SAN ANTONIO – Two-way frontage roads are becoming a thing of the past.
Hernan Rozemberg, a public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation, said two-way frontage roads were common between the 1950s and 1970s.
“A lot of times, this was around the rural areas. You know, there we didn’t have the urban density, an extreme population growth that we have nowadays," Rozemberg said.
By the 1990s, Texas started to see a lot of growth, which lead to head-on crashes on frontage roads, said Rozemberg.
TxDOT knew it had to change the design of frontage roadways. The solution was one-way frontage roads.
Rozemberg said the change helps reduce congestion and increase safety.
“When you have the frontage road coming down to an overpass where you have traffic lights, it’s going to make it better so that the traffic light signals are going to move faster,” Rozemberg said.
Currently, the agency is working on converting the I-10 frontage roads between Graytown Road and Pfiel Road.
“The beginning part of it is on the one-way system, but the latter part of it, again, as you start getting out to the rural areas, is still in a two-way system. So that portion of it is going to be switched,” Rozemberg said.
The left frontage road lane will be closed on both the eastbound and westbound sides of I-10 between Graytown and Pfiel. There will also be temporary exit and entrance ramps on I-10.
Rozemberg said the amount of frontage roads they change depends on funding. He said they have to widen the roads from 11 feet to 12 feet for the one-way design. They also have to add shoulders to incorporate pedestrian and bicycle lanes.
To see the latest information on the I-10 project and other TxDOT projects, click here.