Loop 9

[crescentboi]

Loop ?

I just ran upon this and I've never heard about this? Or have I and just missed it? Are they actually wanting to build MORE freeways in an area that doesn't really need it from what I know. Does anyone have more info?

http://www.loop9.org/index.html

[dallastophoenix]

very interesting find, crescentboi. although those areas aren't booming as much as the northern suburbs (they are growing rapidly though), it will eventually be a corridor that needs additional roads/highways... i'm glad they're working on it now and not until it's too late and congestion is like the northern cities of dallas.

also, wasn't there something mentioned (somewhere) about dfw needing another major airport in 25 years to handle the population boom - to be located in the southern depths of the metro area?? i can't remember where i saw that...

[mikedsjr]

I don't like the idea. I don't like the Trinity travesty tollway. I didn't like the idea of 190. I don't like the expansion of the Dallas North Tollway north. I didn't like the idea of 161. I don't like the idea of the Southwest Freeway proposed.

IMO, there are plenty of freeways right now and some of those freeways need to be expanded. In fact, there are freeways that haven't even been completed like 360 just west of the airport.

The common denominator with all these new highways is they help promote the evils of sprawl on the enviroment. We have enough highways in DFW area. What we need is developers not destroying natural treeline areas on the outskirts of the DFW area due to new Highways and force developers to build near the CBD like what is happening in Uptown. They need to find places like South Dallas and the Fair Park area to change and make look better with new developements.

[gc]

Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

rail rail rail

[US75Guy]

Bad news for us anti-sprawl folks out there. According to texasfreeway.com, plans are already running around some TxDOT planner's head to encircle the entire DFW metroplex with a gigantic "Loop 9"! Soon the businesses that left the CBD to Loop 12 in the 60's, and then I-635 in the 70's and 80's, and then out to 190 in the 90's, will have to pick up and move further out to escape the perils and multi-ethnicity of the "urban-core." Should come as a surprise to the folks officing on the PGB turnpike, that one day soon they will be in just another blighted, dated suburb. Here's the write-up:

170 Freeway, Far North Fort Worth
Last updated 27-August-2001

The present 170 facility, consisting of two 3-lane feeder roads, is about 7 miles (11km) long, connecting 114 to IH-35W. In the long run, it will form part of the wide outer loop (Loop 9) of the Dallas/Fort Worth region. (See the 2025 mobility map.) Local officials from this area recently asked the Texas Transportation Commission for funding to extend the feeder roads westward to 81/287.
Feeder roads were constructed between 114 and I-35W in the early 1990's on a right-of-way corridor that is a minimum of 400 feet (122m) wide. There is plenty of space for a nice, wide freeway.

Up until the late 1990's, the area around the 170 corridor was almost entirely undeveloped. As of August 2001, urbanization has begun with some office developments and the beginnings of residential development. There is no funding in place to build the main lanes. I expect main lane construction to occur around 2010-2015.

[drumguy8800]

You are somewhat misinformed, US75Guy.

According to all NCTCOG maps, Loop 9 will consist of these roads:

Starting from I-20 and going north: 161 goes from 20 north through Grand Prairie, then through Irving, down the "Superconnecter.." it becomes 190.. not outside of 190.. 190 is part of loop 9. which goes past DNT, US75, and becomes an arterial at I-30. It is now Loop 9. Note than an arterial is Not a highway!!! Then it goes past US-80, I-20, and then US-175. From there, it will become and entirely new road with new ROW. At I-45, it will join with Bear Creek where it will head west. In Grand Prairie, it will curve south of Joe Pool Lake, then Curve back north and continue west up and around Fort Worth. Note that it is not really a loop.. as it never rejoins with 161.

WHOA.. I-635 will now technically become a complete loop. The outer loop and I-635 will kind of share a western thing.. sort of. In Irving, at the I-635/116 interchange, you can just head south, then get on I-20, which splits with I-635. Wow. 635 will finally have a definite western edge, even if its not really the same loop.

But, there ARE plans to at least start building a massive loop, as noted on another thread somewhere.. some Northern Collin County leaders wanted to go ahead and get a jump on building a massive loop that, if built, (and I remember correctly.. I calculated it myself) would be 218.9 miles long. And that's only if it went around Dallas.. I'd hate to see how big it would be if it went around DFW (which it, of course, would have to..).. I just didn't feel like pulling my notes out on conic sections and figuring out the length of an ellipse.


aieee!!! NO! must we encourage this?

oh well..

if it does get built.. and since the cities up there are like... what.. 35 miles outside DTD... the loop would thus be 219.8 miles long, plus/minus any meanders.. and plus the entire possibility of it curving around Fort Worth too. my gosh, 219 miles!? I can't even imagine. It would probably be the longest loop in the nation.. and visible from space, or something..

