Does any other state have these road conventions?

Texas does have some amazing road networks and it seems to ease congestion in high traffic areas they simply build a bolt together highway above an existing road. Our best friend ‘Google’ navigated us from Austin – Bergstrom Airport to Cedar Park by taking us of the 183 to FM620. So we are used to seeing an Interstate with an I and SR for State Road and US for Route and so on.

We had never come across an FM road or a RR which usually is a Rail Road as far as we knew. So of course we started seeing these FM road signs pretty much everywhere off the highways.

The following are designated by the Texas Department of Transportation

FM – Farm to Market

RR – Ranch to Ranch

RM – Ranch to Market

FS – Farm to Market Spur

RS – Ranch to Market Spur

RE – Recreational Road

UR- Urban Road

SH – State Highway

and there are more

Google (other smart speakers are available) would sometimes just say FM and other times Farm to Market with the whole road name but not joined up and by the time it took her to complete the instruction we sometimes missed what her direction was.

Texas State Capital, Austin has a population of under 1 million and yet the traffic is consistently heavy nearly all of the day. Either nobody commutes from the suburbs on the inexpensive and free park and ride areas and has to drive in ever increasingly large cars or the population is under estimated.

When we drove in North Houston the toll road was at a complete stand still most of the time and yet the service or frontage roads that run alongside were largely clear except for the traffic light controlled junctions where there was the expected build up of traffic. Even Houston reports a population of around 2 million which is 80% less than London and is the fourth most populous city in the States.

We found that not surprisingly by choosing to avoid highways we found clearer and far more scenic roads to travel on with the route into Downtown Austin particularly beautiful.