Texas is one of few states in the country that regularly builds access roads (also called frontage roads, service roads, or feeders) alongside its freeways. When I lived in Texas, I found them quite useful and even indispensable for getting around, wondering how people in other states could get around nearly as easily. However, now that I live in Seattle, I've started to realize how Texas' access roads have heavily influenced the state's development patterns, not only along the freeway but everywhere. This influence has caused access roads to be integral to Texas' transportation network and have affected the role of freeways themselves. In Seattle, since access roads have never existed, the land has been developed differently so that not having them doesn't seem like much of a loss.

In Texas, development is very car-based, so businesses build where they can be seen - along the major thoroughfares, and freeways are in many ways just a faster version of an arterial street in Texas. Due to the power of access roads and the convenience that they pose, businesses have been pulled toward the freeway. This makes a pretty big difference in how land is developed, at least from the vantage point of the freeway. Development in the Metroplex has made good use of access roads, allowing you to drive along them for miles, looking for somewhere to eat or for the next shopping center - you can cruise along and anything you want is just off the freeway. However, here, to go somewhere, you don't just drive along the freeway to find what you want, you kind of have to know where things are. Here it's much harder to build right along the freeway, because the lack of access roads means that just because you can see something from the freeway, doesn't mean that you can get to it.

Let me use this example from the Metroplex to help illustrate the difference that access roads make. There are three east-west freeways between Dallas and Fort Worth: 183, I-30, and I-20, but they have significant differences between I-35W and I-35E. Along I-20, which is the newest of the highways, I believe, there is a lot of commercial development right near the freeway including 3 malls (Hulen, The Parks, and Southwest Center Mall in Duncanville). Along 183, there is also a lot of development, with a ton of restaurants on both sides of D/FW airport and 2 malls (North East Mall and Irving Mall). However, I-30 has no access roads, and despite being the oldest freeway in the Metroplex, I-30 has less development along it than both I-20 and 183. The major point of development along I-30 is in Arlington (which is partially served by a two-way access road). In fact, there are no malls along I-30 either. How strange, there are 5 malls on the freeways with access roads and 0 malls on the freeway without access roads.

Now, that's just one example, but I think it helps convey how things are here. With no access roads, you just don't see as much commercial development along the freeway - I can't think of a sign for a single business that I can see right off the freeway, at least not in the city. The lack of access roads here has made a pretty big difference in how the cities have been developed, which means that the lack of access roads doesn't make that big of a difference on a daily basis, it just means that we use the freeway less. In D/FW, there's not much difference between a major street like Hulen or Greenville and freeways, except the freeways are faster and have fewer places to get on and off. Here, though, since there isn't as much development along the freeway, we don't need to use it as much. We still use it to go to the mall and a few other places, but otherwise we can pretty well ignore the freeway. The freeway here just has a different role than the freeways in Dallas, and I think that's a neat little difference between D/FW and Seattle.