10 SHOCKING Things I Learned Driving Around Texas for 4 Months

So earlier this year I spent around four months in the great state of Texas now Texas is quite the unique place it definitely has its own culture and way of doing things particularly when it comes to traffic and transportation so in this video I want to talk about 10 of

The strangest traffic related things I’ve discovered while traveling around Texas welcome to the channel I’m knowledge Mike silver engineer turn full-time traveler like the video subscribe if you love it and let’s talk about the Lone Star State the first thing on this list is the frontage roads Frontage roads are these access roads

That parallel most of the freeways around Texas you may have seen them in other states so they’re not entirely unique to Texas but no other place builds nearly as many as Texas does I did an earlier more in-depth video on Frontage roads that I’ll link in the description but generally these were

Built to provide access along the frontage of Highways hence the name Frontage roads as you notice with freeways without Frontage roads any business that sits adjacent to the freeway does not have direct access to it usually reserving most development for the crossing roads near the exits but with Frontage roads you’ll often see

Development lined up and down the freeway here in Texas Frontage roads do have their pros and cons which I go over in more detail on the Frontage Rose video in the description so we’ll move on to the next Texas traffic Oddity and Frontage rose leaves us right into

Number two and that is the good old Texas turnaround you know how in Most states if you’re on a freeway and you want to turn around then you get off on your exit drive over to the other side and exit back onto the main roadway and

That’s just if you so happen to be near a simple Diamond interchange well in Texas with this Frontage Rose there’s something called a Texas turnaround these are U-turn movements that you can find off almost all Frontage roads where they intersect The Crossing Road in Texas you don’t have to wait or wonder

Where your next chance to turn around is you can just get off on just about any Frontage Road and know that at some point you can ride on a fancy old Texas turnaround to reach the other side of the road or to make that U-turn back onto the freeway the Texas turnaround is

Actually a very unique part of the Texas Frontage Road design that you don’t find on the Frontage roads in other states I haven’t quite been to every state just yet but so far I haven’t seen anyone else use the Texas turnaround along their Frontage roads like here in Texas

Number three on the list are the double turns on yellow lights now in other states everyone has seen an intersection where one can make a left turn after yielding to oncoming traffic on the flashing yellow arrow this is called a permissive yellow well Texas takes it to

Another level Texas is the only place so far that I’ve seen where there’s a flashing yellow arrow that two lanes of traffic can turn it onto when I first saw this I was hesitant to make that maneuver as it just didn’t feel right and kind of didn’t feel safe but after

Seeing many of the locals do it I realize it’s just a normal Texas thing one thing I’ve noticed about intersections where multiple Lanes can turn left at the same time is that often drivers ignore the dashed line that guides them onto their Lane and will often just turn left into whatever Lane

They feel like that’s even when they have a green arrow so even after being here for a while I’d recommend being extra cautious if you choose to turn along with other cars on that double yellow arrow the other thing I questioned was just how well the car in

The outer Lane has the visibility to see when the coast is clear to make that turn with how far he is from view of the oncoming traffic makes me wonder what the crash statistics have been on this feature so far I’ve only seen this around the Dallas area so I’m not sure

If other parts of Texas utilize it number four is the high speed limits out in Texas you’re going to encounter the highest speed limits in America Bar None in fact the Texas 130 toll road and the Austin area has the highest posted speed limit in the Americas at a whopping 85

Miles per hour the speed limit was raised this High to encourage through travelers to use the toll road over Interstate 35 through the city though it has had limited results out in West Texas you can find speed limits up to 80 miles per hour on Interstate 10 headed

Towards El Paso as well as in some other rural parts of Texas this makes sense as there is absolutely nothing out there for miles and miles most other interstates reach 75 miles per hour between cities and Texas such as I-35 20 and uh 45 whereas in most other states

You’re likely to see 65 or 70 miles per hour at Max on Rural interstates one thing that will shock you is the speed limit on rule two lane Roads Texas posts them at 70 miles per hour now to be honest 70 is probably the speed that a

Lot of drivers move at along these roads even when is posted at 55 or 60 miles per hour but when you’re about to pull onto a two-lane road just that wind that you feel as a car blows past you probably doing something like 75 or 80 is wild I probably wouldn’t risk driving

On one of these roads at night so I’ve only done it during the day at this point then there’s the urban freeway speed limits usually the speed limits on interstates or other freeways is lower than in the rural areas due to the higher traffic counts and more frequent

Entrance and exit points well when I first got to Dallas and hopped onto Central Expressway I saw something that I hadn’t seen anywhere else a 70 mile per hour posted speed limit on a busy Urban freeway yep that’s right 70 miles per hour is the speed limit on one of

The busiest freeways in Dallas the locals take that speed limit seriously too and treat it more like a minimum speed sign rather than a maximum if you come to Dallas for the first time I recommend you staying in one of the two right lanes at number five we have I-69

I-69 I-69 gotta love this hallway but in this case not the full or the main I-69 but uh 69c what’s so unique about this route well i-69c is the only C route on the interstate highway system I-35 splits off into i-35e and i-35w right here in Texas and again in Minnesota but

