Motorists facing long jam
session
Some learning to cope as road projects mount
06/15/98
By Curtis Howell / The Dallas Morning News
Come 5 p.m., Jennifer Hibbs is in a hurry.
She has an hour to get from downtown Dallas to Richardson to pick up her kids, or face a $15 late fee.
And she must tackle Central Expressway to get there.
"I drive like a maniac," said Ms. Hibbs, 30, an editor with Blockbuster Video. I'm one of those [who] runs up the side and cuts in at the last minute."
But at least once a week, she said, some sort of delay along the construction-plagued freeway stops her cold.
For Ms. Hibbs and thousands like her, negotiating crowded freeways made even worse by construction is a way of life.
And there is no relief in sight.
Across the Dallas-Fort Worth area - on Central Expressway, Interstate 35E, Interstate 30, Loop 820 - motorists are facing one delay after another.
Some are coping with it. Some are whining about it. Some are figuring out how to take advantage of it.
Highway officials aren't sure what they can do to make commutes less stressful, time-consuming or costly.
"The main thing we have to do is get more innovative, do it better," said Jim Hunt, director of construction for the Texas Department of Transportation's Dallas district.
That's not to say that highway officials don't try to ease the burden now.
Most contracts - all of them for area freeways that carry commuters - require that at least two lanes of traffic be kept open in each direction during rush hours. Contractors can't shut down a lane before 9 a.m. or after 3 or 3:30 p.m. without the department's approval.
"And they are not likely to get that," said Tracey Friggle, assistant construction director for the Transportation Department.
When a lane is closed during those times, Ms. Friggle said, it's usually to remove or install large bridge components or to accommodate a complicated concrete pour that cannot be interrupted.
"Traffic control is one of the most critical items, and it is the thing we worry about the most," Ms. Friggle said. "Nine out of 10 times when we close a lane it's for the safety of the public, not for the convenience of the contractor."
Message signs are used at each end of a job to warn motorists of delays ahead.
Another measure used recently on some of the I-30 construction in Garland is to provide a financial incentive for the contractor to finish the project early.
Ms. Friggle said the contract specifications defined construction time, but bidders were provided a $15,000-a-day incentive to bid shorter. So if they bid to finish, say, 10 days sooner, the contract would be worth $150,000 more to them.
The reverse is also true. Once the contract is signed, the road builder can be penalized $15,000 daily for delays.
When construction starts on the planned $168 million interchange at LBJ Freeway and Central Expressway in about two years, contractors will not be allowed to close lanes except at night, Mr. Hunt said.
From time to time, night work is done on both the I-30 and Central Expressway projects. But officials cringe at the idea of working in the dark alongside moving traffic, and with good reason. Late last month, a 22-year-old man working on I-30 near Zion Road was killed at 11 p.m. by a passing motorist.
But none of those things are much help to people who use the roads during midday or at other times when construction pinches traffic to one lane.
"It's just up to us to oversee it on behalf of the traveling public," Mr. Hunt said. "That's a constant battle."
But the time that some people see as wasted in traffic, others consider an opportunity.
Harry Hoehn, 35, spends about 90 minutes a day, a fairly common commute, driving 22 miles to work and back between Heath in Rockwall County and downtown Dallas.
Assuming 240 workdays, that's 360 hours a year, or the equivalent of nine 40-hour weeks behind the wheel.
Because his job involves dealing with international clients, Mr. Hoehn said, he has considered using the time to learn another language.
Erin Giordano, a spokeswoman for Berlitz International in Princeton, N.J., said it would take 15 to 20 hours of listening to a taped course for someone to learn enough of a new language to be comfortable on a pleasure trip.
A more advanced course could have the 90-minute daily commuter comfortable enough to hold conversations, arrange meetings or do business by telephone in 10 to 12 weeks, Ms. Giordano said.
If learning a language is too tedious, voice lessons may be an option.
John Darling, vocal director for the Dallas School of Music, said he could design a 360-hour tape program "that would do amazing wonders" for even the tone deaf.
"They could match pitch, carry a tune and stay on key in a month or two," he said.
And if learning to sing or speak another language seems like too much work while dodging traffic, there's always the old standby: books on tape.
The typical best seller on tape runs about 6 1/2 hours, said Jan Nathan, executive director of the Audio Publishers Association in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Seventy percent of the people who listen to books on tape do it in the car, she said.
She also said people will often listen to a book on tape that they would never read and that the most rapidly growing segment of the audio book market is truck drivers.
But for Ms. Hibbs, a little rock 'n' roll on the car radio best fills her commute from Richardson to downtown.
"It's the only time I have to myself," she said. "At night it's a chance to work through the day and transition into being at home."
Her transition time won't get any shorter any time soon. There's about three-quarters of a billion dollars in highway projects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area either backlogged or waiting for funding.
About the time that construction is complete on Central Expressway and Interstate 30 at century's end, work will begin on LBJ Freeway - and continue for about 20 years.
Ms. Hibbs has enough to deal with already. Her most critical traffic-coping tool is the clock.
"If I can get on the road by 7 a.m., I get there [downtown] in 30 minutes, but if I'm five minutes late, it takes me an hour. It's like this window of opportunity," she said. "If there is a wreck or a lane closure, forget it. It's at least two hours."
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