ADOT is teasing I-10 drivers with how wonderful the new I-10 expansion will be once the whole thing is finished.
With little fanfare, ADOT has opened westbound I-10 to four lanes from Speedway to Prince, where it merges back to three lanes. Plus, the Grant Road on ramp is open westbound. That follows the opening of the westbound Miracle Mile on ramp in April.
The four lanes are a joy. The bottle-necked, claustrophobic two-lane construction highway of the past two years suddenly dissolves into an expansive rubberized-asphalt nirvana. I changed lanes four or five times just for the hell of it.
This stretch of road is going to be great once they’re done.
I have to give ADOT and Sundt construction credit for how smoothly this project has gone. I expected it to be a total disaster with every flat tire and overheated radiator creating hours- and miles-long backups. Plus, I expected it to dump so many cars onto crosstown streets that gridlock would prevail.
None of that happened. The only two big crash disasters were caused by semi trucks, one crashing through the center divider and closing the freeway for about eight hours and the other semi caught on fire and closed the freeway for about four hours. Other than that, backups have been minimal, in my experience, anyway.
I drive the freeway to work every weekday and for the past two years I can only remember about a dozen times or so when I got stuck in a jam because of a disabled vehicle or a crash. And I mostly cleared all of those in about 15 minutes. That’s only about once every two months where my commute was slowed. I expected it to happen every day.
That said, I can’t wait for this to project to be finished.
