Until now, throughout my life I've done practically all of my driving in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. There have been a couple trips out of town, but otherwise I've had plenty of time to familiarize myself with the way roads are arranged in Texas. Now that I'm in a totally different city in another part of the country, it means that I have to not only learn all the specific roads and routes to take, but I also have to learn how roads are laid out differently here and re-learn how to get around.

Overall, in my limited driving experience here, I'd say the differences between roads in Texas and in Seattle are relatively minimal. One thing I immediately noticed, though, was that the freeways here aren't as smooth as in Texas. Since Texas' economy depends tremendously on commercial trucking and most people there depend on the freeways to get to work and get around the state needs to put a lot of money into building flat, straight, smooth and quiet roads. Here, the geography prevents the roads from being too flat or straight but for some reason the roads just aren't very smooth or quiet either. I'm not sure if they use a special pavement here that can handle snow and ice better or if they just haven't repaved the roads in a long time, but most of the freeways here are very loud - louder than any others we drove on throughout our entire road trip up here. They're not really uneven or bumpy, they just have a loud pavement.

Another aspect of the freeways here that isn't as common in Texas is the use of express lanes. I-5 north of Seattle is 4 lanes wide, both ways. In addition to that, there is a separate 4-lane set of express lanes that anyone can use to bypass a lot of the exits near downtown. The closest thing to this that I can think of in D/FW is the new managed HOV lane on I-30, which seemed kind of strange to me when it first opened.

Most of the freeways here (I think there are only 8, compared to 16 or so in the Metroplex) have HOV lanes. And, strangely, some of these HOV lanes have their own set of exits, so whereas on 635 in Dallas, you have to exit the HOV lane to get to the right exit, here, from some of the HOV lanes you can stay in your lane and take your exit which is entirely separate from the exit that everyone else has to take. This seems like a much more expensive way to build exits, but I think it's because the HOV lanes here are often separate from the freeway, whereas in Dallas they're mostly just made by narrowing the rest of the lanes and adding an extra lane.

There does seem to be a lot more left exits here. Now that the Fort Worth mixmaster is long gone, there are only a few interchanges in D/FW that I can think of that have a left exit. However, here, a few of the regular street exits are left exits, especially near downtown. Also, as you might expect, most of the exits and on-ramps here, have shorter deceleration/acceleration lanes. And, since there are no access roads, you have to turn at least 90 degrees after you exit to intersect with the nearest street, and you have to stop, you can't keep going 60 miles per hour after you exit like everyone does in Texas.

The lack of access roads is probably the biggest overall difference between the freeways here and in Texas. Without access roads, it's a little harder to find alternate routes. Whereas in Texas I might stay on the access road and turn on the next street, here I have to cross over the freeway and hope that I find another major street and that it parallels the freeway. However, the lack of access roads here doesn't make as significant of a difference as you might expect, the difference in road layout has caused each metropolitan area to develop a lot differently (I'll talk about this in more detail in another post).

Another thing I've noticed is that people get around much more leisurely here. When I'm driving in Texas, it's pretty common for quite a few people to be going 70 mph or more. However, here when I've gone 65 it seems like I've been passing everyone.

The differences in surface streets likewise aren't that significant. One thing that I've noticed is that the major arterial streets here aren't that wide. The most major street in our area has only two lanes in each direction with no center turn lane. It does get quite busy during rush hour and it does back up, but there are no wider streets anywhere nearby. In fact, I can't think of any streets that have three lanes in each direction. I'm sure my perspective is somewhat skewed because I haven't spent as much time in the suburbs here as I have spent in the suburbs in Texas. Still, in Texas most arterial streets have three lanes in each direction, plus a median with turn lanes, and sometimes even turn ins for slowing down to turn right. The roads here are much smaller in comparison.

Also, people here are more conscious of pedestrians. In Dallas, I was always looking over my shoulder when crossing a street, but here (while I still often look over my shoulder), there are other pedestrians and drivers expect there to be pedestrians before they turn. Also, the streets aren't as wide and fast, so walking alongside the streets isn't as intimidating.

Overall the differences in roads aren't very significant, but I think they're interesting and reflective of the culture of each area, and they do make a slight difference in how I get around.