CHANGIN' 1960

This is my 3rd enrty into the category entitled "New and Improved (Not)". This category exists mainly because people ignore the old adage 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'. People are so obsessed with change that it's mainly done now just for the sake of change instead of really trying to improve on something. For example, I had an old, old, really old cell phone that works better than the one I have now. Granted, the one I have now is pretty antiquated, but still. It just seems that in the rush to be the first to have the newest thing out that people get away from the things that worked really well to make people get it in the first place. Yeah, your phone may take a better, clearer picture now, but there's some other feature or features, that you really liked and used a lot, that have to be left off. Easy to see how that is with technology, but what about something like redoing a road?

One of the busiest and better known roads in the greater Houston area is Farm-to-Market road 1960. Better known as FM 1960 or simply 1960. Actually, since 1995 a portion of this road between Interstate 45 and U.S. 290 actually carries the designation of Urban Road 1960. But this is only recognized by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) as all of the signage along this road still carries the FM designation and I've never heard anyone refer to it as UR 1960. Sounds like a text message. UR 1960 CU L8R BFF

The busiest part of this road, though the folks in Atascocita may have something to say about it, is the aforementioned stretch between I-45 and 290. And even more so between I-45 and state highway 249. This is the section that has undergone some changes recently. Since the last major construction on this road, whenever that was, 1960 was made into a 7 lane road (3 lanes in each direction with a center left turn lane). What has been done recently is that the center left turn lane down this entire stretch of road has been replaced with a median. You can still turn left but only at designated areas.

I don't know what the thinking was behind this. Maybe there were too many accidents happening with people being able to cross the street anywhere. I don't know. What I do know is that when traffic is backed up and people need to turn left, they can get into this lane at any point and be out of the way of the flow of traffic on the main lanes. Guess what? Not any more. Now you have to go to where the median gives way to a left turn lane. And these lanes are nowhere near long enough to get all of the left turning traffic out of the main lanes. So now the left, inside lane of traffic is at a standstill with people waiting to get into the left turn lane and the backups and traffic has just been made worse.

When traffic isn't as bad it still has been made worse. Used to, you'd get into the left turn lane at any point to turn left into a business. You now have to find a designated left turn lane, which means you usually have to pass the business you're trying to get to because the median doesn't allow you to cross where you want, then basically make an illegal u-turn to come back to where you wanted to go. Plus these designated left turn lanes are usually at a stop light. So when there's absolutely no traffic coming, you have to sit there and sit there and wait for the light to turn green when you used to be able to zip on across when the coast was clear. Geez! Can they at least make the lights turn green where you yield on green so you can go when there's no one coming? No, you wait and wait and wait until it turns green, then you can go.

This whole idea, whoever came up with it, came straight from someone's head being planted firmly up their derriere. No doubt about it. And this is not the only change in store for this famous road. There are plans to change the name of it. No, they're not still going with the UR crap, in which tremendous public outcry back then is probably the reason they never went with UR. Now they're actually planning on changing the name of FM 1960 to Cypress Creek Parkway. Good luck with that.