately amounts to pretty much the same thing in the minds of some Texans-if you didn't. I did not know it was illegal in some places to turn from the shoulder. I've done it all over the country, probably including LA (I do it so habitually that I don't even know when I've done it), so I guess I've just gotten lucky and never been caught. Thanks for the tip!
I feel like one of the disadvantages of frontage roads is one of the reported advantages. Yeah, frontage roads open up development that otherwise wouldn’t be there, facing the highway, but what that also means is that we end up with SO much of our development being stretched across these long linear paths instead of concentrated in denser commercial areas - forcing local drivers to routinely be taking further trips more frequently on highways. I’m in Austin and if I wanted to go the post office, Walmart, and Central Market, that’s me getting on a 55mph frontage road or 65mph highway 3 times over just to run some quick errands.
That’s right. It’s asinine. Speaking of which, guys’ butts are getting pretty soft and wide anymore, driving around on one’s ass for every little trip 🤭😭
I used to work for the Texas Department of Highways. Frontage roads were built for developers to profit from having access. Very few roads in Texas were built for transporting reasons.
service roads are mostly just a way to access the land that is being farmed, making transport much easier. county roads are still roads, even if they are mostly used for land portioning. sure their use has changed when towns grow into cities and then metroplexes. but their original purpose hasn't. connecting sellers to buyers.
@@ernestsmith3581 Depends on how long ago it was. The Texas Highway Department was created on April 4, 1917. On June 19, 1975, Gov. Dolph Briscoe signed a bill that merged Texas Mass Transportation Commission and the highway department to form the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation. The State Department of Highways and Public Transportation was renamed the Texas Department of Transportation in 1991.
I'm a resident of Austin, Texas. This was pretty comprehensive, but I think think there is a big disadvantage that was missed, and one advantage mentioned is more of a disadvantage. The big disadvantage is that urban one-way frontage roads are reliant on a lot of weaving across them to get onto ramps and into turnarounds and out of lanes that either randomly end or turn in directions you don't want to go. It's very chaotic. You can probably tell that I don't like frontage roads. The separation of local and long-distance traffic sounds advantageous, but can alternatively be viewed as putting them in the same corridor, where they interfere with each other, which is how I see it.
There are some cities that just have terrible planning, eveen in texas. Austion is one of them. the texas joke is that the engineers who did the road planning were thus: aggies
@@idminister It's true that any time you mention interstates in Texas, people from Austin are going to be upset. Rightfully so, as Austin has some unique issues that deviate from the norm. In my experience of course, it is true that most engineers are Aggies!
I can absolutely understand why you feel that way but, having traveled extensively both inside and outside of Texas, and having spent a good bit of time in Austin, I feel like lots of things there are just really poorly designed for such a large city precisely because they weren't designed for such a large city. 20, 30, 40 years ago, Austin was a much better place to drive, but the long period of outrageous growth that it's experienced has caused a lot of its infrastructure to lag behind the current needs and become difficult to use. It's a frustrating ordeal today. I promise it's a very different situation in much of the state, and frontage roads really do make things better in lots of places, at least in my opinion.
In europe, this is not necassary. Plus, it takes up too much space. That is like adding six lanes (3e per direction) to an existing motorway. In uk, we already have a comprehensive road network, so if the motorway is closed for roadworks (not sure if other countries follow suit) or accident, we are able to direct them onto local roads. This is why they are only closed between 8pm and 7am. In addition, think of induced demand that widening roads does not always decrease traffic flow.
In many parts of the USA (mostly eastern), Interstates were built on new terrain, parallel to existing US and state highways, and therefore did not require extensive frontage roads as the older highways fulfilled local travel needs (I-81 and US-11 in Virginia, for example). In Texas and other western states, on the other hand, many Interstates were simply upgraded US and state highways, so frontage roads were needed to continue to provide for local travel needs after access to the former highways was severely limited.
They’ve grown on me since moving to Fort Worth, TX from Grand Rapids, MI. I think the thing that threw me for a loop was on my moving down trip encountering them in Arkansas for the first time. Especially because the first one I encountered was two-way and had what I will lovingly refer to as a “kamikaze off-ramp” where instead of simply connecting to the frontage road, it cut across it at a drastic angle and then looped around to rejoin it a few hundred feet away.
Two ways definitely need to be done away with. Unless some bright young engineer perfects a "Mobius Strip Access Road" bi-directionals will always be dangerous. :-)
There are a few reason’s Amarillo has a lot of road construction. One reason is the weather. It is BOTH cold and hot here with snow most winters and lots of wind, however less humidity than say DFW, SA, Houston, or Austin. In fact they have to close I-40 sometimes for the weather. Also they are trying to build a true loop around the city including moving the western side further west. Finally I would say they seem to practice the more old fashioned way of building roads that takes forever and seems perpetual. All with far less traffic than the big cities in Texas. Trying to play catchup with rest of state and rival Lubbock. IMHO.
Frontage roads that are one-way with a few less ramps per mile seem like a good idea, and I like your idea of frontage roads being a viable alternative for drivers who are new to an area, are older, or otherwise unable to cope with the increasing speeds of freeways. Since a freeway often replaces a US or state highway that was a surface, lower-speed street, it does cut people out of access - a frontage road can be very helpful in this situation. And, of course, the free access road is a nice alternative to paying toll. Glad to see you are a Pappadeaux fan (7:35). They are the best eatery at DFW, near gate A28.
Yeah getting drivers used to fewer exits, exiting early or u-turning to come back should improve freeway safety and flow. I don't like the HOV lanes on the far left with various restrictions and higher tolls, but I guess somebody is getting rich from them. They should be eliminated and replaced with left exit options.
I love frontage roads. They make so much sense. When I have traveled outside of Texas, I missed our frontage roads, and was so happy to get back to Texas, and it's highways/freeways.
Nice video, and it clearly illustrates why frontage roads are an ingenious way to solve what I'd call the "urban decay" problem with interstate corridors and business access. By preserving access to those businesses, it preserves the economic balance of the affected areas. There are so many places in the country that have died out due to loss of business when interstate highways were first built.
The downside is the walkability of these areas becomes even worse. It's entrenching more road usage into communities that desperately need better urban density and should be prioritizing pedestrian access.
Great information! As a 21-year Texas resident living near I-35, frontage roads are a must to avoid backups. I appreciate your perspective as a civil engineer - I first learned about city planning via Sim City way back in 1990!
I loved service/frontage/access roads when I lived in Texas many decades ago. The pros definitely outweigh the cons. I always called them service roads. Sometimes, the service roads did not have a bridge to cross a stream or other body of water, so you were forced to loop under the highway back in the other direction.
@@michaeljkeeney , yeah as far I know, that’s what they call it around DFW, it’s referred to differently across there, Houston, and San Antonio, not sure how it is around Austin.
I remember the first time I visited Dallas in 2004. I drove in on a Sunday night and stayed at a hotel just off I-35E in Carrollton which is probably 12+ miles north of the city center. I wake up on Monday morning to see southbound interstate traffic literally crawling. I wanted no part of that mess, so I stayed on a frontage road all the way into downtown.
I greatly enjoyed frontage roads. Nearby me never had frontage roads going west but one going east. After the 183/121 texpress construction, they removed one exit but added the frontage road going west. Now I can go get in-n-out in Hurst without getting into the freeway!
Another great 👍🏼 video MM, as a trucker for 42 years with about 10 years running line haul between Secaucus, NJ and Charlotte, NC and/or Bristol, Va/Tn , I find your videos very enjoyable to watch and if anyone would like to know what you have to endure if you didn’t have service roads all you have to do is drive US 22 in the Scotch Plains area in New Jersey where you have businesses not just along the highway but in the middle of the highway , this creates messes most of the day !!
I love the frontage roads in Texas! For the most part, they work beautifully. Yes, there’s the occasional tie up but in most cases that would still be worse without them. Great video, as always.
Texas traffic sucks! lol Texans are like a cult that thinks they have figured everything out, and yet, somehow, things run terribly! lololol I guess it's better than Arkansas...
Born and raised in DFW and I will say it threw me for a loop when I took my first trip to the North East as a driving adult. Driving in Pennsylvania and New Jersey was an unpleasant experience compared to driving in Texas. If you are exploring Dallas I highly recommend that you take a look over in the North Fort Worth area, we are growing rapidly and the cost of living is a little bit lower on this side of town compared to Dallas. I hope you are enjoying your time in DFW!
I'm a native Texan but I didn't grow up in Texas much due to my father being military. So when my father retired in Texas, I joined him snd my mother. Prior to moving back in '98, we were living in the Virginia suburbs of D.C., and 495 was always a nightmare, especially of you needed to turn around. It was like a scavenger hunt sometimes trying to fund the nearest on ramp back on 495 So on returning to Texas, I absolutely fell in love with their highway system, especially the turnarounds.
Tbh the backing roads you mentioned seem like a better "local access road". I've driven across most of Texas and while the u turns are nice to have, overall the areas without service roads are nicer both as a driver and a pedestrian. Denton has areas with and without frontage roads for example. The local business angle is ironic because along service roads for new development you end up with the same 10 or so giant chains stamped over and over. Also using the bus to get to anywhere on central expressway sucks since there are no sidewalks in a lot of areas and people run red lights all the time. I lived in a town out in the country bisected by a high way and service road for a while. It sucked because the park was on one side where the old state highway used to be and where I lived was across the highway from it. Someone died on the service road probably because there were no pedestrian crossings or sidewalks and the speed limit was like 45 or 50. The whole town lacked sidewalks except for the oldest part. But at least the local roads were all 25 mph. There was a crossunder nearby, but it didn't have any space for pedestrians at all. Walking along the service road was harrowing. And I had to take a goddamn car to the park 100 yards away because of it.
