interchange

Motorists traveling west on the Sam Rayburn Tollway TX121 and wanting to go south on US75/Central Expressway have a splendid new direct connector ramp that allows them to a gentle left turn without the need to slow. The North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) opened the ramp Saturday Mar 12 about 7pm.

On the present schedule the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission expect to be able announce an end to the gap in I-95 in 2018, project manager Jeff Davis told us in an interview this week. "We'd like to be able to do it sooner, and we will if we can, but that builds in some cushions for delay." It is the Pennsylvania Turnpike's largest, most complicated project - some $1.4 billion total cost - and it could continue through three stages to the late 2020s.

Until this Friday if you were on NJ50 at Interchange 17 in Hamilton township you could only get on the Atlantic City Expressway to travel west to Philadelphia. And traveling on the Atlantic City Expressway you could only exit to NJ50 if you were traveling from Philadelphia.

Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (aka Illinois Tollway) and local officials have broken ground on Illinois' first cashless or all-electronic toll interchange - located appropriately close by one of the Chicago area's premier hightech institutions, the Fermi National Lab. The Illinois Tollway has been a leader in implementing open road tolling through the middle of all of its mainline plazas, but all of these retain cash collection on the sides.

State house majority whip Keith McCall and Pennsylvania Turnpike CEO Joseph Brimmeier are set to announce Friday "a new Turnpike access point in northern Carbon County,"  McCall's constituency to quote an announcement today. McCall was one of the fiercest opponents of a longterm lease of the Turnpike, so the deal has all the appearances of a political pay-off.

Afficionados of interchange design and other highway aesthetes mustn't miss this set of magnificent photographs of swirling, interlocking ramps.

"Beauty is in the eye of the interchange!"

Magic.

Pictures from Ken Ohyama.

What Ansel Adams is to Yosemite, Ken Ohyama is to Tokyo's toll expressways.

Tokyo has the world's most extensive network of urban toll expressways, elevated and underground.

Staff in Montgomery County north of Philadelphia have proposed a special toll surcharge to raise capital to help pay for a new interchange and connector road from the Pennsylvania Turnpike into central Norristown. The project is an all-electronic tolled interchange on the east bank of the Schuylkill River and a spur road. The spur - termed locally the Lafayette Street Extension or Corridor project - is 3.1km (1.9 miles) of signalized arterial into Norristown.

E470 Public Highway Authority (E470PHA) in Denver have opened a grand new 2.33km (7645ft) long direct connector being nicknamed the skiers' ramp because it takes northbound E470 tollroad motorists way up and over the complex roadway spaghetti to head westbound on I-70 up into the Rocky Mountains. Ramp H as it is named in the highway planners' jargon is 2 lanes plus shoulders with 493m (1616ft) of steel plate girder bridging in about ten spans, the rest embankment.

The Atlantic City Expressway ACE) is rebuilding Interchange 17 in Hamilton Township to improve the connection to NJ50. At present there are only west facing ramps - reflecting the expressway's early orientation to Philadelphia. With development along the shore there's now serious demand in these parts to go the other way - toward Atlantic City and to the Garden State Parkway.