They're planning on buildng a "Grand Avenue?" in Houston.. that's going to be something like 170 miles long. It's also a loop. Stupid sprawl.

Go here (http://www.loop9.org/overview/area.html) for maps of the Loop 9 southern route..
Go here (http://forum.dallasmetropolis.com/showthread.php?t=2358) to see some stuff about the Collin County loop.
Go here (http://www.nctcog.org/trans/corridor_studies/rtp_map_501.pdf#zoom=100) to see the entire proposed Loop 9. If you need a reference point, start out at 190 and DNT.. and follow the line to the right.. it'll curve just like I explained up above.

[freewaytincan]

Go here (http://www.nctcog.org/trans/corridor_studies/rtp_map_501.pdf#zoom=100) to see the entire proposed Loop 9. If you need a reference point, start out at 190 and DNT.. and follow the line to the right.. it'll curve just like I explained up above.[/B]

Consarnit, Drum, you could've warned us it was a PDF!

[I45Tex]

drumguy -- they're calling it the "Grand Parkway", which of course has that interesting irony concerning its entire purpose being not to offer a scenic auto drive in the country like the idealistic roads that originally took the parkway moniker, but rather specifically to turn what is currently parklike into an interminable scatter of steel-frame prefab buildings and hastily Planned Communities. The area north of Dallas is actually known, among city planners out in the Houston sprawl, for having been generating more traditional urbanism lately - quasi-walk-ups and town centers and so forth - while down on the Gulf Coast things remain mired in one trumped-up golf course development after another, all across the board.

The Grand Parkway is being fought because its backers actually have the gall to try to shove its greed corridor right by Brazos Bend State Park with its George Observatory (really a wonderful public resource). It's obvious to everybody that light pollution for profit right there is unacceptable -- not to mention that it's twenty miles out beyond the suburban fringe, and if traffic slices out that way its air pollution will kill all the spanish moss in the state park every bit as surely as Houston's disgusting air has exterminated the moss that formerly gave most of the town some natural grace.


Boo PDF's

[US75Guy]

Thanks for the new info Drumguy. Pretty amazing the amount of effort, and money, going into new expressways slicing up farmland, instead of focusing on improving existing highways and mass transit in the city. Why do we need another road ring of Walmarts and krispy kremes......okay maybe we do need more krispy-kremes........... These new loops, rings, whatever seem designed by developers only, rather than fulfilling any needs for a city bypass or something.

[RobertB]

Thanks for the new info Drumguy. Pretty amazing the amount of effort, and money, going into new expressways slicing up farmland, instead of focusing on improving existing highways and mass transit in the city. Why do we need another road ring of Walmarts and krispy kremes......okay maybe we do need more krispy-kremes........... These new loops, rings, whatever seem designed by developers only, rather than fulfilling any needs for a city bypass or something.
You *can't* be serious about needing more Krispy Kreme's. They're nasty, mass-produced, and represent everything that's wrong about corporate america vs. sustainable development. Can you really make the case that there are not enough donut shops? Your local donut shop is the last bastion of the mom-and-pop business model. Krispy Kreme is corporate parasitism at its worst.

And it tastes like the mass-produced abomination that it is.

Sorry, you hit my sore spot. :)

[US75Guy]

no I wasn't serious. However, it is interesting that when Krispy Kreme first began their big expansion in the last decade, they were initially seen as a nostalgic throwback to a corny '50's era type establishment. The goofy neon, the donut-making machine, etc. Now it has become the boogeyman. Funny how big corporate money and stock offerings can change a perception.

For donuts, I'll go for a fresh cake donut with icing.....and then a triple bypass.

[RobertB]

Ok, now that my pointless ranting is out of the way, I'm curious about this note in the Loop 9 FAQ (http://www.loop9.org/faqs/faq_general.html):


Q Didn't we study Loop 9 before? Why are we studying it again?
A. Yes, the Loop 9 Corridor was studied before. The previous study-the Loop 9 Route Alignment and Feasibility Study-was conducted from 1995-1997 and resulted in a Technically Preferred Alternative. However, due to some technical (fatal) flaws with the technically preferred alignment, the study was suspended before a unanimous agreement on a Locally Preferred Alternative (needed for federal approval) was reached amongst the various jurisdictions in the Loop 9 corridor. This current study will be an update of that 1995 study as well as incorporate new environmental mandates for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Does anyone know what the "fatal flaw" was in the 1997 proposal? I can't imagine that millions of bucks were thrown at the studies and then the whole thing dropped for nothing. What sort of "fatal flaw" can go unnoticed, and then kill a project -- and what did they do to address the problem five+ years later?