A lot of comments are saying that since frontage/feeder roads provide freeway access to businesses, they're a net positive. I think on the surface this seems like it would be a good thing but it has a big problem. Dotting the highway with businesses accessible by frontage roads causes the same problem as stroads. The road is trying to serve two incompatible functions at the same time, providing both high speed transportation over long distances on top of providing easy access to every location along the way. When the video mentions that they're 'confusing to out of towners', this actually hints at a much bigger issue. Their function and use are not always immediately intuitive, and in transportation unintuitive design causes accidents. The access to these businesses becomes severely hampered as the traffic spills onto the frontage roads during peak traffic hours. They do offer certain conveniences to drivers when the traffic conditions are lighter, but it starts to fall apart as things become congested, which is partially a consequence of the separate roles they're trying to fill.
I remember being a teenager visiting family in St. Louis and finally realizing feeders were not the norm. Same when I moved to Austin as a couple of their highways don't have frontage roads.
I remember first moving to Texas and being heavily thrown off by the turnarounds. Now I dont even blink. Personally, I like the frontage roads as far as getting free from traffic jams when needed.
Interesting. I just assumed they were part of every freeway. Mind blown. I thought they were needed to get on and off of one. I can't think of ever seeing one without a frontage road. It seems like travel around freeways would be a major pain without them. Where I live they built about half of a freeway circling my city then I guess ran out of state funding for it so the other half of it was just the frontage road with a big field between them for about 40 years until they finished the freeway.
My area in NE Mississippi has a rural frontage road off US 82. The main purpose of these were to encourage new business and allow neighborhoods along the old US 82 to still have direct road access.
video idea: interstates that are permanently one lane each way for a brief moment (not including interchanges), i live in topeka ks and i-70 is only one lane going straight thru the downtown section and i really don’t see any reason why, and i’m sure this happens in other cities too
My very first apartment was on what I’ve always called an access road. On one side of the complex was a quick service restaurant we’ve all heard of, a surgical center, a small grocery store, & a tractor supply type store. On the other side was a barbecue restaurant, a bicycle shop, a motel, & a gas station. All of that economic activity within 2 large blocks on a frontage road. There are countless numbers of both small businesses & large corporations activity on the frontage roads. Even government offices & schools sometimes as well. A large amount of Texas’s newest housing is apartment complexes on frontage roads. Economic vitality happens on access roads.
Frontage roads are good for cities that want their focal point to be a freeway. In cities where freeways are just methods to get through/across town fast, fewer conflict points and smaller right of way makes more sense.
i think you dont understand what a city actually is. its a literal trading hub, the whole point is that you need access to the business/local economy import/export that make it happen. freeways dont make cities, cities make traffic.
So due to all the frontage roads we have what we call “Texas Exits” it’s where if there is a traffic jam or road stoppage or something we make our own exit when driving through Texas you will see many well worn dirt paths from the freeway to the feeder (this is illegal but still happens all the time)
We don’t have frontage roads here in Florida. And I never been to Texas. But I definitely can see an advantage of having frontage roads in urban areas. Correction: There’s some limited access highways with frontage roads here in Florida. I-595 in Broward County. And US 19 in Pinellas County. My bad y’all.
See SR-84 / I-595 west of Ft. Lauderdale - SR-84 was a two-lane highway until about 1980 when it became two lanes in each direction, separated by a huge median. There were many businesses and local side streets on each side. Eventually, I-595 was built in the median with SR-84 as its frontage roads. A similar pattern happened in many other places where parts of a legacy US or State route were upgraded to accommodate a new freeway. (e.g.: US-66 -> I-44 )
I work for TxDOT and am from Houston. The local term is feeder road. People from other parts of the state call them access roads and service roads. The official TxDOT term is frontage road, as you stated.
Great video! Honestly the main issues I have with them are the double yields signs. Imagine an out of state driver not familiar with them realizing you have to yield to the off-ramp of the main freeway. I don't even think locals do well with them either. It also encourages crossing multiple lanes in a short amount of distance if you want to make a right turn (assuming you are coming off the freeway) or getting on the freeway if you are coming from let's say a strip mall from the right. it should ironically not encourage such maneuvers since you could take an earlier exit or delay getting on the freeway until after the next intersection. It's just a nightmare during busy hours it seems. Also not very pedestrian friendly as well as screws up my GPS as the roads are so close together, it thinks I'm on the frontage road instead of the freeway.. The main pluses are obviously the easy to use dedicated U-turn lanes and being able to pivot in your route easily like for example what you said about accidents on the main freeway. It is also a big part of what makes Texas Texas.
we have nothing about yielding to off ramps in west texas. but there are plenty of signs about not crossing the double white lines, which separates the slower access roads. seems most people now dont even realize that the color and patterns of the road stripes actually mean something.
Yep, definitely agree about the yielding to the off ramp. Most people don't, and that is about the only negative I see. I moved to KC from San Antonio and I miss the frontage roads a lot.
Have y'all noticed that the light at the end of the overpass/underpass turns green 5 - 10 seconds later after the light at the beginning turns green for people who are going straight past the freeway and then eventually the beginning light turns yellow and red in order for people to turn left from the frontage road onto a regular street while the light at the end stays green and then after that it does the same thing on the opposite side at some of the intersections there?
Vistited Texas for my first two times last year (Austin and Dallas). People aren't lying when they say Texas is every urbanist's worst nightmare. Your "cities" (more like giant suburbs) feel like they're 50% covered by freeway and these frontage roads are a big reason why. It's all extremely hostile to anyone not driving.
I had a very scary introduction to Texas involving frontage roads. The main line of I-10 west was closed for construction near Beaumont, so all Interstate traffic was driving on the frontage road. I got off a little exit from the frontage road to use a gas station. Getting back ON the frontage road was very dangerous, though. I had to merge back onto the frontage road, with cars zooming by at 80mph, with a little makeshift onramp that was only about 500 feet long for me to turn right onto and get up to highway speed from a complete stop, and no shoulder. And of course, because its a major interstate in Texas being restricted to just a 2 lane frontage road, there were very few gaps in traffic to be able to merge into. I waited a bit and give it my best shot, but a big lifted pickup truck zooming in from behind defintely had to slow down a bit for me, and swerved a little.
Try accomplishing that feat in an 80,000 pound semi truck! Your car can get up to speed in a few seconds. A truck will enter that ramp doing 10mph. Luckily most people realize they will die if they don't slow down or move over
NYC has "Service Roads" which were mostly built because the roads existed before the highways. They definitely help when the highways are congested. The main ones being: Horace Harding Expressway, Van Wyck Expressway, Bruckner Blvd, Whitestone Expressway, and North/South Conduit Aves.
Yes, in the northeast we have some limited "service roads". These are pretty much limited to urban areas where the planners tried to keep existing neighborhoods intact to the greatest extent practical when the interstates came through. Between the larger cities, the best you can do if avoiding the highway due to an accident or construction is go on the local/state highway that the interstate effectively "replaced". In many areas on I-95, for example, this is US Route 1. But these routes are far from parallel roadways and they slow down to very low speeds within the villages they cross.
I am pro frontage roads. There are a few of them in the greater metropolitan area of my city in NY state. There is one in particular that is really confusing that I have to drive on for work! It is NY 425 just over the creek in North Tonawanda. It is a super dense congestion because much of the town is built on it but it flow well and that is probably due to the frontage roads in part.
On major disadvantage is that frontage roads encourage development along freeways which bring in local traffic to mix with through traffic. Causing congestion.
I'm not a Texan (YET) but I drive a big rig in Texas quite often from Dallas to Houston or to Laredo or where ever and I have to say first time I seen the Texas U-Turn I was little amazed like why can't other states do this and the feeder roads I love them best idea ever and wish more state adopt the idea but money is the big talker. as a person who drives the country Texas my favorite state to be in and i try to get there often
As a driver myself I absolutely despise Texas. The frontage road system on paper is a great idea. Most drivers pay zero attention to speed double white lines or yield. The system has a free for all mentality and the most aggressive fastest driver will always take advantage. Nothing like having a car decapitate themselves on you dot bumper because yield means go faster
@2:50 That exact particular stretch of road in Carrollton is completely consuming the businesses along-side it now. Eminent domain is an insatiable savage in such areas. At this point, the road has taken any and all easements of these businesses. When you’re inside these stores, you will see cars passing by only feet away whenever they’re done paving. Some businesses were so close they’ve been completely demolished.
I agree. My wife works near 35/Old Denton Rd And it’s sad to see. Tbh I don’t see much of an alternative at this point though. The fwy is too narrow with how much traffic passes through daily and how close those businesses are to the fwy. I always thought maybe they should’ve extended the double decked express lanes from the Dallas portion all the way to like PGBT so the main lanes of the fwy could’ve been widened past 3-4 lanes. Maybe it could’ve saved some business in the long run. There’s just too much population in Denton County now to relieve the traffic any other way.
Another advantage- for someone like myself who doesn't have the greatest of reaction times, using a service road is a /lot/ safer. The time difference sucks but it's better than avoiding your destination. An extra downside, though, is that near built-up places service roads make pedestrians' abilities to access things that much worse (in terms of sprawl, crossing, and in terms of businesses along service roads that are pretty inaccessible)
@@MileageMike485 - The whole state of Texas is not interested in walkability, for good reasons, primarily the huge distances involved in getting from (any) Point A to (any) Point B. Ask Dallas people if it's still a thing to drive from Dallas to Ft. Worth for lunch. Texans were expected to go everywhere on horseback, or in modern times have a pickup truck, Chevy Suburban, or (if they needed to impress people) a Cadillac, Mercedes or Porsche. I think there's a provision in the Texas state constitution covering this.
That isn't true. There are many people in metro areas across Texas interested in walkability. The issue is getting the average person to see the possibilities of good transit and fighting decades of cars=freedom propoganda (which are issues across the US)
@@garyd.7372 One such "good reason" is TxDOT who hasn't left the "tradition" of leveling houses, businesses and amenities for the pleasure of the rich suburban family at the expense of everyone else.
The frontage road intersections in urban areas that are controlled by traffic lights are terrible. Except for the u turn lanes they take forever to get through, usually only one of the four directions can go at a time. A major flaw at busy cross roads.
