Frontage roads, like 'em, hate 'em?

[JLWM8609]

This is an interesting question. Apparently the term "feeder road" is almost exclusively a Houston term. Here is a map based on the above question (with a few more response choices like service road and gateway, the latter which I've never heard), showing where the term feeder road is used. Unfortunately I couldn't find the one that has different colors for all the choices and where they are common, but this just shows where feeder is used vs. not used...

 

5617c92da99eb8f8ea100e2abf2a724f.png

 

As to the original question, I love feeder roads. It makes access to businesses and side streets much easier, and as people mentioned, can be a life-saver in high traffic situations. Two local examples that I like to use are 290 westbound, where the feeder can be significantly faster than the main lanes during rush hour, even with the lights, and the Gulf Freeway northbound, where several exits in the Clear Lake area have bypasses on the feeder road so you don't even have to stop at the light, going under the overpasses for Bay Area Blvd and El Dorado instead.

 

Enjoy those feeder bypasses on the Gulf Freeway while you can. I used to do that when I commuted home from my old job in League City. Once the expansion project is done in a few years, I-45 will go over those roads instead of them going over I-45.

[samagon]

I've lived most of my life with feeder roads, riding, or driving on roads without them is mostly alien to me.

 

That being said, I've lived in cities without, and visited many others without, the single advantage I see to not having a feeder road is the potential of the freeway drive to look nicer. 9 times out of 10 though, driving on a freeway without feeders is just as ugly a drive as driving on a freeway with them.

 

In fact, with a large enough median between freeway and feeder and some greenery planted in that space, it is just as nice to drive. 

 

Look at the examples of freeways in Houston without feeders to see this in motion, while yeah, 59 between shepherd and the spur is one of the nicest looking sections of freeway, it's the exception rather than the rule, you've got 59 inside the spur up through downtown. ugly. pierce elevated, ugly. most of the westpark tollway, ugly. sections of i10, ugly. 

 

thinking of other cities without feeders that I've frequented, LA, all their freeways are ugly and there's not a feeder road to be had. Chicago, no thanks. I haven't been to NY, but I don't suspect it's teeming with beautiful freeways.

 

I have to start thinking about the smaller towns I've visited to start seeing some freeways that aren't ugly, and even still it's few and far between. so what's the advantage of no feeder again?

[Subdude]

I've lived most of my life with feeder roads, riding, or driving on roads without them is mostly alien to me.

 

That being said, I've lived in cities without, and visited many others without, the single advantage I see to not having a feeder road is the potential of the freeway drive to look nicer. 9 times out of 10 though, driving on a freeway without feeders is just as ugly a drive as driving on a freeway with them.

 

In fact, with a large enough median between freeway and feeder and some greenery planted in that space, it is just as nice to drive. 

 

Look at the examples of freeways in Houston without feeders to see this in motion, while yeah, 59 between shepherd and the spur is one of the nicest looking sections of freeway, it's the exception rather than the rule, you've got 59 inside the spur up through downtown. ugly. pierce elevated, ugly. most of the westpark tollway, ugly. sections of i10, ugly. 

 

thinking of other cities without feeders that I've frequented, LA, all their freeways are ugly and there's not a feeder road to be had. Chicago, no thanks. I haven't been to NY, but I don't suspect it's teeming with beautiful freeways.

 

I have to start thinking about the smaller towns I've visited to start seeing some freeways that aren't ugly, and even still it's few and far between. so what's the advantage of no feeder again?

 

The concern about feeder roads in many cases is driven by traffic, not aesthetics.  The freeway system was originally intended to accommodate longer-distance trips.  Placing commercial strips alongside freeways draws more local traffic to freeways, increasing congestion, instead of funneling local shopping traffic through local streets.  The traffic problem is worse in situations where there are frequent on/off ramps, since local drivers often tend to bounce on and off the freeway lanes.  Having lived in feeder-less cities, I would say there is some merit to the argument, although this is not to say that a lack of feeders alone guarantees better traffic flow on freeway lanes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mollusk]

I don't know if it's been studied, but I'm willing to bet a freeway with feeders probably has more of a heat island effect than one without.  Likewise, and germane to Houston's flat geography, all that concrete is a direct take away from permeable earth, with all of its storm water having to be drained off to somewhere (unless it's forming an ad hoc detention pond, as sometimes happens).