[drumguy8800]

If Texas doesn't implement Portlandesque development laws real quick, someones gon' get toe up roun' hur.

[RobertB]

Here are some interesting historical facts about the Loop 9 designation, courtesy of TxDOT (http://www.dot.state.tx.us/tpp/hwy/sl/sl0009.htm). Apparently, the late '60s envisioned a Loop 9 that sounds a lot like the currently proposed Loop 9, plus the Bush Turnpike from Rockwall around to Irving, plus the abominable SH 161 through Grand Prairie. Reminds me of what they say about bad pennies always coming back.


Minute Order 016701, dated 09/26/1939
Olton Spur - From a point on US 70 to Olton. (Lamb County) General redescription of Highway System.

Adm. Auth., dated 06/21/1955; Adm. Cir. 030-1955, dated 07/01/1955
Cancelled. (Lamb County) Cancelled and combined with FM 304.

Minute Order 062250, dated 05/06/1969; Adm. Cir. 035-1969, dated 06/01/1969
Dallas Loop - From proposed IH 20 near Tarrant County Line, northward, eastward, southward, westward, and northwestward to proposed IH 20 at or near intersection with SS 408. (Dallas County) New Designation.

Minute Order 073581, dated 10/21/1977; Adm. Ltr. 011-1977, dated 11/15/1977
Cancelled. (Dallas County) Removed from the designated highway system.
For those road geeks among us, the stretch of highway in the Panhandle town of Olton only stayed part of FM 304 until 1959, when FM 304 was merged with FM 168. Just in case you want to make a road trip to the only stretch of Loop 9 to ever be actually built.


Oh, and one more note:

If Texas doesn't implement Portlandesque development laws real quick, someones gon' get toe up roun' hur.
If the Houston example isn't enough to make the legislature rein in unregulated sprawl, I don't think there's much of a chance.

[drumguy8800]

For those road geeks among us, the stretch of highway in the Panhandle town of Olton only stayed part of FM 304 until 1959, when FM 304 was merged with FM 168. Just in case you want to make a road trip to the only stretch of Loop 9 to ever be actually built.

There's a panhandle near dallas..?

[freewaytincan]

There's a panhandle near dallas..?

Richardson has one.

[drumguy8800]

Richardson has panhandle towns?

[freewaytincan]

Richardson has panhandle towns?

Yes.

[TexasTiny]

Yes.
Didn't Plano swap that "pandhandle" extension to Richardson because they didn't want 190 separating the city?

I remember up there around Owens factory a long time ago, You used to be able to see the Plano watertower, now that same watertower says Richardson.

[drumguy8800]

Didn't Plano swap that "pandhandle" extension to Richardson because they didn't want 190 separating the city?

I remember up there around Owens factory a long time ago, You used to be able to see the Plano watertower, now that same watertower says Richardson.

What an odd thing to do...

[rantanamo]

seems to still be there. When travelling up Murphy Rd one goes from Garland, to Sachse, to Richardson, to Murphy, then to Plano in about 5-10 minutes.

[freewaytincan]

Didn't Plano swap that "pandhandle" extension to Richardson because they didn't want 190 separating the city?

I remember up there around Owens factory a long time ago, You used to be able to see the Plano watertower, now that same watertower says Richardson.

I think that was something else.

[txRNGr]

sorry to dig this thread up from the grave, but the loop9 website, www.loop9.org (http://www.loop9.org) was pulled from the internet(unless my computer is acting up). wondering if this means that the funding for loop9 was pulled too. anybody have any knowledge of this? was bored and going through different road projects when i stumbled on it. did a few searches but didnt come up with anything.

[freewaytincan]

Sure enough, it's gone.

[psukhu]

It is still on this map:

http://ims.nctcog.org/trans/mtp/freeway.asp

[RobertB]

sorry to dig this thread up from the grave, but the loop9 website, www.loop9.org (http://www.loop9.org) was pulled from the internet(unless my computer is acting up). wondering if this means that the funding for loop9 was pulled too. anybody have any knowledge of this? was bored and going through different road projects when i stumbled on it. did a few searches but didnt come up with anything.
Don't get too excited. The domain name doesn't expire (http://www.whois.sc/loop9.org) until June 2006, and the registration is under the name of "Sydney Fulbright, Dallas County, 500 Elm Street". It's probably just a temporary glitch. But I've added it to my domain name list... I'd love to snag it out from under an inattentive sysadmin and turn it into an anti-sprawl site. :cool:

[big-tex]

while we are posting about far away freeways, 380 which connects Denton to Mckinney is a possible(if not evitable) freeway in the longterm. The future Coco/Deco transportation project like 121 now.

