King of the Roads
A Houston author tells how our traffic got jammed
Erik Slotboom is the new king of the local road geeks. Houston Freeways took two years to write, but freeway systems have been a lifelong obsession of the 36-year-old engineer and software developer. As a child, he was intrigued by the "spaghetti bowl" of roads at the U.S. 59 and Loop 610 interchange between downtown and his Sharpstown neighborhood -- the area's original suburban nightmare commute. According to Slotboom, traffic became so bad there during the early-'80s oil boom that he couldn't even get to school. He calls that era "the worst transportation crisis that any city in the U.S. has experienced in the post-World War II-era -- although people driving the Katy Freeway now might disagree." As bad as traffic may seem today, Slotboom says it's about average for American cities. "We're not among the worst," he says. "We're in the middle of the pack."
The author believes that since the 1948 construction of the Gulf Freeway, the "story of Houston, more than any other city, is the story of the freeway system." Freeways tells why we built where we did, who made the decisions, who profited, who lost -- and what's coming real fast down the turnpike (tollways, lots of 'em). Houston Freeways is available at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Brazos Bookstore and River Oaks Bookstore for $34.95, or for $29.95 at www.houstonfreeways.com. - Scott Nowell
Have we come so far only to be able to get nowhere?