[samagon]

The only realistic way to not have local traffic use a freeway is to not have on/off ramps. As it goes, I know the interstate freeway system was intended to accommodate long distance travel, but local freeways are just that, local freeways and were designed for local traffic, 288, 290, 225, 59, 45 (as it was a local freeway prior to being an interstate), etc. Maybe I am mis-remembering, but from the Houston Freeways book it did mention that Houston was a catalyst of hijacking the interstate system as it went through towns to make it a local freeway with lots of entries/exits, and introduced the loop to augment as a sort of bypass. It's a quaint idea in Houston today, as the loop is in the middle of town pretty much, so there's not much bypassing able to go on.

 

I can't think of a city of a size with Houston where traffic isn't a problem, feeders or no. Pretty much every freeway in every town with/without feeders have just as many on/off ramps as those in Houston, so the lane changing is just as much a problem.

 

I think though that the scissor on/off ramps to the feeders is a great solution, and coupled with one exit per 2-3 streets is the best solution. You can't do that on a freeway without a feeder without making lots of people very angry. You can have a street crossing a freeway without an exit, but imagine if you're trying to get somewhere that is on a street that crosses a freeway without an exit and no feeder. Feeders and more exits may increase overall traffic, but I think that average drive time is reduced with feeders. Feeders really increase the convenience and utility of a freeway.

 

I think also that freeways without feeders may actually create more of a divide between one side of a freeway to another, at least for people driving.

[Trae]

Disagree with you on LA. They have some of the best looking freeways. So nice that you will exit to get some gas, and then get right back on because the area you got off at is the hood.

[DaTrain]

Disagree with you on LA. They have some of the best looking freeways. So nice that you will exit to get some gas, and then get right back on because the area you got off at is the hood.

To a degree I have doubts about the world's largest freeway system being that nice.  A handful like the Hollywood Freeway or the Foothill Freeway (I-210) has greenery around it.  The rest are wall to wall and the only saving grace to them aestheticallly are the mountains in the distance.

 

In the case of California, San Francisco and the Bay Area have better looking freeways than LA does.  They don't have as many noise barriers as LA does plus they have more of an oleander look due to the regionality, as well as having nine major bridges cut across water.  Many of em cut through undeveloped elevations (golden brown hills) and yet are still in the same region between urbanized areas.

 

One example is I-580.  It is designated as a scenic route, and it maintains it as it cuts through Oakland from the MacArthur Maze before commuters hit the Bay Bridge to Hayward.

 

http://www.aaroads.com/california/i-580ec_ca.html - eastbound

http://www.aaroads.com/california/i-580wc_ca.html - westbound

 

Another advantage is that it's the only major interstate not to allow big trucks on it mainly through the Oakland city limits, although the disadvantage is them detouring along I-880 (Nimitz Freeway) instead.

[DaTrain]

Enjoy those feeder bypasses on the Gulf Freeway while you can. I used to do that when I commuted home from my old job in League City. Once the expansion project is done in a few years, I-45 will go over those roads instead of them going over I-45.

I don't understand why Texas has a tendency to convert underpasses to overpasses.  It doesn't make no sense.  They could have just built a new bridge on top of the interstate with wider lanes and or a wider clearance between support columns to accomodate a wider freeway like they did the Post Oak bridge over the Katy.  I think it screws up traffic by funneling it all in a narrow space to take out a bridge, not to mention forcing cars on the feeders to sit through new traffic signals once the interchange is taken out.

[ToryGattis]

I don't understand why Texas has a tendency to convert underpasses to overpasses.  It doesn't make no sense.  They could have just built a new bridge on top of the interstate with wider lanes and or a wider clearance between support columns to accomodate a wider freeway like they did the Post Oak bridge over the Katy.  I think it screws up traffic by funneling it all in a narrow space to take out a bridge, not to mention forcing cars on the feeders to sit through new traffic signals once the interchange is taken out.