[RobertB]

while we are posting about far away freeways, 380 which connects Denton to Mckinney is a possible(if not evitable) freeway in the longterm. The future Coco/Deco transportation project like 121 now.
Switching from anti-sprawl crusader (or should that be whiner?) to roadgeek... how about some highway redesignations?

I-44: Currently an East-West route from St. Louis to Oklahoma City. But then, inexplicably, they designated the North-South route from OKC to Wichita Falls as an extension of I-44. Why not complete the silliness and make it West-East from Wichita Falls via US 287 to Decatur and US 380 to Denton - McKinney - Greenville, terminating at I-30.

You'd also want to designate I-144: Spur from Decatur down US 287 to I-35W (which I'd redesignate as I-33, by the way) in Fort Worth.

Remember: under current Federal law, you can't turn an Interstate into a toll road!

[psukhu]

while we are posting about far away freeways, 380 which connects Denton to Mckinney is a possible(if not evitable) freeway in the longterm. The future Coco/Deco transportation project like 121 now.

There are no plans for this on the 2025 plan. I guess the density will remain low for at least the next 20 years out there.


http://ims.nctcog.org/trans/mtp/freeway.asp

[rantanamo]

I believe its already been claimed as part of the "outer belt" or something like that

[txRNGr]

Switching from anti-sprawl crusader (or should that be whiner?) to roadgeek... how about some highway redesignations?

I-44: Currently an East-West route from St. Louis to Oklahoma City. But then, inexplicably, they designated the North-South route from OKC to Wichita Falls as an extension of I-44. Why not complete the silliness and make it West-East from Wichita Falls via US 287 to Decatur and US 380 to Denton - McKinney - Greenville, terminating at I-30.

You'd also want to designate I-144: Spur from Decatur down US 287 to I-35W (which I'd redesignate as I-33, by the way) in Fort Worth.

Remember: under current Federal law, you can't turn an Interstate into a toll road!
haha...random but sure why not!:D

[Tnekster]

I-44: Currently an East-West route from St. Louis to Oklahoma City. But then, inexplicably, they designated the North-South route from OKC to Wichita Falls as an extension of I-44. Why not complete the silliness and make it West-East from Wichita Falls via US 287 to Decatur and US 380 to Denton - McKinney - Greenville, terminating at I-30.



What goes on in Oklahoma anyway? They seem to have this really strange way of plotting out tollway routes and designating highways.

[RobertB]

What goes on in Oklahoma anyway? They seem to have this really strange way of plotting out tollway routes and designating highways.
Well, I don't know much about how OK's tollways got where they are. Most of them were already in place by the time I was a kid, and the newest ones were built after I left.

One example often citied of a "bad" turnpike is the Indian Nations Turnpike. From I-40 to McAlester, it's the primary route from Tulsa to Dallas. But from there to Hugo, it gets very little traffic. But I've driven it a lot more, now that I live on the east side of Dallas, and I think it's a logical gateway to East Dallas -- much better than US 75, which is becoming increasingly difficult thanks to explosive Collin County growth.

You know what's keeping the Indian Nations Turnpike from being a major Tulsa-Dallas route? Paris, Texas. If you come down from Tulsa, you've got a fair chance of figuring out that you need to keep going south on US 271 in Hugo, OK -- though a new bypass around town makes it easy to end up at the Wal-Mart instead. But once you get to Paris, there are NO signs for Dallas. There are NO signs, even, for Greenville. If you don't know that SH 19 leads to SH 24 which leads to SH 50 which hits I-30 just east of Greenville... you'll end up following US 271 to Mount Pleasant, almost to Texarkana.