Mileage Mike, I really enjoy your videos, especially the ones where you tell us the information about particular roads. I am originally from downstate NY. Nelsonville, which is about, nine miles north of the Bear Mountain Bridge which you covered in your travels. As a child I was a road geek. My parents joked that my first words were NOT "Mama" and "Dada" but "Esso", Mobil", Sunoco" and "Texaco". Having had traveled out to New Mexico twice as an adolescent, even then the "Frontage Roads" in Texas were obvious. Have passed through Texas many times in my life since the '60's, I have seen more and more frontage roads and came to the same conclusion as you stated in this video. It was for business access along the freeway. In a lot of cases, the frontage roads were once US highways (i.e. US 66, US 75, US 81, US 281) that Interstates were replacing, and business and homes already existed along the route. Some the actual original US highway roadbeds are now in fact a Frontage Road. Thank you for this and for all your videos. I envy you and your travels. Please be save and continue your wonderful work.
I've lived in about a dozen states in my lifetime with the latest being Texas. Frontage roads is on the list of the things I really love about TX. Those 2 way ones were daunting but I think every one of them between Austin and San Antonio is now one way. Commuting here is so much better than it ever was in UT, CO, CA, OK, TN, GA...
there are still plenty of 2 way service roads. but its in smaller towns. and if you know what color the road stripes indicate, its pretty easy to navigate. they often have heavy signage now too, since plenty of people can barely use the signage, much less what the road stripes actually mean.
Frontage roads encourage a monopoly of large chain and fast food development along highways. If we removed feeders and added pretty sound barriers, we could move development back to normal streets and transit stops further away from the highway and give mom and pop shops a fighting chance.
As a Houstonian and admittedly not well traveled I am spoiled by frontage roads, and when driving around in the LA and San Diego area was shocked by th e lack of them. Now thanks to your video I am realizing frontage roads are just a Texas thing. i think here in Houston we mostly call them “feeder" roads.
The names (Service, Access, Feeder, and Frontage) all refer to the same things, but are regional differences in Texas (DFW, SATX, and HOU respectively with Frontage Road being the official/neutral name for them). I think the only real difference is that frontage roads in some rural areas and especially near SATX will be one two-way road on one side of the highway with slightly different rules about yielding/merging. There’s also the topic of whether ramps should be on-off or off-on ordering which will either prioritize getting traffic onto local roads or getting local traffic onto highways (and avoid the local lights)-I highly prefer the latter method because it just makes more sense if your goal is to effectively move traffic.
I feel like this probably makes trying to walk or traverse these areas as a pedestrian pretty much impossible. But I get the idea. Probably not great to continue to adopt elsewhere though.
I moved from the Chicagoland area to Houston a little over a decade ago. The roads did confuse me at first, but after driving on them for a few weeks, something simply clicked one day and everything immediately made _perfect_ sense. I absolutely love the way Texas does its highways.
The highway planning is pretty good here. Outside of the cities, almost all exits are on the right and there's a uturn lane for specifically reversing direction under most bridges just after an exit even in cities. It's pretty nice.
It's pretty difficult to get lost in Texas, since you can easily turn around if you miss an exit. Plus, while out traveling, services are usually placed on the frontage roads, so you'll never have to venture too far from the highway to get gas or snacks.
Same. I’m up in The Woodlands having moved from Greater NYC area, and at first I was bit uneasy….then like you, it clicked. I realized if I make a mistake or miss an on ramp or exit…no worries.
Began to understand when to get in that right lane, and to be patent getting on the Frontage Rds. It’s an incredible sight to see around Beltway 8 and 610…but it’s brilliantly designed.
@@lolbuster01 Meanwhile, construction of these highways is happening in EVERY major city right now and it's been taking forever to get anything done, causing so much traffic.
@@OzzyTheGiant Well, that's to be expected when there is major road work being done. It is worth it when it is done, however.
I live In the Cypress area of Houston and the 290 expansion started a couple years after I moved down here. The traffic was hellish already on 290 at the time, which I suspect is why they opted to expand 290 in the first place. This construction of course made traffic even worse - nightmarish. It probably took 3 or so years, but once it was finished the result was so worth it for somebody like myself that is served directly by this highway.
I've lived in Texas my whole life and didn't know that most states didn't have feeders. I'm glad you gave the warning about staying away from the left and HOV lanes, most Texans use the speed limit as more of a guide. If you aren't doing 10-15 mph more, you will be run over.
Texas is the one state where reckless driving is solely at the discretion of the officer regardless of speed- and drivers absolutely abuse the hell out of it. Because it has to be, to quote 545.351: "more speed than is reasonable and prudent under the circumstances then existing." TX drivers out there making TN and FL drivers look like grandmas. I'm brave, I've driven all 3!
@@buffcode I've lived in knoxville TN for a combined total of 6 years with 3 of them being with my license. Also, was born in Corpus Christi. Can confirm: Texas drivers make Tennessee crackheads look sober.
@@wifelikecow It's all fun and games til some Knoxville crackhead drops their needle and swerves all 3 lanes trying to pick it up and snashes the median barrier!
I'm not even making that up, it happened right in front of me!
You stay safe out there!
@@buffcode was this going east past weisgarber rd on 40?
@@buffcode Absolutely not. I never understood this point about how fast we go. Try going from Houston to Dallas at 90 and tell me you don’t get at least one or two tickets. Speed limit is 75 when it’s rural. 80 is okay. Anything more, don’t cry about tickets. Texas state troopers DO NOT PLAY
As a Texan, I call these “feeder roads.” They are extremely useful, and I can’t imagine not having them around.
I've read that that is the most common name in Houston. There was an old study of regional naming ... it was a quiz, I think, and at the end it would make a heat map of your origin. Sometimes it was funnily accurate! (One of the interesting questions was what you called this road, multiple choice. Several things pinpointed your location within Texas!)
Living in another state will be a rude awakening for you probably…..lol
We had feeders in Canada. I have travelled frontage roads in Houston and Austin, the Texas turn arounds confused me a bit. But now I really like avoiding traffic lights
It's nice having all of the services right next to the highway and having an easy way to turn around if you miss an exit. It's pretty difficult to get lost in this state, imo.
@@AllAmericanGuyExpert Native Houstonian here, I can confirm that 'feeder' is probably more popular of a term here. I have always called them feeder roads. Frontage road sounds formal to me and access/service road both sound to me like the on/off ramp itself and not the frontage road.
I also came from Illinois to Texas and discovered frontage roads in all thier glory. What I think are really cool and smart are the turnarounds built underneath the highways. Texans are fiercely proud of their state and right they should be!
Salute my guy. My dad grew up in the Chi and I heard stories growing up. Never understood why he loved it here so much but now at 31, he makes sense to me lol.
Being from the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, I can't imagine most highways without frontage roads. I thought that was a normal thing. I only left the state twice in my lifetime.
I’m on the other end of that spectrum: I grew up in western NC and we have roads like this that run parallel to the interstate to provide access to local businesses and homes; however, ours are two-way and it wasn’t until my family and I went to College Station for my little sister’s soccer tournament in 2016 that my siblings and I had seen one-way frontage roads like this (which I think is genius for all the reasons given in this video and may or may not have influenced some of my builds in Cities: Skylines). I’ve seen and read about other states implementing/proposing one-way frontage roads like this, but it’s mostly just been to prevent weaving between two interchanges that are very close together and NCDOT’s proposed I-26 Connector project in the Asheville area is a good example of this. Personally though, I think these should be built wherever possible due to their practicality
That is very understandable, for example every tram of interstate highways (69C and interstate 2) in McAllen has frontage roads, and these are not that much chaotic, because they are not two way roads, they are one way roads, depending on which side you are, unlike some other parts of Texas that have two way roads on each side which is confusing so you could say Rio Grande frontage roads or atleast in McAllen ar pretty practical. but i feel that, atleast the only ones that I know that are from Rio Grande Valley area, they take too much space, good thing they don't make congestion because exits have auxiliary lanes
I don't need no lame navapps. I upload data from paper maps into my Mark 1 guidence system: my head!!!🤪
Texas' system of frontage roads allows for very flexible ingress and egress with the freeway.
@@LoneWolf1493 I also think one way frontage roads are way superior and better than two way frontage roads, because the intersection does not only generate unnecessary congestion but it is also dangereous
Having been born and raised in Texas, I can tell you that the lack of frontage roads outside of this state can cause confusion for us, too. With the ubiquity of frontage roads, it's easy to fall into the trap that missing an exit isn't a big deal, since you can just do a U-turn at the next one. It was quite a shock to me the first time I went out of state, and ended up going 10 miles out of my way because I missed an exit.
Tell me about it. When I moved to WA it took years for the sense of "wrongness" when driving near highways to go away just due to the lack of frontage roads, and still i'm annoyed by that lack.
Frontage/Service roads makes sense especially for the business that run parallel. I've seen exits in NJ,CA,NY that ends practically into someone's living room(?) I know I have found following the GPS is not always correct... 😀
Try making that mistake on the PA Turnpike - 20, even 30 miles between exits in some places.
Growing up in Texas and travelling to other states... it SHOCKS me how exits just end in stoplights!
I grew up in Colorado, learned to drive in Texas, and live along the I-20 corridor through DFW, so I'm really used to both. A lot of communities along 20 didn't want the interstate when it was put in, and they couldn't block the interstate itself, but they *could* passive-aggressively block the frontage road, so the I-20 frontage road is inconsistent in my area: there are a lot of traditional-style exits straight to cross streets, and a lot of weird things done to frontage roads.
You can tell which part of Texas you're from depending on what you call these roads. Here in San Antonio, we call them access roads. Last year when my husband and I were visiting a friend in Houston, we got caught up in traffic on I-45, and our friend told us to exit onto the "service road" to dodge the traffic. And my husband had absolutely no idea what he was talking about until I explained it to him!
Yep. I’m in Austin and it’s called “frontage roads”
@@Zach27727 "Frontage Roads" seems to be TxDOT's preferred term. The road signs here will usually call them that regardless of which region of Texas you're in.
DFW area: service road
We call them "service roads" up here in North Texas (Dallas/Fort Worth). Once you get into Waco, they seem to use the term "frontage road" more than "service roads" but I guess it's a regional preference.
