xpensive wrote:That image of the Austin-track's "access road" is so unbelievably and amusingly hicky, with it's crooked direction and level, crooked telephone poles, pick-up trucks and scruffy surroundings, where MrE is supposed to travel with his entourage.
I didn't realize you were such the snob. And I thought all good swedish kiddies grew up listening to these guys...
What's truly funny about that photo is that it shows what a non-issue this really is. The pic was taken, according to HS, at the end of the already-4-laned section, and of course you can see the entrance to the course, and the "bridge", which must be no more than 20' long. Like Richard says, this can be easily done. Absolute worse case, throw down some gravel and call in a bailey bridge.
I smell a bit of opportunism here (from multiple sources). This little stretch of road was already planned to be widened, most of it has already been done, and the land to complete the job was purchased years ago. But the work was stopped when the county found out that the circuit was being built, supposedly because of "heavy traffic", but if you take a look on google maps at the sections they've completed, it seems obvious that the road is amply designed for anything the circuit would add. They gave the road a major off ramp from the highway, so it's not like they were building it for a little farm traffic. No, it seems obvious to me that the county is holding up the road to get the circuit to pay for the work for them. In fact, the article states that the county wants COTA to pay for more than half of the work - for a project that they'd already budgeted! Hell, I'd tell them to go stick it, too.
Actually, since the off ramp from the highway for that entrance (the secondary entrance, btw - I got suspicious the moment it got promoted to "one of the main entrances") is but a single lane wide, I'm not sure what the absolute need is to widen the road. Just keep one lane as one way traffic into the circuit and keep the other open for emergency traffic.