Expert Analysis said:
PS3D said:
Going under Rock Prairie Road, they would have to eliminate shoulders to make it six-laned, it's not wide enough to expand normally. Should've just rebuilt the bridge entirely when they did all that work. I don't know about the other underpasses and how much work they'd require.
isn't it already 5 lanes with plenty of room for an additional lane? not really any issues at any of the under passes
South of Southwest Parkway, the only times Highway 6 in Brazos County goes under a road is Rock Prairie, Texas World Speedway, and Westward Ho. WH is so far out that it won't be widened in years and they have room to anyway, and TWS will likely be rebuilt when those areas become residential. But Rock Prairie's bridge already had a substantial rebuild. The northbound side has an inner shoulder (reduced slightly due to columns), an outer shoulder, and two northbound lanes. The southbound lane was similar, but the Barron Road overpass/new Rock Prairie Road exit/etc. construction that took place around 2007-2009 added a third lane (the merging lane from Texas Avenue SB/to Barron Road), and the outside a shoulder is only a half-lane due to the drainage required for the bridge (must have been a requirement). Northbound can get a lane easily (albeit with a reduced outside shoulder), so to add a third lane it would have to take the inner shoulder (but not all of it since it still bows out slightly) and restripe the other lanes to be a bit thinner.
What they should've done when they were redoing the whole exit/entrance/bridge thing was to backfill the underpass and demolish the bridge so that Highway 6 went over it.