Lane changes cause road woes

Letter to the editor,

I believe the highway engineers who redesigned Highway 183 must be idiots. Let me explain my reasoning.

Before the redesign we (Irving residents) had three lanes east and three lanes west between Mockingbird Lane and DFW Airport. Now we only have two lanes that run the full distance between Mockingbird Lane and DFW Airport and those are not the same lanes, forcing drivers to change lanes at least once during the drive.

New lanes are added and then further along taken away. For some short stretches there are as many as five lanes. That means traffic runs good for short distances and then punches up as all the cars try to squeeze into those two lanes.

My office is in downtown Dallas and I get to 183 eastbound at O'Connor Road. I do not get onto 183 itself until I am going over Carl Road. Then I have about 1/4 of a mile to change four lanes to the left or be forced to exit the highway. There are many times that I have had to stop on Highway 183 wait for a space between cars to change lanes. This is a very part of the very dangerous part of the revised highway.

Also, if I get on 183 and MacArthur westbound I cannot get off at Story Road. This means that east or west traffic going to the next north-south street must use the access road or another east-west city street. This causes more traffic to use Rochelle Road or Grauwler Road. That increases the cost of road repairs on those two city streets.

The highway department did add one east and one west pay lane. I believe the highway department reduced the free lanes and made the pay lanes to force people to pay for the use of the highway. I believe that most Texans would only use the pay lane to travel through Irving, not starting or stopping their travel in Irving. Needless to say, I'm not happy with the Texas highway department.