And now for some good traffic news

Work on the reconstruction of the Southwest Freeway and Spur 527 is proceeding so fast that the project will be finished months ahead of schedule, the Chronicle reports:

The contractor will beat December's planned opening by several months. The work should be finished in June or July, said TxDOT spokesman Norm Wigington.

He said the new outbound lanes on both U.S. 59 and the spur will probably open one weekend and the inbound lanes one or two weekends later, followed several weeks later by opening of the extended High Occupancy Vehicle lane.

Wow — getting in and out of downtown easily on 59 is going to be hard to get used to! Houstonist will have to start thinking of other ways to pass the time we usually spend crawling along at 1 mph as we pass under the nifty new double-arched Montrose bridge. As freeway projects go, the 59 reconstruction is pretty exciting: Not only will it give a busy section of road a much-needed widening, but it's architecturally more interesting than your typical trench freeway. And when it rains a lot, we can waterski there!