 

I've enjoyed that aspect of the freeways and feeders around Clear Lake too, but I understand why they're changing: it uses less land (don't need the cloverleafs), and it enables easy U-turns from the feeders, which is important for accessing retail on both sides of the freeway.

[IronTiger]

So then, they're configuring it to be every other freeway in the Houston freeway system, frontage roads, two stoplights, turnarounds on the frontages? Boo.

I mean, Barker Cypress at 290, for instance, always had the wide "cloverleaf" turn-outs so you didn't need to stop if you were on the frontage road, but the reconfiguration now allows you, if you were going to turn south on Barker Cypress lets you make a cloverleaf directly onto (or directly off) Barker Cypress without dealing with the frontage roads, which are already lined with commercial link. When they widened the freeway in Conroe, for areas where the frontage road stretched out wide enough for its stoplights, they actually ended up keeping the frontage road "bypass" (north 336 and Interstate 45), though where ROW wasn't there, they didn't have it.

Additionally, with the exception of ONE place in Conroe, I can't find a highway reconstruction project in Houston where they forced the frontage roads or the cross-street to stop where they hadn't before.

The alternative to frontage roads in a lot of cases is an unwieldily set-up where the exits and entrances directly connect to the road going over or under the highway and have ANOTHER stop with a two-way road that paralleled the freeway that didn't cross it. This was one of the problems of the old Katy Freeway pre-reconstruction, there was the westbound frontage road, then across the railroad was ANOTHER intersection where Old Katy Road went. Even without the railroad, the additional pseudo-frontage road must have been frustrating.

[IronTiger]

If frontage roads promote commercial growth, I think that would be a plus for the city rather than a minus. As commercial taxes tend to have a higher pay-out than residential (unless I'm completely wrong about that), encouraging commercial use along freeways will drive a good tax base even higher, instead of the inverse, where residential use could see land value DROP because of freeway proximity.

[HoustonSpurs]

Having moved here from Los Angeles I am a big fan of them.  Especially if there's an accident at least you have an option to take rather than being stuck there on the freeway,

 

Some of the retail signage makes it look some frontage roads look a mess though, that I absolutely agree with.

[Slick Vik]

I've spent the last few weeks all over the west coast and Vancouver and have to say not having feeders is nice. No ugly retail all over the place.

[lithiumaneurysm]

I've spent the last few weeks all over the west coast and Vancouver and have to say not having feeders is nice. No ugly retail all over the place.

 

Ugly retail isn't necessarily the fault of the feeders though. I think it's entirely possible for Houston to have attractive freeways and feeder roads with retail. It all comes down to the municipal government's approach to regulating things like signage and architectural design, and planting some trees in the green space.

[Slick Vik]

Ugly retail isn't necessarily the fault of the feeders though. I think it's entirely possible for Houston to have attractive freeways and feeder roads with retail. It all comes down to the municipal government's approach to regulating things like signage and architectural design, and planting some trees in the green space.

True.

[mollusk]

Ugly retail isn't necessarily the fault of the feeders though. I think it's entirely possible for Houston to have attractive freeways and feeder roads with retail. It all comes down to the municipal government's approach to regulating things like signage and architectural design, and planting some trees in the green space.

 

Aye - for example, the feeders in The Woodlands are as sterile looking carefully organized as any of the rest of it.

 

IMHO, it's as much a matter of zoning (or lack thereof) as anything else.  The Katy feeders are lined with apartments and commercial pretty much from downtown all the way out, save for where Memorial Park and the Polo Grounds border it on the south (just inside the loop), and chunks here and there in the villages (though they've zoned some of it commercial, too).  The feederless stretch of the Southwest Freeway from Shepherd to the downtown spur might have developed differently but for having already had single family homes and the occasional duplex or fourplex taken out for the right of way, out of similar neighborhoods on either side - the three blocks fronting the south side of Richmond down to the freeway are just about the right size for car dealerships and big boxes (like I-80 through Emeryville).