fun with highways

Highway 120 in Westchester County, NY

A little local “fun with highways” as I spend Thanksgiving with family in Chappaqua, just north of New York City.

We have noted Chappaqua in the past as the “home of CatSynth and Hillary Clinton.” It is a relatively small but affluent town in the middle of Westchester County. You can read more about it here, including its noted school system and famous residents.

Our main road is NY 120 which starts in the nearby community of Millwood (which is actually part of the same town), and continues southeast through the town center of Chappaqua. The main intersection is famously confusing and dangerous and years of trying to install such safety conveniences as a traffic light have met with local resistance. Apparently a traffic light would ruin the character of the town (in a way that car accidents apparently do not). 120 also crosses the Saw Mill Parkway, our nearby excuse for a highway, and the main commuter rail line that passes through town to New York City.

From there, 120 works its way southeast, through Armonk (one-time home of contributor whaleshaman of JellyPizza), the Westester County Airport (which I have never used), Purchase (home of a state university campus) and eventually the town of Rye on the Long Island Sound (home of the Playland amusement park). It's not really the most efficient way to cross Westchester, that's what our freeways including aptly named Cross Westchester Expressway are for, but that's a topic for another day…

Fun with Highways: Austin, Texas

Some of you might have noticed that this site went dark for several days. During this time I was in the bucolic Texas “Hill Country,” away from any sort of computer and internet technology (not to mention cell phone service).

Like many out-of-state visitors, my first introduction to the area was the Austin airport. And you cannot leave the airport to either the city of Austin or the countryside without vist passing through this interchange:

This interchange connects I-35, the area's only interstate highway, with state highway 71, still called Ben White Boulevard even though a large portion has been converted to a freeway. However, significant portions are still not freeway, and as I discovered there is no way to connect to or from I-35 south of the interchange without going through at least one traffic light and/or stop sign. Indeed, this interchange between Austin's oldest and newest freeways is still very much under construction:

From the impressive site TexasFreeway.com:

This intersection is the worst traffic disaster in Austin. The 290/71 freeway ends about 0.5 mile to the west of the interchange, dumping all the traffic into this substandard intersection with a traffic light. But relief is on the way. The 5 level stack is under construction. Texas 71 will be depressed below grade, and the feeders will be at grade.

Austin seems to be a city awash in freeway construction projects. Several were plainly visible from the air. Again, the TexasFreeway site is an excellent source for more detailed information.

Another freeway of note in Austin is the MoPac expressway (aka “MoPac Boulevard”), or Loop 1. Texas has several so-called “Loop” highways that must use a different definition of the word “loop” than most of us. Loop 1 is mostly a north-south highway that fails to loop around much of anything. But hey, it's Texas, it's different, what can I say? Many readers might know Texas by its reputation, which has most certainly been harmed by George W Bush and his cronies. Austin, the state capital, has a separate reputation as a liberal oasis and thriving music/cultural scene at odds with the rest of the state. And within Austin, the MoPac is known for being quite scenic, at the interface between Austin and the Hill Country, and not having the usual frontage roads that track most Texas freeways. The frontage roads mostly attract ugly strip malls and other commercial developments that were almost as tacky as the televangelist I heard while driving on I-35 south – he seemed obessively concerned with identity theft (maybe he was bitter after sending his checking-account number to someone in Nigeria?), and decrying the assumption of power-of-attorney for elderly parents as a sin. If he has any grown children, I might advise them to do just that.

As my trip to the area was for family reasons, I will not go into details, although I probably will have some photos and other items of interest to share in a later post.