Reply With QuoteI wondered what they were doing here but didn't realize it was such a dramatic improvement.
The Irving Diamond Interchange: SH 114, SH 183, Loop 12, Spur 482
Diamond Interchange highway projects under way near Texas Stadium in Irving
01:42 PM CDT on Sunday, April 19, 2009
By BRANDON FORMBY / The Dallas Morning News
bformby@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.4a9585c.html
The dirt is flying around Irving's shuttered Texas Stadium with renovations under way on that area's four major thoroughfares.
The $518 million worth of highway projects are aimed at transforming how motorists maneuver through state highways 114 and 183, Loop 12 and Spur 482.
State transportation and Irving city officials say the dramatic transformations will also forever change how drivers travel throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The projects will add direct highway connections, flyover bridges and extra highway lanes to an area famous for problematic entrances, exits and switchovers.
In several instances, motorists must exit highway main lanes or use cloverleafs to get from one highway to another. Current plans would add direct connections off of and on to the main lanes of most of the highways surrounding the stadium site.
The Texas Department of Transportation plans to add more main lanes to Highway 183, Highway 114 and Loop 12. Those three highways will also see new managed HOV lanes.
"It's definitely a project that's going to enhance traffic flow throughout the metroplex because of where it's located," said Michelle Releford, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation.
TxDOT has begun the first phase of the project, which encompasses the interchange of Highway 114 and Loop 12. The entire series of projects – dubbed the Diamond Interchange – is expected to be complete in six to seven years.
State and city officials admit that construction during that time period will prove problematic to daily commuters. But the end result, they say, will benefit the entire region.
"It's a nexus of all the freeways in western Dallas County," said Jim Cline, Irving's public works director.
TxDOT's changes to the roadways immediately surrounding the stadium site are expected to enhance accessibility to whatever development the city attracts to the area.
"It cracks the code of getting to this site," Cline said.
The city, the University of Dallas and Southwest Premier Properties are pursuing separate development deals for their respective parcels of land around the interchange.
Two stations along Dallas Area Rapid Transit's coming light-rail line are also planned for the area. One will open along with the Orange Line in 2011 and provide access to the university and a planned outlet mall on its land. The other will open at a later date and will provide access to the stadium site, which the city took over last month after the Dallas Cowboys left for their new $1.1 billion stadium in Arlington.
Until the city finds a viable redevelopment project to replace the stadium, TxDOT will lease the site as a staging area for the construction projects.
Releford said a main consideration for the reconfigured highways was how best to get motorists to and from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Much of the construction is also being done in conjunction with the designs for DART's Orange Line.
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I wondered what they were doing here but didn't realize it was such a dramatic improvement.
Are there any diagrams or anything so we can visualize the changes?
http://www.keepitmovingdallas.com/NR...CONS061107.pdfOriginally Posted by tamtagon
http://www.keepitmovingdallas.com/Texas+Stadium/
Anyone here knows who had the project?
http://transportationblog.dallasnews...hway-114.html/
More at the jump, including rendering/video/link right back to this thread/and so on.The Texas Department of Transportation has control of the old Texas Stadium site through 2019, and as you’ll note in the video above, which was posted by the city of Irving on Monday, the LBJ Express-ers are currently using the spot to fabricate beams for IH-635′s extreme makeover. That, more or less, was the point of the video: to show off how the would-be, could-be, maybe-one-day Crossroads DFW site (or whatever) is being used now.
But that wasn’t enough for Irving’s chief development officer, Doug Janeway, who amped up the presentation by opening it with a sneak peek at the new-look bridge over StateHighway 114 — an “iconic” and partially enclosed drive-n-walk-way intended to mimic the former home of the Dallas Cowboys. Which is the decided highlight of this short film. . .
Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/thecityofirving
I am so relieved the Irving folks are so intent this early on to make sure an "iconic" bridge, a landmark, punctuates Irving City Limits here. Visual markers like this, and the MHH Bridge in Dallas, are critical to community identity and helps promote a sense of well being.
It's kinda funny, too, how the Irving Booster club touts the bridge as a gateway to Irving.... but most people will really associate the bridge with entering or leaving Dallas. haha
The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.
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