Houston calls them feeder, Dallas uses “service”. Frontage roads are the general term used everywhere else (including the rest of Texas)
As someone who was raised in DFW, I was absolutely shocked to learn other states don't have access roads, I intend to live in Charlotte NC and the lack of frontage roads showed tons of traffic issues.
this is why i love texas. i was so shocked to find out that other states don't use the texas turnaround
Despite being born and raised there, it took me a while once I moved to other states to realize that those frontage roads or easy U-turns on Texas freeways are just specific to Texas
Lived in Mississippi for a few years before moving to Texas. Got my first taste of Frontage roads when i took trips to Arkansas. I was skeptical for a while even after moving to Texas, but the turn around makes them 10000% worth it. No state does highways as good as Texas.
@@andrewsloan3754 , Jug handles, I spent some time in NJ a couple years back, they have them on US Route Highways like US-1 for example.
To go left on a lot of those roads you have to stay to the right lane if you want to enter a road that you would’ve otherwise entered with a left turn in left lane in other states.
As a Michigander I’ve heard of Texas turnarounds but I was shocked that other states didn’t have Michigan lefts lol.
Very well worded video. As a transplant to Texas a decade ago. Frontage roads confused me all the time. Having gotten used to them and navigating all the different types as you state (u turns, one ways, two ways etc)now, i wouldn't have it any other way. The other thing you didn't mention is how to Texas tell the DOT where a new exit is needed. We call it the "Texas Off Ramp". Basically you just go off roading through the grass divider onto the frontage road. :)
Ha! It's true, and it's a form of petition that can actually work if a particular location becomes enough of a nuisance for them. 🙂
Growing up in Texas I always thought this was how the whole country did it and still can’t believe most don’t. It’s so much better.
There’s ups and downs to the system, coming from a MO transplant. They are fantastic in midsized cities and suburban areas.
In rural areas, they’re often two-way like the outer roads in every other state, except Texas decided to put the exit and entrance ramps right off of these to make them a “frontage road” still. And to a transplant at least, it’s unnecessarily complicated.
In larger cities, they’re problematic due to backups at intersections, but that’s likely because the queue distance isn’t long enough since the cities have grown since the roadway was built.
That said, I’m in Lubbock. The system works great here except for about an hour in the evening. The U-Turn system should be standard on every highway. Saint Louis has attempted to do something like this in some places, but none of the people involved have obviously not ever been to Texas because their implementation sucks worse than what they had before - “backage roads”.
A Con I haven't heard yet. Half of the addresses are on the side of the highway you're not on, meaning: those businesses get reduced traffic and shoppers.
@@UPalooza that’s what Google maps is for
We've always had them in MI. We have them on the Interstate in the Urban areas. Particularly around Detroit and Flint. It is why you have exits at just about every mile.
Thank you for your commentary on the Texas frontage roads. I learned to drive in SoCal, and spent much of my adult life there. I often wondered why frontage roads were so rare, and why they didn't work well where they did exist. Most of the frontage roads in SoCal (where they exist) are two-way roads, and are generally not accessible from the main roadway, except at the diamond interchanges.
About 10 years ago, I spent some time in Houston, and stayed at a place right near the 610 Loop. With the one-way frontage roads, it was very easy to get in and out of the hotel, and onto the highway (if I chose), or just down the road a bit, if desired. It took me almost no time at all to learn to navigate and to appreciate the advantages of the frontage roads in Houston. Having spent quite a bit more time driving in Texas since that time, I've learned to appreciate the frontage roads along the highways of the state.
Those "Texas Turnarounds" are great, unless you're behind a semi that is trying to follow Google's prompts, by turning where it won't fit...
Of the many traffic "solutions" I've seen along our nation's highways, the Texas frontage roads are, in my opinion, one of the best solutions in use today. I've seen crossover lanes on some highway interchanges, and they do make sense to a degree, but are complicated and confusing for drivers that aren't familiar with them. Roundabouts work well in theory, but, from what I've seen, are almost always built too small, so traffic in the circle becomes too congested.
I applaud Texas for building its highways with frontage roads the way they do. From my experience they work reasonably well for keeping the highway traffic moving while providing relatively easy access to nearby businesses and neighborhoods.
Also having grown up in SoCal, I have a slightly different take. Frontage roads are both a blessing and a curse.
Blessing in the areas where they are consistent: one direction only with those glorious Texas U-turns.
Horrifying curse where they are not: bi-direction with the freeway on and off ramps requiring crossing *over the opposing direction of traffic that only has a YIELD sign on the frontage road* with almost never a suicide lane in the middle to prepare your turn in and a 50/50 chance there’s a stop sign shortly after exiting.
Add the sometimes wonky freeway signage (would be lovely if they could figure out that “exit only” on the same lane approaching the first exit for two consecutive exits should mean the lane continues on to end at the second exit rather than the lane to the left of you that suddenly becomes the 2nd exit’s exit only lane right as the first exit is peeling off) and it can get somewhat frustrating at times. SoCal freeways have their own issues, but at least they are much more consistent in this regard. (Dallas/Ft Worth, PLEASE get some consistency)
As to why SoCal doesn’t have them for the most part: space. Texas has it in spades while SoCal does not. In the rare spot where there was some space, you’ll see an attempt at frontage roads, but they’re so uncommon they’re treated more like normal surface streets rather than freeway companions. I’m not sure where you’ve seen frontage roads only accessible from diamond interchanges, but I concede that likely does exist somewhere.
With the blessing of space, I do like how Texas builds its freeways: plunk down your right of way, then build the frontage roads. The frontage roads can start serving traffic while you take your time to build the freeway in the middle. The 114, 170, and the northern terminus of the 360 were like that here in DFW and I thought that made so much sense (again, when you have the space to be able to do that).
I've lived my whole adult life in Texas but I've traveled all over the country. I'm pretty neutral on most aspects of this question, but I do often find myself getting very frustrated when I'm in an area that doesn't have fairly frequent exits/turnarounds, plus easy access to nearby businesses. We're heavily conditioned to have high expectations about those things.
One thing is that for many newly built highways, especially tollways, the frontage roads are actually built first, oftentimes years before, and the main high speed lanes are built oftentimes purely based on traffic demand. You’ll see just frontage roads in some places with an immensely wide median between them that is really where the future main lanes will be built, which isn’t even guaranteed
I've lived in Texas most of my life but also California. I think frontage roads are a net positive in cities because access to retail is so convenient and the commercial strip on each side of the freeway functions as a sound barrier for residential. In California the freeways feel like tunnels because of high sound walls close to the roadway. Despite this there are adjacent "freeway houses" which have so much noise pollution they are nearly uninhabitable (90 Db in the backyard). Caltrans hides all the ramps pretty good too!
I find it opposite, because it’s terrifying to pull out in traffic going 50-60 mph. And if you miss your store, you have to drive alllll the way around, and if you wanna cross the street, you’re screwed
I think your points about the advantages and disadvantages are well-reasoned and -explained, with the exception of "unusable parcels." They're not unusable, they just require different routing to access them and their "front" will be facing away from the highway.
In the case of GA-400 mentioned at 3:05, I live in Alpharetta and know that what you have highlighted in yellow as "unusable parcels" are required buffers, which reduce visual clutter and noise noticeably. Contrast this to Dallas, TX where my son lives. We met a friend in the parking lot in the 9300 block of the North Central Expressway (where Total Wine and Cavender's are) and we had to raise our voices significantly so we could hear each other because of the traffic on the expressway and frontage road, neither of which had any sound-absorbing features between them and the parking lot.
That's partly intentional - it helps to buffer the more residential areas from that noise.
@@spamlessaccount, did you miss this part of what I wrote: "buffers, which reduce visual clutter and noise noticeably"?
@@ShawnD1027 I think the point they were trying to get at was that the commercial businesses themselves are the buffer for more residential areas. Of course, as you pointed out, this means that these businesses don't get to have their own sound buffer. How bad the sound is definitely depends on which highway(s) they're next to though.
Another disadvantage of frontage roads is that they are a disaster for pedestrians trying to walk under an interstate bridge. You have so many more points of conflict with drivers. And none of the drivers are looking out for pedestrians or even yielding when they should. You have to cross two extra roads in addition to going under the interstate.
But you can't walk ANYWHERE in Texas on account of distances and heat. It's just expected you'll drive everywhere.
@@marius2k8 that because highway made everything so spread apart
@@LWoodGaming People were already spread apart, because this was agricultural land. It wasn't until like a century ago that most people lived in cities. And the availability of cheap land naturally encouraged more impressive roadworks than elsewhere. And again, for like 9/12 of the year, you just don't want to go outside. It's miserable, bordering on swamp or desert. For those of us who prefer more humane climates, and really only go outside when they vacation in the mountains of Colorado, the proliferation of highways in Texas is pretty self-explanatory as well.
@@marius2k8I dropped my car off for service at the intersection of the SRT and DNT, and there were restaurants caddy-corner across that intersection. It was a 10 minute walk each way, but thanks to two 6-lane highways and multiple flying ramps, at least I wasn’t in the sun long.
People weren’t already spread apart-cities like Dallas and Houston were very dense a century ago, and only got hollowed out by highways since WW2. Of course the agricultural areas aren’t dense, but that’s not what anybody is talking about.
Grew up in Texas and then moved to the West Coast, in my 30s. Married a Washington woman and we ended up moving to Texas for a job I got. She'd never seen a frontage system like that, and she loved it! I was used to them, so I kind of shrugged.
I moved to TX with my family when I was still young, and I remember my mom and dad being really confused by frontage roads and especially turnarounds. However, after getting used to them, we love it. It is way more convenient than other states. I cringe every time I need to turnaround on a vacation outside of TX and have to wait at 2 lights just to go the other way.
One of the other problems with using Google Maps to navigate to a specific business on the frontage road is that often times the directions will instruct you to exit the freeway about 200 feet before the business driveway. This makes it virtually impossible to switch 3-4 lanes in time. One example of this is accessing Micro Center from SB 75 in Dallas or the Costco in Plano in the NB direction. To avoid this, i'd recomend taking the frontage road a mile or so before your directions tell you to hop off the mainline. I also love the idea of right-in-right-out for high volume commercial. While it can be a bit confusing at first, I never find myself stuck at shopping centers in Texas like I did everywhere else i've lived.
