Driving in Texas, you likely have had the experience of motoring onto a highway. These massive crossroad interchanges take a driver high above the ground -- so high it can be unnerving. We've even heard from listeners about this experience.
"I think they're awful. I get very scared, and I try to avoid them at all costs," said one caller.
"I am deathly afraid of them. I'm scared of heights. I would love to know why they are so big in Texas," another caller said.
It's true that in Texas we have a lot of flyovers -- more are being built, and they are getting higher.
The newest skyscraping highway flyover in Texas is in San Antonio at the interchange of I-10 and Loop 1604.
It looks like a gargantuan spaghetti ball of half completed ramps with steel frame girders in place, each heading higher and higher into a blue sky.
"This is what's called a stack interchange," said Brian Purcell also known as "The Texas Highway Man."
It's also called a five-level Texas stack by engineers, because it's so often built in Texas. They are used to replace an old, overwhelmed clover leaf interchange. But the flyover stack isn't new. Purcell says it's been around for 50 years.
"The newer versions of it are going higher and higher and a lot of that's because of the way they construct them now. In the old days, they had shorter spans. The newer ones have much longer spans. Those girders are 9 feet high. So right there you're adding, you know, 5 feet per level of extra height. They make them higher, because they get a better elevation to let the traffic go faster," said Purcell.
Move traffic faster, that's the name of the game. Last month TxDOT cut the ribbon on the first of eight flyovers at this interchange. It was a huge relief to the quarter of a million drivers who pass through this exchange every day.
"This flyover ramp is a vital part of the $463 million investment TxDOT is delivering in segment two of the expansion project," said TxDOT San Antonio district engineer Charles Benavides while at the ribbon cutting for the first flyover Loop 1604 North expansion project,
"The innovative interchange we are building behind us will enhance connectivity at one of the most congested interchanges in the state and lay the foundation for future improvements that will reduce congestion, increase safety, and improve travel times by up to 76 percent," Benavides said.
Next to the podium are signs that read "Texas Clear Lanes" which is Governor Greg Abbott's branded program that's basically his war on traffic congestion.
"My only ask of our senior staff at TDOT is to execute, execute, execute," said Bruce Bug, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, speaking at the ribbon cutting and explaining his plan for Texas Clear Lanes.
"It was designed for the most congested choke points throughout the state of Texas. Which is where you might expect, the five major metropolitan areas of the state," said Bugg.
To do that, Texas' budget on highways is almost as high as the flyovers.
For the 2024-2025 biennium, TxDOT has a budget of approximately $37 billion. TxDOT's new biennial request is $40 billion. In addition to the biennial budget, Texas has adopted a record $104 billion 10-year statewide roadway construction plan, known as the Unified Transportation Program.
"Texas spends more money per capita than any other state on highways," said Megan Kimble. Kimble is the author of "City Limits: Infrastructure Inequality and the Future of America's Highways."
"We have a very vast state, so we do need roads to connect us. But in cities like Austin and Houston, these interchanges, they're so big in part because we have so many roads and so many lanes on those roads that need to be connected," said Kimble. "And so that just demonstrates that we have prioritized through our transportation policy, moving cars rather than building other forms of transportation like transit or walk-in bike transportation to move people by other modes," Kimble added.
Kimble says she's not surprised that Texas is home to so many five-stack flyover interchanges.
"Everything is bigger in Texas and that includes our highways, but they are so enormous, they're so out of proportion to a human scale and they're really monuments to our car infrastructure," she said.
When it comes to monuments, bigger is always better. The newest flyover at I-10 and 1604 is 123 feet high. The next flyover to open here will be 126 feet high -- the tallest in Texas, but still short of the record 130 feet which is the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange in Los Angeles, which is best known for being used in the 1994 movie "Speed" with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves.
That's where the bomb-rigged bus drives up the flyover and jumps to the next elevated ramp.
It was a legendary stunt and if you've seen the movie, it could explain why you might be afraid of flyovers.