When The West Beltway Was Built Back In The 90s…

[mrsticka]

When the US 77 West Beltway was built back in the late 80's/early 90's, they should've built it as a full complete uninterrupted freeway from I-80 all the way to Saltillo Road.

That includes:
-Building the Rosa Parks Way interchange as a diamond interchange from the get-go instead of a traffic light intersection, then waiting years later to change it into an SPUI.
-Building Pioneers Blvd as a diamond interchange and overpass above US 77 back then instead of waiting until now to change it like they plan to.
-Make Old Cheney an overpass above US 77 as opposed to completely cutting it off there like they plan to do because that's kind of a vital link to that part of town.
-Build the Warlick Blvd intersection as another diamond interchange instead of waiting until now to do it.
-Cut off Rokeby and Yankee Hill Roads since there unpaved gravel dirt roads that don't really go anywhere like they already have.
-Finally, the first traffic light intersection being at Saltillo Road.

I know what you're probably thinking: Back then, it wasn't necessary to do this. Maybe not, but now that Lincoln's substantially grown out that way, it probably wouldn't have been such a bad idea to do it then.

When they built 27th Street up to I-80 as 4 lanes up to I-80, there wasn't anything there yet. That was just nothing but countryside. But now the city's grown out that way.

So what do you think?

[almighty_tuna]

I wouldn't consider Lincoln's westward growth as substantial. In fact, by and large it has stayed the same up until the last few years. The failed development at US77 and Denton Rd was supposed to be huge, with some big box stores, bunch of houses, etc and might have been a decent kickstart, but save a few apartment complexes it hasn't changed much at all.

The Lincoln/Lancaster Co long term plans have never prioritized westward growth though. Even the Coddington/West A neighborhood has barely grown over the last 20+ years. The easy growth has always been southern due to the Beal Slough and Southeast Upper Salt Creek watersheds. Easy wastewater infrastructure improvements nearly always wins against transportation corridors.

Here's a link to a great Lancaster Co watershed map on page two of the executive summary. You can pretty much follow the growth of Lincoln over the years with this. The salt creek marshes made initial westward growth harder than south and east, so here we are.
https://app.lincoln.ne.gov/city/ltu/wat ... ummary.pdf

[mrsticka]

I suppose you may have a point. In the 90's, they didn't think that Lincoln would grow out that way much. Nobody had a crystal ball to look into the future. But now, here we are 30 years later and it has grown out that way.