Great content! Welcome, from McKinney!
The ridiculous lane crossings to exit to frontage roads is a huge issue! In my opinion it is the single greatest disadvantage of this road design as a driver. It is not just shopping centers and businesses that I have trouble cutting over to in time. Sometimes the exit designs still make you cross 3-4 lanes in very little space even just to reach the particular intersecting road that the signs on the interstate signal you to "exit here" for! Very dangerous quick-merges these frontage road designs create!!! (or at least when they are poorly designed)
@@carolinavatorThat's why the access roads used to always be required to yield to the ramp. They're getting away from that, but they're also moving the exits further back from the roads they're intended for.
idk if this is weird to say but i love your voice, it's calming to me
Spent over 7 months in Houston and have always been living in the Ozarks. They are called feeder roads. Roads like these are really needed because traffic is far too bottlenecked around traffic signals when there are roads running parallel to the highway with various businesses.
Only other person I see that mentioned feeder roads. Wew
In Texas they are called feeder roads. I grew up in Houston, and "frontage road" was only something I saw on road signs. People call them feeder roads.
Yup, I'm in Houston and I've always called them feeder roads.
They change based on what part of Texas you're in we call the service roads here
The name changes depending on the area. Tell someone from here in San Antonio to get on the feeder road and they probably won't know what you're talking about. Tell that same person to get on the access road and they'll get it.
I think biggest disadvantage of a frontage road is they encourage speeding. They’re basically drag strips encouraged by high speed traffic on the interstate. And unlike interstates, high speed can have disastrous consequences on a frontage road if another driver turns out onto the road from a business.
Good point. I’ve seen that on the ones in Dallas
I think one major disadvantage that was missed was how these can affect the walkability of urban areas, as they make crossing freeways on foot (already not super fun) even more difficult and uncomfortable for anyone not in a car. NotJustBikes has done some neat videos about Texas (and American) roadway design. It really leads a lot of Texas cities to feel even more unwalkable than they already are, aside from perhaps Downtown Austin/Domain and areas near the Riverwalk in San Antonio.
I hope NotJustBikes enjoys the diet of bugs Klaus Schwab and the WEF are shoving down the EU's throat.
This is a strawman argument. Only a lunatic would cross an actual freeway on foot, one should be crossing at the grade seperated cross streets. These service roads allow a multitude of cross streets without interfering with the freeway.
Bro, you ain’t walking in south Texas when it’s 103 degrees for 4 months out of the year. Quit with the walkable cities meme
@@seanbohannon How far between are these cross streets, from a walkable perspective? And how safe are they for walking across?
Just by lookin on this video, the traffic was going sub highway speeds on these frontage roads.
@@seanbohannon only problem is, it would be a problem for people to climb the stairs and wheelchair users to climb up and down ramps. The minimum gradient is 1:14 but 1:20 or more is ideal. If you need to climb 17 feet, that is 250 feet of distance . But since you are going down, that is another 250 feet. 500 feet of extra distance. It would be like going up a 3 story building and down again. In the UK, this will only be necasary to cross a large fast busy road or motorway.
Frontage roads are a brilliant idea making transportation much more efficient while still maintaining access.
When I first relocated to Texas from California the frontage roads confused me. But after stepping back and thinking about it for a little bit I realize what good idea they were. In California you had to know every road that had an access to the freeway. Otherwise you would find out you were on the wrong road as you passed over the freeway. With an Access Road you just need to get on the access road and sooner rather than later would be able to get on the freeway.
I lived in the Fort Worth half of the Metroplex and learned how to drive in that area. I was about 25 when I moved out of state, and after 29 years, I still miss the hell out of those frontage roads. One thing that really made sense about them was how the exit and entrance ramps were all in the same place. We have very little of that in CT. Several highways around here might have an off ramp, but then when you need to get back on, you don't always have a choice about which direction. You could be traveling East on a highway, exit at a given place, then you can't turn around and go West for a return trip home. Or you can't get back on in the same direction. Others may have an off ramp for only one side of the highway, but not for the traffic on the other side of the highway. And this is in suburban and rural areas too, where there is plenty of room to install the additional ramps. It's even worse as you start approaching actual cities. Not kidding either... CT's highway system is a complete cluster fuck.
I am from McAlester Oklahoma and I love the frontage roads. In fact in McAlester a section of Hwy 69 has been rebuilt like the Texas frontage roads and it was the best thing that could have been done. The traffic is safer thinks to the change,
Better for drivers, worse for land use and pedestrians
Texas in nutshell
Not necessarily worse for pedestrians. Sidewalks along frontage roads allow pedestrians to walk to businesses along freeways. In a sense, they're kind of worse for drivers, since you *have to* change lanes to get on or off the freeway
@@lazygongfarmer2044 have you ever tried to walk along a frontage road? Let alone cross a freeway as a pedestrian?
@@noahgarcia7599 A: you don't cross the freeway, you cross at the cross street same as any busy road.
B:Most frontage roads are perfectly walkable, more walkable than your typical stroad.
Well, the US is defined by car culture.
Also, some of the frontage roads in Texas were former alignments of highways. An example of this is I-20 between Weatherford and Ranger where the north side access road was a former alignment of US 80 (noted by older-style bridges).
Same with parts of Route 66 east and west of Amarillo, that are now service roads for I-40.
And much if I-35 is the old US 77.
I just moved to Texas last year from Mississippi and I must say that I do like the frontage roads. And especially like the Texas turnarounds that make it easy to double back to a business on the one-way frontage roads.
Oh, and TXDOT has changed their philosophy with entrance/exit ramps in recent years. Here in San Antonio they're basically redoing all of TX1604 on the west/south side of town. The philosophy is to have exit ramps just after the interchange and then the entrance ramps ahead of intersections. In addition, the highway gains a temporary far-right lane which serves as the on-merge and exit-only lane easing merge and exit traffic!
The other downside to feeder roads is that they can cause lots of traffic accidents because of people not indicating that they are turning into a business access or swerving to making multiple lane changes to get onto the freeway, especially when the feeder road's speed is relatively high compared to side streets.
What's interesting is that frontage roads as well as Texas u-turns are very common in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which makes me wonder if the original highway engineers were Texans or studied in Texas. Riyadh even has high stack interchanges
I'm sure with a strong petrochem industry in both Houston and Middle East, there's bound to have been some cross pollination of socio-civil engineering ideas.
I know the TXDOT has a very large amount of Texas A&M alumni working for them and there is a Texas A&M campus in Qatar. Could be part of the reason for that, or maybe just a coincidence.
Cheap fuel and cheap land remove disincentives for these. Not that they're very safe: I have to drive an extra kilometer or so south every day to get to work here in Saudi, and then drive a kilometer north to get to the office. Often cars stack up in the U-turn lane and overflow into the left lane. Oncoming northbound drivers drive 110 km (68mph), and drivers making a U-turn must choose their gaps. It's a good thing we pray five times a day!
Nice insight. I imagine so
@@majedal-baghl4917Solution to that is dedicated acceleration lanes out of the U-Turn.
I really enjoyed this video and agree with many of your points. However, there are several I strongly disagree with.
Most particularly, I disagree with the idea that at 3:55 that frontage roads are a "less stress" option to being on the freeway. I find the feeders bring plenty of stress because lanes are constantly disappearing, turning into on-ramps, or turn lanes. This causes me to have to change lanes which I don't like to do.
Another safety concern is that motorists on feeders frequently drive at speeds nearly as fast as the freeway itself, and much higher than the posted speed limit. This makes it hard to turn onto a feeder from a side street.
I find that feeders are detrimental to safety on the freeway itself, particularly when feeder on-ramps are back-to-back. It basically makes the far right lane unusable as through lane. Yes, this is a problem throughout the U.S., esp. in urban contexts, but much so here in Texas. A good example of this is I-45 in north Harris County, (the "North Frwy").
Probably the thing I hate most about feeders is seeing an extra slab of pavement off to the side and all the big box stores with their signs right up against the freeway. I am not an anti-big box type, but they are undoubtedly ugly. Driving on Texas freeways is a clearly hideous option compared to driving on freeways elsewhere in the country and are so even when compared to states with similar scenery.
In South Carolina, I 85 Business which was the original I 85 has Frontage roads. Business 85 was built on a old routing of U.S. 29 around Spartanburg so there were businesses on adjacent land. It was one of the first parts of I 85 to be built in the state.
Smiling the whole time watching this. Just love my state, and it’s infrastructure!
I was born and raised in San Antonio, have driven in DFW, Houston, Austin. I learned how to drive as a teenager on these frontage roads as they were being expanded/built! This is a great comprehensive overview of one of my favorite Texas-patented pieces of infrastructure.
One other disadvantage to access roads is that they're dependent on flat geography, and wouldn't be practical in any mountainous or nearby areas. Tennessee is a great example of a state that couldn't use access roads, even if they wanted. If you ever drive through the state's highway system, you'll notice hundreds and hundreds of areas where a large rock face is seemingly adjacent to the highway... that is due to the extensive blasting the state has to do when constructing their roadways. This is prevalent all the way from the Appalachian mountains themselves to nearly Memphis/Mississippi river. Not only would creating an access road be exponentially more expensive as it would require much more blasting to clear out hill sides... it would be for nothing. Due to the geography, no businesses could take advantage of an access road. You simply cannot develop long stretches of restaurants, gas stations, service centers..etc along the highway due to the foothills of the smokies.
I think I can also think about another advantage, knowing that rural Texas have a lot of agricultural industry.
So for example, if you would have to use a road to drive a tractor 🚜? I mean I think that thouse alternative path can come in handy as you would be able to drive 30 mph without making anyone angry.
And since highways are limited access areas, you wouldn't probably be able to enter them in the first place and would have to search for alternatives, that could be uncomfortable to use as they would not run along the important corridor like an interstate road.
