Many eyes — and sighs — have been focused on the main lanes of Loop 1604 and I-10 as a state agency shutters lanes and exit ramps to overhaul Texas’s largest state loop highway. But some pretty big changes are also coming to the access roads underneath, an area many divers have become more familiar with as the upper levels have been closed numerous times over the past year.
The Texas Department of Transportation has made progress on a $1.4 billion revamp of the northern section of Loop 1604. The agency is transforming a highly congested highway from four lanes to 10. But little has been said about what’s coming underneath the system of stacked connecting ramps between Loop 1604 and I-10.
What’s currently a series of lights with a park-and-ride and confusion from merging traffic will eventually be replaced by four partial roundabouts. The change is intended to create a constant flow of traffic and eliminate red-light potential, but it introduces a series of yield signs that can be confusing for San Antonio drivers who do not handle roundabouts well.
This new access road design, a unique one in the Alamo City, ironically mirrors the bygone four-leaf clover design of the I-10 and Loop 1604 intersection with a small semicircle of merging frontage roads at the four corners. It’s been coined the “fidget spinner” by engineers, according to The Texas Highway Man…