Yay! They’re finally making progress in the war zone/disaster area that is SH 121 in front of our city. For those of you in the area, the new southbound lanes of 121 through The Colony and parts of Plano will be opened on Saturday July 1st. Now, they’re moving from an old 2 lane road to a nice new 3 lane access road, but they’ll most likely do like they did on the northbound side and keep the innermost lane closed (because if you give the people to much more concrete at once they actually get happy!), so there probably won’t be a big traffic improvement there. In fact, if it’s like it was last time, things will actually slow down at first. Though I think the traffic lights will be better once the timings are worked out.

But the big news I’m REALLY happy to hear is that the main lanes of 121 in Carrollton/Coppell/Lewisville which have been finished for about six months now will finally be opened sometime in July. They’ve been finished to the point that landscaping, lighting, and signs have been done (the lights are even on at night). The problem was they can’t open a road as a free road and then change it to a toll road without a county wide vote. The tolling systems aren’t ready, and I guess they finally got enough flak over this that they’re opening the road up as a toll road, but it’s temporarily free as a “marketing period”. Whatever. I’m just glad it’s open. Though I imagine it will get terribly backed up when everyone hits the remaining two lights in Dallas County. Yup, the section on one side in Tarrant County is already a highway, the sections on the other side in Denton and Collin are becoming tollways, but the section in Dallas County wasn’t part of the project so you’ll have everyone both ways sitting at two stinking lights in the middle of a long highway. God, you just HAVE to love government work!

I’ll probably still try the new route some, but I’m hoping a lot of other idiots/suckers/commuters choose this route, get stuck at the lights, and I can take my alternate routes which will be more open. That’s the thought. Or this route does manage to be faster. One way or the other I’m hopeful I’ll have even just a slightly faster commute coming soon!