I'm sorry English isn't my first language, I'm just judging from the area where I live anytime a tractor goes on the busy highway it's often a traffic jam. So correct me if I can be wrong.
Good point.
@@MileageMike485 also second possible way revealed to me in a dream yesterday: Horses.
You can ride horse on the side of a street but not the highway obviously.
I’ve lived in Texas for nearly ten years (a mix between Austin and San Antonio) and I’ve spent most of my years before that living in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Kentucky and South Dakota. And I have to say that I hate the frontage roads here. Having a plethora of business off an interstate or freeway is a major distraction and I think it adds to the traffic and congestion. Also, exits are usually intended to get you to a cross street and many times the ramps for them are located 1 or two miles before you actually cross that road as the exit ramp just dumps you onto the frontage until you eventually cross that street. Its like having to always get on an extra street to get to the actual street you want to be on. In the Phoenix metro, everything (businesses, housing areas, side streets) are all located off the major arterial streets so there’s never a need to access anything along the freeways themselves and the exits are never closer than a mile apart as the major arterials are all exactly one mile apart. To me, they have the best freeway/road network in the country as they built most of it after the interstate boom and they’ve learned from a lot of the mistakes that older cities have made. That’s just my take. I think the frontage roads look cool and it makes an area seem very happening when you see all the businesses directly off of it. But you also end up merging with traffic to you right rear of your vehicle when you use the Texas turnarounds. Non frontage freeway exits using SPUI (Single Point Urban Interchange) or diverging diamond interchanges, so basically the same thing as the Texas turnaround.
Being a Houston native and having traveled outside of Texas before, I remember being on the 285 in Atlanta and thinking "man, a frontage road would be nice"
Lol. No.
@@shivtim have you ever been on there, 610 wishes it were that bad
Being an Atlanta resident and having traveled to Houston, I am usually on 285 thinking it would be nice to have a few more ring highways like Houston has done...
@@danbert8 Yeah. As an Atlanta resident who worked out in Dallas a couple years ago, I realized Atlanta’s bypass needs another or more bypasses.
@@BabyBang17datruth The US, and Texas in particular, is proof positive you can't build your way out of traffic problems. There needs to be a fundamental shift in mindset.
As a European, the concept of a bar with a large dedicated parking lot is absolutely nuts...
The feeder/service/access roads in the urban areas in Texas turn into busy, congested , backed-up city streets with traffic turning into and out of commercial driveways and strip malls. Traffic often backs up for a mile and onto the exit ramps and freeway. They are disasters but TXDOT seems to love them at the expense of drivers time and gas
Road Guy Rob has done a video on these a couple of years ago, and despite being a road enjoyer, he called such usage of frontage roads as "great designs leading to terrible roads", due to the so-called "area of influence" around an interchange which ends up being the entirety of Texan frontage roads. This makes the environment around the highways to be the same everywhere, with the frequent exits makes the sprawl greater, which is not a good thing especially in the Houston area, getting more and more susceptible to hurricanes every year. There will be more Hurricane Harveys.
May wanna move to San Antone or the DFW Metroplex.
Houston is in hurricane AND cancer alleys!
For these reasons I hate them. They make crossing under an underpass terrible
@@connor5890 same number of crossings
Is it the lack of obstacles that allows the hurricane a given pathway way to destruction with no deterrent?
Another thing about driving in TX is you are expected to make a right turn into another road/parking lot from the shoulder (if it exists and is safe to do so) to avoid slowing down the main lanes of traffic. Got ticketed in LA for doing this. We also used to be known for slower traffic temporarily moving onto the shoulder so faster traffic could pass on 2 lane highways and farm roads, but I haven't seen that in a long time.
I was recently on an FM in central Texas and had someone move to the shoulder to let me pass. And on the same trip, someone in oncoming traffic flashed his lights to let me know I'd be passing a cop soon. It felt like a blast from the past.
lol im TX born and i got pulled over in a suburb of Las Vegas for not stopping turning left in a curbed and grassed median. it was like 3am and we had been driving all night, and i was watching the GPS. i didnt even know that was a thing. luckily i only got a warning, but i had just assumed it was a obvious yield. (too be fair there was an obvious stop sign)
People still go onto the shoulder to let people pass all the time in my area. (To be fair, I live in a very remote, rural part of the state where most roads are only two lanes. I'm sure that makes a big difference.) You'd be considered deeply rude and inconsiderate-or maybe assumed to be from up north or the west coast, which unfortunately amounts to pretty much the same thing in the minds of some Texans-if you didn't.
I did not know it was illegal in some places to turn from the shoulder. I've done it all over the country, probably including LA (I do it so habitually that I don't even know when I've done it), so I guess I've just gotten lucky and never been caught. Thanks for the tip!
I stopped moving over because of nails. Had way too many flats, and even multiple flats at the same time.
I feel like one of the disadvantages of frontage roads is one of the reported advantages. Yeah, frontage roads open up development that otherwise wouldn’t be there, facing the highway, but what that also means is that we end up with SO much of our development being stretched across these long linear paths instead of concentrated in denser commercial areas - forcing local drivers to routinely be taking further trips more frequently on highways.
I’m in Austin and if I wanted to go the post office, Walmart, and Central Market, that’s me getting on a 55mph frontage road or 65mph highway 3 times over just to run some quick errands.
That’s right. It’s asinine. Speaking of which, guys’ butts are getting pretty soft and wide anymore, driving around on one’s ass for every little trip 🤭😭
Austin opinions dont count
I used to work for the Texas Department of Highways. Frontage roads were built for developers to profit from having access. Very few roads in Texas were built for transporting reasons.
That’s cynical enough to be actually true. Welcome to Texas where the business of government is business.
The actual name being "Texas Department of Transportation" makes your claim to have worked there appear a bit dubious.
service roads are mostly just a way to access the land that is being farmed, making transport much easier. county roads are still roads, even if they are mostly used for land portioning.
sure their use has changed when towns grow into cities and then metroplexes. but their original purpose hasn't. connecting sellers to buyers.
@@ernestsmith3581 Depends on how long ago it was. The Texas Highway Department was created on April 4, 1917. On June 19, 1975, Gov. Dolph Briscoe signed a bill that merged Texas Mass Transportation Commission and the highway department to form the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation. The State Department of Highways and Public Transportation was renamed the Texas Department of Transportation in 1991.
@@petertrudelljr Well, they never changed the signs on the trucks from "Texas Highway Department" until it became Txdot.
I'm a resident of Austin, Texas. This was pretty comprehensive, but I think think there is a big disadvantage that was missed, and one advantage mentioned is more of a disadvantage. The big disadvantage is that urban one-way frontage roads are reliant on a lot of weaving across them to get onto ramps and into turnarounds and out of lanes that either randomly end or turn in directions you don't want to go. It's very chaotic. You can probably tell that I don't like frontage roads.
The separation of local and long-distance traffic sounds advantageous, but can alternatively be viewed as putting them in the same corridor, where they interfere with each other, which is how I see it.
Austin needs more interstates
There are some cities that just have terrible planning, eveen in texas. Austion is one of them. the texas joke is that the engineers who did the road planning were thus: aggies
@@idminister It's true that any time you mention interstates in Texas, people from Austin are going to be upset. Rightfully so, as Austin has some unique issues that deviate from the norm. In my experience of course, it is true that most engineers are Aggies!
ahh yes... austin. the only city surrounded by texas.
i dont think this is a road issue lol.
I can absolutely understand why you feel that way but, having traveled extensively both inside and outside of Texas, and having spent a good bit of time in Austin, I feel like lots of things there are just really poorly designed for such a large city precisely because they weren't designed for such a large city. 20, 30, 40 years ago, Austin was a much better place to drive, but the long period of outrageous growth that it's experienced has caused a lot of its infrastructure to lag behind the current needs and become difficult to use. It's a frustrating ordeal today. I promise it's a very different situation in much of the state, and frontage roads really do make things better in lots of places, at least in my opinion.
In europe, this is not necassary. Plus, it takes up too much space. That is like adding six lanes (3e per direction) to an existing motorway. In uk, we already have a comprehensive road network, so if the motorway is closed for roadworks (not sure if other countries follow suit) or accident, we are able to direct them onto local roads. This is why they are only closed between 8pm and 7am. In addition, think of induced demand that widening roads does not always decrease traffic flow.
Induced demand is not bad. Who cares that more demand comes in?
In many parts of the USA (mostly eastern), Interstates were built on new terrain, parallel to existing US and state highways, and therefore did not require extensive frontage roads as the older highways fulfilled local travel needs (I-81 and US-11 in Virginia, for example). In Texas and other western states, on the other hand, many Interstates were simply upgraded US and state highways, so frontage roads were needed to continue to provide for local travel needs after access to the former highways was severely limited.
I have tons of driving anxiety, so frontage roads allow me to get anywhere I need without worrying about merging and high speeds; I love them so much
They’ve grown on me since moving to Fort Worth, TX from Grand Rapids, MI. I think the thing that threw me for a loop was on my moving down trip encountering them in Arkansas for the first time. Especially because the first one I encountered was two-way and had what I will lovingly refer to as a “kamikaze off-ramp” where instead of simply connecting to the frontage road, it cut across it at a drastic angle and then looped around to rejoin it a few hundred feet away.
Detroit has frontage roads. As an Ohioan that was my first experience
Two ways definitely need to be done away with. Unless some bright young engineer perfects a "Mobius Strip Access Road" bi-directionals will always be dangerous. :-)
There are a few reason’s Amarillo has a lot of road construction. One reason is the weather. It is BOTH cold and hot here with snow most winters and lots of wind, however less humidity than say DFW, SA, Houston, or Austin. In fact they have to close I-40 sometimes for the weather. Also they are trying to build a true loop around the city including moving the western side further west. Finally I would say they seem to practice the more old fashioned way of building roads that takes forever and seems perpetual. All with far less traffic than the big cities in Texas. Trying to play catchup with rest of state and rival Lubbock. IMHO.
There are a lot of frontage roads in the Metro Detroit area.
