Conroe, Texas

If anyone was watching the news during the Hurricane Rita fun of several weeks ago then you probably heard about the wonderful contra-flow lanes that the Texas Department Of Transportation set up to help the traffic get out of Houston.

What you are seeing is a picture of the hugest fecal impaction imaginable when it comes to evacuating Houston. This is I-45 at FM 1488 in Montgomery County, just inside the Conroe city limits.

This is the place that made the mayor of Houston and the Harris county judge go nuts. The bridges over the San Jacinto River are under construction and the state is attempting to widen I-45 to four lanes both ways. The only problem for Rita evacuees is that this created a huge bottleneck of trouble. There was no way to contra-flow I-45 further south because the shit hits the fan right inside the city limits of Conroe. I get the feeling that the powers that be in Harris County would have just filled the damned river in and let the cars drive over the blockage. I think the final count was nearly 8 hours to get the spot in the picture in shape so that traffic could cross the river, then travel north on all available lanes.

I am sitting on the FM 1488 overpass that is another Conroe traffic legend. For years (All of the 1980s and most of the 1990s) the overpass was too low. Every darned big rig in the state plowed into it. It took nearly 15 years of constant demolition derby for the state to raise the overpass to an acceptable height. Now you understand my issues with the current I-45 widening project. If another hurricane hits Houston, this spot is going to be the largest fecal impaction imaginable, again.