Spur re-opens, drivers get confused

It's a red-letter day for commuters on the southwest side. That's right: The northbound Spur 527 opened this morning, meaning those pesky traffic backups we've sat in for the past two years as we tried to get downtown on the Southwest Freeway have vanished.

Uh, well ... not exactly. As KHOU reports, the new lane configuration caused traffic headaches this morning. Now the Southwest Freeway has five lanes heading northbound from Shepherd; the two left lanes exit onto the spur, the next two head north toward downtown and the right lane (which is the entrance ramp from Shepherd) merges and disappears. It's not that different from the configuration before all the rebuilding took place — at least as far as we can remember — but it's been more than two years since drivers were able to use the spur to get downtown, so we understand their being a little on edge this morning. Today's rush-hour traffic was backed up past Buffalo Speedway (see raw footage of the backup from KHOU).

If you're confused about the whole thing, check out Channel 11's traffic guy, Darby Douglas, showing you which lanes go where. There's nothing like a telestrator to clear those traffic jams right up!

(In other spur news, TxDOT will add a "merging traffic ahead" sign to Deathramp 527. We feel safer already.)