Frontage roads that are one-way with a few less ramps per mile seem like a good idea, and I like your idea of frontage roads being a viable alternative for drivers who are new to an area, are older, or otherwise unable to cope with the increasing speeds of freeways. Since a freeway often replaces a US or state highway that was a surface, lower-speed street, it does cut people out of access - a frontage road can be very helpful in this situation. And, of course, the free access road is a nice alternative to paying toll. Glad to see you are a Pappadeaux fan (7:35). They are the best eatery at DFW, near gate A28.
Yeah getting drivers used to fewer exits,
exiting early or u-turning to come back should improve freeway safety and flow.
I don't like the HOV lanes on the far left with various restrictions and higher tolls, but I guess somebody is getting rich from them. They should be eliminated and replaced with left exit options.
@@cifey Trust me you don't want left handed exits. Nothing like traffic backing up on both sides of the highway. Don't believe me visit OKC
In Houston we specifically call them "Feeder Roads"
I love frontage roads. They make so much sense. When I have traveled outside of Texas, I missed our frontage roads, and was so happy to get back to Texas, and it's highways/freeways.
Nice video, and it clearly illustrates why frontage roads are an ingenious way to solve what I'd call the "urban decay" problem with interstate corridors and business access. By preserving access to those businesses, it preserves the economic balance of the affected areas. There are so many places in the country that have died out due to loss of business when interstate highways were first built.
The downside is the walkability of these areas becomes even worse. It's entrenching more road usage into communities that desperately need better urban density and should be prioritizing pedestrian access.
@@wolfblaide hahaha. Pedestrians walk the sidewalk
@@biruss yes. And?
@@biruss What sidewalk?
@@dontgetlost4078 frontage roads have sidewalks in the suburban areas
Great information! As a 21-year Texas resident living near I-35, frontage roads are a must to avoid backups. I appreciate your perspective as a civil engineer - I first learned about city planning via Sim City way back in 1990!
I loved service/frontage/access roads when I lived in Texas many decades ago. The pros definitely outweigh the cons. I always called them service roads. Sometimes, the service roads did not have a bridge to cross a stream or other body of water, so you were forced to loop under the highway back in the other direction.
FACTS!
Hear hear! They are called service roads in Fort Worth. I'm an Uber and Lyft driver and EVERYONE calls them service roads.
@@michaeljkeeney , yeah as far I know, that’s what they call it around DFW, it’s referred to differently across there, Houston, and San Antonio, not sure how it is around Austin.
At 8:18 You were looking at my exit for Blalock. Come to Spring Branch next time you are in town.
I remember the first time I visited Dallas in 2004. I drove in on a Sunday night and stayed at a hotel just off I-35E in Carrollton which is probably 12+ miles north of the city center. I wake up on Monday morning to see southbound interstate traffic literally crawling. I wanted no part of that mess, so I stayed on a frontage road all the way into downtown.
Typical morning.
I greatly enjoyed frontage roads. Nearby me never had frontage roads going west but one going east. After the 183/121 texpress construction, they removed one exit but added the frontage road going west. Now I can go get in-n-out in Hurst without getting into the freeway!
Another great 👍🏼 video MM, as a trucker for 42 years with about 10 years running line haul between Secaucus, NJ and Charlotte, NC and/or Bristol, Va/Tn , I find your videos very enjoyable to watch and if anyone would like to know what you have to endure if you didn’t have service roads all you have to do is drive US 22 in the Scotch Plains area in New Jersey where you have businesses not just along the highway but in the middle of the highway , this creates messes most of the day !!
I love the frontage roads in Texas! For the most part, they work beautifully. Yes, there’s the occasional tie up but in most cases that would still be worse without them. Great video, as always.
Texas traffic sucks! lol Texans are like a cult that thinks they have figured everything out, and yet, somehow, things run terribly! lololol I guess it's better than Arkansas...
Born and raised in DFW and I will say it threw me for a loop when I took my first trip to the North East as a driving adult. Driving in Pennsylvania and New Jersey was an unpleasant experience compared to driving in Texas.
If you are exploring Dallas I highly recommend that you take a look over in the North Fort Worth area, we are growing rapidly and the cost of living is a little bit lower on this side of town compared to Dallas.
I hope you are enjoying your time in DFW!
We have a good number of these in Detroit and around the state. I always thought they were a "recommendation" for Interstate highways.
I'm a native Texan but I didn't grow up in Texas much due to my father being military.
So when my father retired in Texas, I joined him snd my mother. Prior to moving back in '98, we were living in the Virginia suburbs of D.C., and 495 was always a nightmare, especially of you needed to turn around. It was like a scavenger hunt sometimes trying to fund the nearest on ramp back on 495
So on returning to Texas, I absolutely fell in love with their highway system, especially the turnarounds.
Tbh the backing roads you mentioned seem like a better "local access road".
I've driven across most of Texas and while the u turns are nice to have, overall the areas without service roads are nicer both as a driver and a pedestrian. Denton has areas with and without frontage roads for example.
The local business angle is ironic because along service roads for new development you end up with the same 10 or so giant chains stamped over and over. Also using the bus to get to anywhere on central expressway sucks since there are no sidewalks in a lot of areas and people run red lights all the time.
I lived in a town out in the country bisected by a high way and service road for a while. It sucked because the park was on one side where the old state highway used to be and where I lived was across the highway from it. Someone died on the service road probably because there were no pedestrian crossings or sidewalks and the speed limit was like 45 or 50. The whole town lacked sidewalks except for the oldest part. But at least the local roads were all 25 mph. There was a crossunder nearby, but it didn't have any space for pedestrians at all. Walking along the service road was harrowing. And I had to take a goddamn car to the park 100 yards away because of it.
A lot of comments are saying that since frontage/feeder roads provide freeway access to businesses, they're a net positive. I think on the surface this seems like it would be a good thing but it has a big problem. Dotting the highway with businesses accessible by frontage roads causes the same problem as stroads. The road is trying to serve two incompatible functions at the same time, providing both high speed transportation over long distances on top of providing easy access to every location along the way. When the video mentions that they're 'confusing to out of towners', this actually hints at a much bigger issue. Their function and use are not always immediately intuitive, and in transportation unintuitive design causes accidents. The access to these businesses becomes severely hampered as the traffic spills onto the frontage roads during peak traffic hours. They do offer certain conveniences to drivers when the traffic conditions are lighter, but it starts to fall apart as things become congested, which is partially a consequence of the separate roles they're trying to fill.
I remember being a teenager visiting family in St. Louis and finally realizing feeders were not the norm. Same when I moved to Austin as a couple of their highways don't have frontage roads.
Oh WOW! amazing! lolololol
That’s only in Austin
@@LolLol-ve5xt austin has tons of frontage roads. they spent 10 years building them on mopac expwy downtown
I remember first moving to Texas and being heavily thrown off by the turnarounds. Now I dont even blink. Personally, I like the frontage roads as far as getting free from traffic jams when needed.
Interesting. I just assumed they were part of every freeway. Mind blown. I thought they were needed to get on and off of one. I can't think of ever seeing one without a frontage road. It seems like travel around freeways would be a major pain without them. Where I live they built about half of a freeway circling my city then I guess ran out of state funding for it so the other half of it was just the frontage road with a big field between them for about 40 years until they finished the freeway.
You also have the other Texas phenomenon of long, tall ramps at stack interchanges and very tall high mast lighting to go with those interchanges.
True. Haven’t seen those in any other state like Texas has them.
My area in NE Mississippi has a rural frontage road off US 82. The main purpose of these were to encourage new business and allow neighborhoods along the old US 82 to still have direct road access.
DFW native here, I love the service roads especially when there is a massive wreck
video idea: interstates that are permanently one lane each way for a brief moment (not including interchanges), i live in topeka ks and i-70 is only one lane going straight thru the downtown section and i really don’t see any reason why, and i’m sure this happens in other cities too
that’s not permanent, the Polk-Quincy Viaduct is being rebuilt
Because the downtown existed first, and Topeka sensibly didn't ruin their city for a freeway like so many others have done.
My very first apartment was on what I’ve always called an access road. On one side of the complex was a quick service restaurant we’ve all heard of, a surgical center, a small grocery store, & a tractor supply type store. On the other side was a barbecue restaurant, a bicycle shop, a motel, & a gas station. All of that economic activity within 2 large blocks on a frontage road. There are countless numbers of both small businesses & large corporations activity on the frontage roads. Even government offices & schools sometimes as well. A large amount of Texas’s newest housing is apartment complexes on frontage roads. Economic vitality happens on access roads.
Frontage roads are good for cities that want their focal point to be a freeway. In cities where freeways are just methods to get through/across town fast, fewer conflict points and smaller right of way makes more sense.
The point of American cities is to create as much traffic as possible, I thought everyone knew that.
I disagree.
i think you dont understand what a city actually is. its a literal trading hub, the whole point is that you need access to the business/local economy import/export that make it happen.
freeways dont make cities, cities make traffic.
So due to all the frontage roads we have what we call “Texas Exits” it’s where if there is a traffic jam or road stoppage or something we make our own exit when driving through Texas you will see many well worn dirt paths from the freeway to the feeder (this is illegal but still happens all the time)
We don’t have frontage roads here in Florida. And I never been to Texas. But I definitely can see an advantage of having frontage roads in urban areas.
Correction: There’s some limited access highways with frontage roads here in Florida. I-595 in Broward County. And US 19 in Pinellas County. My bad y’all.
Having grown up visiting my grandpa in Clearwater, y’all probably need those frontage roads more than Texas does
@@LoneWolf1493 1)Right
2)I forgot there’s frontage roads along US 19 in Pinellas County.
See SR-84 / I-595 west of Ft. Lauderdale - SR-84 was a two-lane highway until about 1980 when it became two lanes in each direction, separated by a huge median. There were many businesses and local side streets on each side. Eventually, I-595 was built in the median with SR-84 as its frontage roads. A similar pattern happened in many other places where parts of a legacy US or State route were upgraded to accommodate a new freeway. (e.g.: US-66 -> I-44 )
@@ElmerCat I forgot about I-595 too.
