The planned closure of I-35 at Ben White/Texas 71 this weekend is still on.
Even better, the Texas Department of Transportation is also planning to close I-35 the weekend of March 4th as well. Yes, that’s two weekends in a row.
And:
Is there any good news?
The $26 million project and all four bridges should be done by September.
That would be just in time for the start of the UT football season. Anybody think that’s a coincidence?
TXDOT states that they’re planning to close I-35 at Ben White Boulevard again the weekend of February 25th.
Does anyone have any first-hand reports from this weekend’s closure they’d care to post? I tried to stay as far away from I-35 as I could; I saw one report in the Statesman of 15-minute delays at that intersection, but someone close to WCD stated they’d heard the delay was more like an hour.
The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.
Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:
If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.
This one is for Andrew: northbound Highway 45 bridge in Milwaukee closed after highway department discovers the bridge is falling apart.
I haven’t found any good photos of the actual structural cracks yet, but I’ll update this post if I do.
Today’s memo from Captain Obvious: scalpers find it hard to sell tickets when the team is awful. And sympathy for the Nets.
So your scam involves taking money for hot tubs from people on eBay, then not shipping the hot tubs? I can’t decide who is dumber; the scammer, for not thinking that he’d be caught, or the people who actually thought purchasing hot tubs off eBay was a good idea.
In other news, we’re all going to die (well, mostly you folks in Houston). Film at 11.
Edited to add: The Observer has a nifty interview with Maj Sjöwall. I’m kind of ashamed to admit, even though I’ve read some of the Martin Beck books, I had no idea Per Wahlöö was dead. (Hattip: Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.)
I am not sure why this story is in the Statesman rather than the HouChron. However, the Statesman has decided to acknowledge the 35th anniversary of Ronald Clark O’Bryan’s murder of his son.
This happened shortly after my family moved to Texas. I remember reading about it in the Chron at the time, and the story still makes me angry.
“This guy had never had anything but a parking ticket in his life,” he said. “So how did the evidence support that he wasn’t capable of rehabilitation?”
Well, gee, Clyde, I don’t know. Maybe because the evidence shows he killed his own kid for the insurance money – and, by the way, also tried to kill four other kids to cover his tracks?
I’ve mentioned this at least once before, but, for the record, here’s one of my favorite Halloween stories.
Edited to add: I’m going to throw this in, for the benefit of Andrew and other folks who don’t read SlashDot; a pretty good explanation of what’s going on with the Bay Bridge, complete with photos and diagrams.
Edited to add 2: When I clicked through to this article on the NYT website, the Times decided to display an ad …for Brighton Beach Memoirs. And as a libertarian who eats out a lot, I don’t see a damn thing wrong with this list, except maybe that the people who need it the most are also the least likely to read it.
The NYT has an interesting article about Thomas Keller (of French Laundry fame) and how he’s changed after the death of his father.
This has been linked elsewhere, but I wanted to throw this up mostly for Andrew: local coverage of the SF Bay Bridge closure.
I’ve also been meaning to note the unfortunate incident on I-40, mostly because I’ve been somewhat baffled by it; however, the linked article helps make a little more sense of it. It looks like the slide is in an area that’s not easily accessible to the heavy equipment needed to remove the rocks; it also looks like NCDOT is going to want to spend some time stabilizing the slope, and then you’ve got to make sure the road bed is in good shape…
Tim Page has been popping up a lot recently as I make my rounds; first (by way of Jimbo) on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, then in an online chat at the WP. For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Page, he’s a former classical music critic at the WP (and winner of the Pulitzer for criticism in 1997) who briefly became notorious for going off on Marion Barry’s aides after they kept spamming him. (“Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new and typically half-witted political grandstanding? “)
Page has a new book out, Parallel Play
(Before anyone asks: I have Look Me in the Eye
