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...and just wait until they widen 290 at Hyw 6/1960 AND get full on into the overpass bridge for Hwy 6/1960 going over 290. I am not looking forward to the daily commute as it's going to take most of 2017 to finish.

Scott B. wrote:...and just wait until they widen 290 at Hyw 6/1960 AND get full on into the overpass bridge for Hwy 6/1960 going over 290. I am not looking forward to the daily commute as it's going to take most of 2017 to finish.

Yeah; and where you work you're pretty much impacted by that no matter what you do. I've resigned myself to avoiding 290 unless there's no reasonable alternative. Weekend traffic isn't so bad, but that's when no closures are instituted for major work. I usually just resign myself to taking Eldridge down to I-10 if I'm going into downtown or the med center. When we have flooding of the Addicks/Bear Creek area like we did last April, that option is removed.

Ah, but without urban sprawl and rapid growth, we wouldn't be Houston! The metropolitan statistical area is 10,062 square miles. That means we're about the same size as the state of Massachusetts. And we're larger than Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, or, of course, Rhode Island. In fact, you can fit all of Rhode Island, Delaware, and Connecticut inside the area covered by Greater Houston.

But many of us currently tend to think of the area inside the Beltway as the city, even though Greater Houston extends well beyond that on all sides. Several years from now, I have no doubt that the Grand Parkway's circumference will supercede the Beltway for that distinction, just as Loop 610 was years ago superceded.

So what does the area encompassed by the Beltway look like compared to the size of other cities?

How about New York?



My drive to the PSC range is essentially the same as starting just northwest of Montclair on that map, following that blue path south through East Orange and Staten Island, east across across Breezy Point, then south another 11 miles to the range. That's why I don't get there as much as I'd like. But boy, is it worth it. New Yorkers would no doubt consider that insane.

How about San Francisco?



Or Paris?



How about the island of Oahu?



Yep. We do build 'em bigger in Texas.

[Edited to add: maybe I should do a set of overlays like that using the Grand Parkway projection now that it's about halfway finished. Just because it might frighten some folks in populous blue states....]

Sorry, when I said tolls are OK, I do have a TxTag, good every where around Houston. Looks like it's Grand Parkway to I-10.

Thanks everyone for the input.

oohrah wrote:Sorry, when I said tolls are OK, I do have a TxTag, good every where around Houston. Looks like it's Grand Parkway to I-10.

Thanks everyone for the input.

Then absolutely; that's the way to go. Blink a few times and you'll be on I-10 if you take the GP. If you hit I-10 closer to 9:00 than 8:00, some of the morning inbound traffic will have begun to clear. If you're going all the way through Houston, just keep an eye on the lane signs. I-10 does a few interesting expansions and contractions along the way. Staying as close to the center lanes as possible will be your surest bet.

290 was particularly ugly this morning. Wise choice if you took the parkway.

Here's the denouement: Decided to take Waze's advice and wound up on 290 between BW8 and 610, which was stop and go. This was mollified by seeing the HOV lane completely stopped (at least 5 miles) by a bad rear-ender, and we just rolled on by them. I bet at least a third of the cars trapped were not HOV, from what I saw.

Once on 610, it was a breeze.

I love this forum - thank you all for your help.

I would consult the Houston Transtar map https://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/. Whoops, I see this for this morning.

oohrah wrote:Here's the denouement: Decided to take Waze's advice and wound up on 290 between BW8 and 610, which was stop and go.

Waze can get you into a lot of trouble that it ought to be able to avoid; it loved to route me onto 635 during the worst of the construction when I was trying to get from Weatherford to Richardson. I stayed on 30 to 75, and about the time I'd exit for 75 it would finally update with an ETA 10-15 minutes earlier than what it had planned based on 30->121->635->75, then 30->161->635, then basically every other possible route it could come up with to try to get me to take 635 even though its realtime data was showing single digit speeds from 35 to Coit. Several attempts to get the folks on the forum to come up with a satisfactory explanation for that were dead ends.

Scott B. wrote:290 was particularly ugly this morning. Wise choice if you took the parkway.

Especially for those poor souls in the inbound HOV lane. Mercy.

I live right off 290 and Eldridge. The last couple weeks 290
Has been shut down at the beltway. Causing a nightmare. Not sure what the traffic or construction schedule is for this weekend. I just avoid 290 all the way. Lol. If you drive through early, you probably won't have any issues.

This site might help you out. https://traffic.houstontranstar.org/construction/