@@LoneWolf1493 True, US19 in Clearwater has frontage roads...I stayed at the Hampton Clearwater twice which is along a frontage road.
I work for TxDOT and am from Houston. The local term is feeder road. People from other parts of the state call them access roads and service roads. The official TxDOT term is frontage road, as you stated.
Great video! Honestly the main issues I have with them are the double yields signs. Imagine an out of state driver not familiar with them realizing you have to yield to the off-ramp of the main freeway. I don't even think locals do well with them either. It also encourages crossing multiple lanes in a short amount of distance if you want to make a right turn (assuming you are coming off the freeway) or getting on the freeway if you are coming from let's say a strip mall from the right. it should ironically not encourage such maneuvers since you could take an earlier exit or delay getting on the freeway until after the next intersection. It's just a nightmare during busy hours it seems. Also not very pedestrian friendly as well as screws up my GPS as the roads are so close together, it thinks I'm on the frontage road instead of the freeway..
The main pluses are obviously the easy to use dedicated U-turn lanes and being able to pivot in your route easily like for example what you said about accidents on the main freeway. It is also a big part of what makes Texas Texas.
we have nothing about yielding to off ramps in west texas. but there are plenty of signs about not crossing the double white lines, which separates the slower access roads.
seems most people now dont even realize that the color and patterns of the road stripes actually mean something.
Most newer ones have a merge lane for the off-ramp, and there's no need to yield.
@@spamlessaccount Definitely better. Still have some old ones even in the busy metro areas though.
Yep, definitely agree about the yielding to the off ramp. Most people don't, and that is about the only negative I see. I moved to KC from San Antonio and I miss the frontage roads a lot.
Have y'all noticed that the light at the end of the overpass/underpass turns green 5 - 10 seconds later after the light at the beginning turns green for people who are going straight past the freeway and then eventually the beginning light turns yellow and red in order for people to turn left from the frontage road onto a regular street while the light at the end stays green and then after that it does the same thing on the opposite side at some of the intersections there?
Vistited Texas for my first two times last year (Austin and Dallas). People aren't lying when they say Texas is every urbanist's worst nightmare. Your "cities" (more like giant suburbs) feel like they're 50% covered by freeway and these frontage roads are a big reason why. It's all extremely hostile to anyone not driving.
I had a very scary introduction to Texas involving frontage roads. The main line of I-10 west was closed for construction near Beaumont, so all Interstate traffic was driving on the frontage road. I got off a little exit from the frontage road to use a gas station. Getting back ON the frontage road was very dangerous, though. I had to merge back onto the frontage road, with cars zooming by at 80mph, with a little makeshift onramp that was only about 500 feet long for me to turn right onto and get up to highway speed from a complete stop, and no shoulder. And of course, because its a major interstate in Texas being restricted to just a 2 lane frontage road, there were very few gaps in traffic to be able to merge into.
I waited a bit and give it my best shot, but a big lifted pickup truck zooming in from behind defintely had to slow down a bit for me, and swerved a little.
Try accomplishing that feat in an 80,000 pound semi truck! Your car can get up to speed in a few seconds. A truck will enter that ramp doing 10mph. Luckily most people realize they will die if they don't slow down or move over
NYC has "Service Roads" which were mostly built because the roads existed before the highways. They definitely help when the highways are congested. The main ones being: Horace Harding Expressway, Van Wyck Expressway, Bruckner Blvd, Whitestone Expressway, and North/South Conduit Aves.
Yes, in the northeast we have some limited "service roads". These are pretty much limited to urban areas where the planners tried to keep existing neighborhoods intact to the greatest extent practical when the interstates came through. Between the larger cities, the best you can do if avoiding the highway due to an accident or construction is go on the local/state highway that the interstate effectively "replaced". In many areas on I-95, for example, this is US Route 1. But these routes are far from parallel roadways and they slow down to very low speeds within the villages they cross.
I am pro frontage roads. There are a few of them in the greater metropolitan area of my city in NY state. There is one in particular that is really confusing that I have to drive on for work! It is NY 425 just over the creek in North Tonawanda. It is a super dense congestion because much of the town is built on it but it flow well and that is probably due to the frontage roads in part.
On major disadvantage is that frontage roads encourage development along freeways which bring in local traffic to mix with through traffic. Causing congestion.
I’ve been in Dallas now for a couple of years and yeah, the two way frontage roads took a bit of getting used to.
I'm not a Texan (YET) but I drive a big rig in Texas quite often from Dallas to Houston or to Laredo or where ever and I have to say first time I seen the Texas U-Turn I was little amazed like why can't other states do this and the feeder roads I love them best idea ever and wish more state adopt the idea but money is the big talker. as a person who drives the country Texas my favorite state to be in and i try to get there often
They call them Texas turnarounds.
As a driver myself I absolutely despise Texas. The frontage road system on paper is a great idea. Most drivers pay zero attention to speed double white lines or yield. The system has a free for all mentality and the most aggressive fastest driver will always take advantage. Nothing like having a car decapitate themselves on you dot bumper because yield means go faster
@@mike-sk2li I'm guessing you're not from Texas 🤣.
@2:50 That exact particular stretch of road in Carrollton is completely consuming the businesses along-side it now. Eminent domain is an insatiable savage in such areas. At this point, the road has taken any and all easements of these businesses. When you’re inside these stores, you will see cars passing by only feet away whenever they’re done paving. Some businesses were so close they’ve been completely demolished.
I agree. My wife works near 35/Old Denton Rd And it’s sad to see. Tbh I don’t see much of an alternative at this point though. The fwy is too narrow with how much traffic passes through daily and how close those businesses are to the fwy. I always thought maybe they should’ve extended the double decked express lanes from the Dallas portion all the way to like PGBT so the main lanes of the fwy could’ve been widened past 3-4 lanes. Maybe it could’ve saved some business in the long run. There’s just too much population in Denton County now to relieve the traffic any other way.
Another advantage- for someone like myself who doesn't have the greatest of reaction times, using a service road is a /lot/ safer. The time difference sucks but it's better than avoiding your destination.
An extra downside, though, is that near built-up places service roads make pedestrians' abilities to access things that much worse (in terms of sprawl, crossing, and in terms of businesses along service roads that are pretty inaccessible)
True. Overall it looks like Texas cities aren't very interested in walkability.
@@MileageMike485 - The whole state of Texas is not interested in walkability, for good reasons, primarily the huge distances involved in getting from (any) Point A to (any) Point B. Ask Dallas people if it's still a thing to drive from Dallas to Ft. Worth for lunch. Texans were expected to go everywhere on horseback, or in modern times have a pickup truck, Chevy Suburban, or (if they needed to impress people) a Cadillac, Mercedes or Porsche. I think there's a provision in the Texas state constitution covering this.
@@garyd.7372 Honestly the only people in TX who are interested in walkability are those who live in or near Austin.
That isn't true. There are many people in metro areas across Texas interested in walkability. The issue is getting the average person to see the possibilities of good transit and fighting decades of cars=freedom propoganda (which are issues across the US)
@@garyd.7372 One such "good reason" is TxDOT who hasn't left the "tradition" of leveling houses, businesses and amenities for the pleasure of the rich suburban family at the expense of everyone else.
The frontage road intersections in urban areas that are controlled by traffic lights are terrible. Except for the u turn lanes they take forever to get through, usually only one of the four directions can go at a time. A major flaw at busy cross roads.
Mileage Mike, I really enjoy your videos, especially the ones where you tell us the information about particular roads. I am originally from downstate NY. Nelsonville, which is about, nine miles north of the Bear Mountain Bridge which you covered in your travels.
As a child I was a road geek. My parents joked that my first words were NOT "Mama" and "Dada" but "Esso", Mobil", Sunoco" and "Texaco".
Having had traveled out to New Mexico twice as an adolescent, even then the "Frontage Roads" in Texas were obvious. Have passed through Texas many times in my life since the '60's, I have seen more and more frontage roads and came to the same conclusion as you stated in this video. It was for business access along the freeway. In a lot of cases, the frontage roads were once US highways (i.e. US 66, US 75, US 81, US 281) that Interstates were replacing, and business and homes already existed along the route. Some the actual original US highway roadbeds are now in fact a Frontage Road. Thank you for this and for all your videos. I envy you and your travels. Please be save and continue your wonderful work.
I've lived in about a dozen states in my lifetime with the latest being Texas. Frontage roads is on the list of the things I really love about TX. Those 2 way ones were daunting but I think every one of them between Austin and San Antonio is now one way. Commuting here is so much better than it ever was in UT, CO, CA, OK, TN, GA...
Still some 2-way service roads on I-10 west of houston.
there are still plenty of 2 way service roads. but its in smaller towns. and if you know what color the road stripes indicate, its pretty easy to navigate. they often have heavy signage now too, since plenty of people can barely use the signage, much less what the road stripes actually mean.
Very interesting to hear your outside perspective on some things I took for granted
Frontage roads encourage a monopoly of large chain and fast food development along highways. If we removed feeders and added pretty sound barriers, we could move development back to normal streets and transit stops further away from the highway and give mom and pop shops a fighting chance.
As a Houstonian and admittedly not well traveled I am spoiled by frontage roads, and when driving around in the LA and San Diego area was shocked by th e lack of them. Now thanks to your video I am realizing frontage roads are just a Texas thing. i think here in Houston we mostly call them “feeder" roads.
The names (Service, Access, Feeder, and Frontage) all refer to the same things, but are regional differences in Texas (DFW, SATX, and HOU respectively with Frontage Road being the official/neutral name for them). I think the only real difference is that frontage roads in some rural areas and especially near SATX will be one two-way road on one side of the highway with slightly different rules about yielding/merging.
There’s also the topic of whether ramps should be on-off or off-on ordering which will either prioritize getting traffic onto local roads or getting local traffic onto highways (and avoid the local lights)-I highly prefer the latter method because it just makes more sense if your goal is to effectively move traffic.
I always called them side roads
I feel like this probably makes trying to walk or traverse these areas as a pedestrian pretty much impossible. But I get the idea. Probably not great to continue to adopt elsewhere though.