More Road Construction In Amarillo

Yes, there has been a ton of road construction around Amarillo over the last few years, and it's infuriated us as it seems to take literal years to finish the project. Like the one happening on I-27 and Washington. That's been here for what, two years now?

Now, I'll give them credit because recently I HAVE seen some major movement on the project, so I'm hoping that it's just about complete.

Then came the news that a brand new construction project is set to start this summer along I-27 by Hollywood Rd/Loop 335 that will stretch all the way to Canyon. That project is expected to take four years to complete. They're widening the highway to three lanes on each side.

Ok, whatever, it is what it is. At least we got a heads up on that one so we can plan for delays and more traffic along that stretch. However, there's one going on right now that I can't figure out and MAN is it jamming things up something fierce.

It's a stretch along I-40 westbound that starts right around Quarter Horse Drive and extends to the exit for the I-27/Downtown interchange. For awhile there, it was taking away two lanes so traffic was getting jammed up into just one lane created long delays.

Truthfully, I have zero idea what they're even doing there. I haven't driven it during the daytime when they're actually working on it, so I don't know if they're just trying to improve something or if they're fixing something.

However, that's not the only one. If you're on I-27 and you hit the exit to hop on I-40, you might notice they have the exit to head westbound on I-40 completely blocked off. You can't even get to westbound I-40 off of I-27.

I found this one out the hard way last night, but thankfully I was headed eastbound on I-40. How do you close off an entire exit that is paramount to be able to navigate the city and just surprise people with it? No advance warning, no nothing. Just shut down.

If they're going to do construction that affects traffic THAT much, a heads up would be nice, and some very quick work would be much appreciated. Oh yeah, maybe stick to one or two projects at a time rather than trying to do so much with not enough workers.