Nowhere else besides Texas is an interstate split into three routes i-69e i-69c and i-69w East Central and West I-69 these routes are branches of the future NAFTA Super Highway I-69 that will theoretically exist one day between Texas and Michigan Texas is working hard building its part but don’t expect to

See movement from nearby States Louisiana nor Mississippi anytime in the next few decades i-69c heads down to the Rio Grande Valley area around McAllen and Crosses over into Mexico via us-281 I had a chance to visit this area earlier this year in June and Texas has definitely got a lot of construction

Going on here in other states these highways would have probably just been given three digit auxiliary numbers but here in Texas they marched to the beat of their own drone at number six on the list we have super wide highways now if you haven’t heard already Texas has

Built the world’s widest highway in the Houston area this is known as the Katy freeway which carries Interstate 10 between the Suburban city of Katy and downtown Houston at its widest point the Katy freeway reaches a whopping 26 travel Lanes which includes Frontage Road lanes and express lanes down the

Center of the highway now the Katy freeway has been much maligned and criticized by some for being extremely overbuilt and inducing additional travel demand in the area a concept that we’ll discuss in a later video but the wild highways in Texas doesn’t end at the Katy while in Most states it’s rare to

See a freeway with more than four general purpose Lanes on each side for a long distance Texas has plenty of freeways that match or exceed this capacity again in Houston I-69 the Southwest Freeway and U.S 280 the Northwest Freeway both boasts a massive amount of travel lanes that make

Atlanta’s downtown connector look like just another highway and not to be totally left out you do encounter some unusually wild highways in the DFW area such as i-35e in certain sections and the I-635 Loop but overall Houston is not only the king of massive highways in

Texas but also the United States as a whole for number seven we revisit a feature that’s associated with the frontage road recall how Frontage roads serve as sort of an access road that runs alongside the main Highway well in some cases the good folks of Texas just

Don’t feel like waiting for their exit to get off the highway and onto that Frontage Road like you can see this driver doing here in Austin off I-35 he says screw late night traffic I’m going to make my own exit this is what they call a Texas don’t only apply for

Getting off the highway and onto the frontage road but but you may also occasionally find Texans driving off the frontage road and onto the main Highway you can you can usually tell where a texit is common by looking for a beaten or Worn Path alongside the highway use

The texit at your own risk at number eight are fire lane markings when you go into a parking lot in Texas you’re going to see something that you don’t really see in other states you’re going to see these strange red painted lines that sort of outline where you can and can’t

Drive and where you can and can’t park these are fire Lanes to denote the restricted areas for fire trucks and other emergency vehicles now in other states this is sort of an understood thing that you’ll rarely find actually painted around the parking lot at least not on this scale however in Texas every

Parking lot no matter how large or how small usually has these red painted fire lines all over them now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in fact I think it’s pretty cool that Texas explicitly shows drivers where they’re allowed to and not allowed to drive in these parking lots maybe other states should

Adopt this Texas habit at number nine we have the FM or Farm to Market highways if you drive around Texas you’ll notice the typical hierarchy of highways that other states have you have the interstate always at the top which Texas has decided to do their own thing and

Label it as IH-35 for example rather than just saying I-35 like everybody else U.S highways are still called U.S highways like all the other states Texas uses this Square shaped Shield to denote their state highways and they also operate on their own program by calling them sh-130 for example rather than just

Saying State Route 130 or Texas 130 like the other states would and under that they have yet another Highway called The Farm to Market Rose or FM for short Farm to Market roads are highways that are maintained by the Texas D.O.T and were built primarily to serve rural parts of

The state they gave these rural areas paid two-lane roads and help connect some of the more isolated parts of the state with the rest of its highways giving ranchers and Farmers a better way to get their goods to the market in a few areas you might see RM routes or

Ranch to Market routes but these basically serve the same purpose and are part of the same system over time as sometimes grew some of these FM routes gained additional lanes and some even upgraded to freeways so basically when you see the FM shield for a route in

Texas you can expect it to be at least two lanes and paved regardless of how remote of a party state that you’re in and the final Texas roadway Oddity that you will see in the state is the sheer number of loop highways now Loop highways are certainly not unique to

Texas you can find Interstate beltways arterial beltways and various other types of loop highways all over the United States and even the rest of the world however Texas probably has more cities with Loop roads than any other state Houston of course is King here with this not one not two but three

Loops around the city Dallas has a few looping highways as the San Antonio with multiple beltways San Antonio sort of looks like a baby Houston in its layout and the state capital of Austin is of course way behind the curve but does plan to eventually have a full told

Beltway around the city but where Texas stands out is how so many smaller towns have Loop roads in most cases these aren’t interstates some are for freeways but they do serve as Loops usually carrying a loop designation on the state route sign wake up Loretta Tyler Amarillo Odessa

El Paso Low Book and more some of these are simple two-lane roads While others are a full blown freeways no other state has built loops around so many of its towns like Texas and they are not done yet there are several more Loops either under construction or being upgraded as

We speak and all right guys there you have it 10 Texas traffic Oddities that I encountered while traveling around the state have you been to Texas and experienced any of these things have you seen some of them in other states let me know in the comments thanks for watching

See you on the next one coming soon to a town near you

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