Monday Traffic: the I-30 Ramp to Southbound I-45 Is Open Again, and I-635's Town East U-Turns Stay Closed

Monday's commute starts with one piece of downtown construction officially finished. The eastbound I-30 collector-distributor exit ramp to southbound I-45 in Dallas County has reopened, closing out a series of nighttime-only ramp closures that ran from October 26 at 10 p.m. through this morning at about 5 a.m. Drivers who built a detour around the ramp into last week's routine can retire it: the direct I-30 eastbound to I-45 southbound movement is a normal movement again.

The east side's longer story has not moved. On the I-635 East rebuild, both directions of U-turns at Town East and the I-635 frontage roads remain closed, as needed, through the end of construction in the fall of 2026. TxDOT's posted workaround is a loop, not a U-turn: northbound I-635 traffic bound for the southbound frontage road reaches Town East, turns left, and makes a second left; southbound traffic does the same in mirror image to reach the northbound frontage road. Until the project ends, any trip planned around a quick U-turn at Town East should be planned around those two lefts instead.

The scale explains the patience the corridor keeps asking for. I-635 East opened in 1969, designed for 180,000 cars a day; by 2020 it was carrying about 230,000. The rebuild adds a general-purpose lane in each direction between US 75 and I-30 under the state's Texas Clear Lanes initiative, and the TEXpress lanes that closed in April 2020 stay closed for the duration, with major lane closures kept to overnight hours and weekends. Monday morning's balance sheet, then: one ramp back downtown, one frontage-road pattern still improvised in Mesquite and Garland, and a corridor mid-rebuild carrying more cars than it was designed for — on the first morning of the week when North Texas also votes.