All it would take to bring travellers -- and their money -- into northeast Texas and southeast Oklahoma, would be a half-dozen signs saying "To Dallas". Or if they really wanted to get the party started, TxDOT could ask AASHTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Association_of_State_Highway_and_Transpor tation_Officials) to dish out one of those juicy new US route numbers. AR, LA, and KS have been bogarting the new routes. I think US 471 would have a nice ring to it and would be quite appropriate for a route from I-35 in Italy, TX, through Kaufman to Greenville to US 271 in Paris. Unfortunately, TxDOT's motto seems to be, "If you don't know how to get there, go back home where you belong." I hope that this attitude will change, shortly after the start of the Strayhorn administration. :)

... what was the topic again? :confused:

[RobertB]

Don't get too excited. The domain name doesn't expire (http://www.whois.sc/loop9.org) until June 2006, and the registration is under the name of "Sydney Fulbright, Dallas County, 500 Elm Street". It's probably just a temporary glitch. But I've added it to my domain name list... I'd love to snag it out from under an inattentive sysadmin and turn it into an anti-sprawl site. :cool:
Still no site, but now there's even less chance of snagging the domain. The registration was just extended to 2010. D'oh! :(

[DalLove444]

If Texas doesn't implement Portlandesque development laws real quick, someones gon' get toe up roun' hur.


I'm with you Drumguy!!! Couldn't agree MORE!!
This is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves and it just angers the bejesus out of me. I've been following Dallas developments for years and I cannot understand why people continue to spread further and further from the center city. This IMO is the reason parts of Uptown, Cedars, South Dallas(Fair Park area) still suffers with empty city blocks. Just look at any sattelite imagery, e.g. GoogleEarth (http://maps.google.com/).

If anyone reads or subscribes to D Magazine, you come to realize that alot if not most of the Best Realtors featured will only specialize in places of LOW DENSITY housing; virtually nothing of urban Dallas!!

[I45Tex]

rail rail rail is not the answer by itself; not unless we were to get serious about land-value taxation. I have heard this proposed as a partial solution to sprawl: tax only land, and not buildings, but with land taxed according to the use-value imparted by the community's activity and infrastructure. Land in the urban core (and, let's say, according to some function of distance from DART) would HAVE to have building intensive enough to make a revenue stream that would turn a profit after the taxation; an owner would either develop this or flip it to someone who would -- there would be precious little squatting (although parking prices would skyrocket to match, as our beloved lots would be disappearing). At the same time there's no incentive to build crap that will depreciate or to hold off on restoring your house; I just wonder about old in-town districts of houses. Can we keep that land taxation low in districts that are significant on their own merits, so that nifty older and smaller buildings on those urban sites aren't suddenly unviable? Now as for sprawl, Theoretically, the value of outlying land should be put at a very low level, not to make it attractive for developers, or unattractive to cash out on, for farmers (although I think it should be -- locally-based agriculture is really important to have), but rather with the idea that it shouldn't then be worth it for towns to install infrastructure out to those farmlands while the use-value is socially concentrated near the town core - hooray! (incidentally, Houston-area development rules about developer-installed MUD [municipal utility district] mini-sewer-plants and so forth would need to be changed, I imagine)
Hopefully we could restore Texan highways to the 'parkway' function of the early vintage highways like Arroyo Seco Parkway in L.A., and NOT the role that the Sam Houston Tollway (Loop 8) is playing around Houston, and at the same time start to give Texan cities more defined EDGES, for Pete's sake. We don't need an urban growth boundary, but something like this land value taxation, which I want to keep learning a lot more about, would work in a way that's more internal to the market. What do y'all think, or what do you know about this that I don't?

[NThomas]

If you drive on 35, 121, DNT, or US-380 you can see the growth changing every day. I get sick of sitting in traffic so it might be nice for DFW to start planning for the future.

[txRNGr]

The Loop 9 website is back up. Looks like they might have done/intend to do some updates but most of the site is out-dated. Sorry RobertB...looks like they're hanging on to it.

[RobertB]

Thanks for the info!

Notice on the map of the proposed route, how all the options treat the Dallas County Line like it's the edge of the world? Instead of starting in Kaufman County, it starts 2-3 miles inside Dallas County, then curves back *east* -- if it weren't for the inconvenience of a major cemetery in its path, it wouldn't even touch the county line. Even the "study area" around Seagoville ends at the county line, as though Kaufman County won't be affected in the slightest -- despite the high rate of growth in Crandall, five miles away.

The situation is nearly as bad along the southern Dallas County border with Ellis County, with the road kissing the county line over and over between Ferris (I-45) and Cedar Hill (US 67) but never daring to cross, as though it were the Korean DMZ or something. It doesn't dip into Ellis County until right around Midlothian -- almost as though its route had something to do with the extents of US Rep "Smoky Joe" Barton's influence.

What sort of game is TxDOT playing by refusing to acknowledge the effects of this route on largely rural Ellis and Kaufman counties?