There's another spoke that never got very far. Spur 5, it was supposed to go down to Alvin along Mykawa, any news on how that's going? IIRC, the La Porte freeway was supposed to penetrate farther into the loop but they killed it.
On occasion when I just need to pick up one item (dish detergent for example) and get back home in order to accomplish something (such as getting the dishwasher started) I get the perception that it is on average faster if I just check it out myself, however, I have yet to actually test this hypothesis.