Lubbock, Texas is a city of about 250,000 smack on the middle of the Caprock – an oil and agricultural rich perfectly flat region in West Texas. The city is also in the process of getting its third freeway, named for retired Texas Tech basketball coach Marsha Sharp. What’s the deal with naming freeways after people who are still alive? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that. Click any images for larger versions. Anyway, here is a bit of Lubbock…
Loop 289 encircles the city to interstate standards, it could easily be a 3-digit interstate. The Marsha Sharp freeway will connect downtown with the sprawling southwestern area. The two meet at a stack currently about 90% complete, its pretty tall, to boot.
The freeway itself carries US 82, US 62, and SH 114 for all or part of its length. It is in various stages of completion, there is a map at the end of this post showing the open portion. It is about 2 miles long and depressed in a trench, near the Texas Tech campus. The freeway is being built in three stages – with the final stage an interchange with IH 27 which will not be done for about 3 more years. Here is the official website for the freeway, with a lot of good information. Something to note is the “windy man” shown on the freeway website has been removed. Some locals at one of the hearings decried it as a ‘pagan symbol’ and it was vandalized soon after it was put up. The state took it down, noting that it cost a lot more to remove it than it had to put it up in the first place.
Marsha Sharp Freeway will replace Brownfield Road, which is currently a very busy arterial with a lot of traffic lights. The old road had two frontage roads built on either side, with the new freeway being built in the center. During construction, many arterial roads are closed off and traffic on the west side of Lubbock is currently pretty bad.
The freeway has something of a Spanish theme, with a lot of arches on the retaining walls. This is so it can match the spanish theme of the adjacent TTU campus.
Loop 289 is a fairly good freeway, especially on the south side of the city. This is where most of Lubbock’s retail areas are, the Chili’s, the mall, Home Depot, etc.
IH 27 runs north/south on the east side of Lubbock. As most of the sprawl is to the west, this is not a very busy freeway. It is consistantly 6 or 8 lanes and never has any traffic on it, according to the locals. Its a very concrete facility and was rebuilt in the late 90s. The ROW is very wide and it stays a good distance away from any retail or major attractions.
In case you were wondering how IH 27 ends going southbound, it does so in the usual Texas fashion. One minute its there…
… and the next minute it has miraculously vanished!
thanks for the photos :-) It can be interesting to compare with these pictures of the Marsha Sharp freeway from 2006 to see how the construction progressed on this site http://www.houstonfreeways.com/modern/2006-05-28_lubbock_82-62_construction.aspx
Excellent job with the photos. Bring some more on! As for as Loop 289 being brought to interstate standards, I private call it Loop 427. That would be great to have in place. But keep up the good work. Can’t wait to see more!
That is amazing that the finished portion that’s there is already being driven on. Wow! Can you get some more shots from that location? Hope you can also get other pics from the rest of the city, too. We need to do an analysis of all of Lubbock’s freeways in its network, and then gather them up.
I like the pics. I myself have been taking pictures of the freeway as its being built and working on a little project of my own to document the various stages. It looks like the Loop 289 and Marsha Sharp interchange is about 98 percent complete and I expect it to be open sometime soon hopefully with in the next couple of months or even less!
I hope we can see even more pictures, Joe. Do you have more to share soon? I also want to see if you or someone else can get some pics of the new traffic cameras and dynamic message signs on Loop 289, and if so, can you get them? Thanks, folks, if you can.
Great pics on the Marsha Sharp Freeway during the construction process! Currently, construction is going on at IH-27 @ 4th Street for the direct connection ramps on IH-27 onto Marsha Sharp Freeway and connection ramps onto Marsha Sharp Freeway onto IH-27! The Marsha Sharp Freeway is COMPLETE from Avenue Q, southwestward towards Loop 289! It would be great for you to add the new portions on to the website, and also Loop 289 is adding an overpass on Northwest Loop 289 at Slide Road. Although I haven’t been to Lubbock in 4 months or so, there should be some progress by now. Thanks!