| I-27 | |||
| Get started | Lubbock | ||
| End | Amarillo | ||
| Length | 124 mi | ||
| Length | 200 km | ||
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Interstate 27 or I -27 is an Interstate Highway in the United States, located entirely in the state of Texas. The highway connects the 2 major cities of Lubbock and Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle, northwestern Texas. The highway is located on the Llano Estacado, an extremely flat plateau. Interstate 27 is 200 miles long.
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Travel directions
I-27 at Tulia.
The terminus of I-27 in Amarillo.
The highway begins on the south side of Lubbock on Loop 289, Lubbock’s ring road. The city has more than 250,000 inhabitants and is an important hub in this part of Texas. Several US Highways radiate from here, all four-lane main roads. The highway begins as an outgrowth of US 87, which comes from San Angelo. The highway has 2×3 lanes here and runs east of the center. Near Downtown Lubbock is a partially grade-separated interchange with the Marsha Sharp Freeway (US 62/82). I-27 mainly crosses industrial estates in northern Lubbock and reconnects with Loop 289.
I-27 still passes the airport of Lubbock. After this you drive over the Llano Estacado, a plateau that rises evenly at 3 meters per mile, so that it appears to be completely flat. There are frontage roads along the highway. The road runs mainly through irrigated agricultural areas, built in a perfect grid pattern. I-27 passes through three villages on the first 70 kilometers to Plainview. I-27 passes west of Plainview, a small town but the main one on the Lubbock-Amarillo route, where it intersects US 70, an east-west route between Clovis, New Mexico, and Wichita Falls. The landscape is quite monotonous. Every now and then you pass a village. There are relatively many exits, which mainly lead to farms, the so-calledFarm to Market Roads. The last part is a bit more hilly, when you drive past the town of Canyon. Here the US 60 exits towards Hereford and Clovis.
You then enter the built-up area of Amarillo, a large city with 200,000 inhabitants. At the south end of Amarillo there is an interchange with Loop 335. A little further into town, the road widens to 2×3 lanes. A major turbine interchange crosses Interstate 40, which runs from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City, and I-27 becomes US 87, which continues north to Oklahoma and Colorado.
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History
The road between Lubbock and Amarillo used to be part of State Highway 9, the Puget Sound to Gulf Highway, in 1917. In 1926 the road became part of US 385, which later became US 87 in 1935. first paved in 1929 at Plainview, and was completely paved in 1940. This road, with a design speed of 70 kilometers per hour, had frontage roads all along its length.
By the late 1960s, almost the entire road had doubled, from Canyon to Lubbock. Interstate 27 was not part of the Interstate Highway plan of the 1950s, the branch from Lubbock to I-40 was assigned after a law in 1968, which added 2400 kilometers to the Interstate system. Texas gave this road its number in 1969, and in 1976 the road was assigned number 27 to the south of Lubbock. Portions of the Canyon Expressway were incorporated into I-27, although this highway did not yet have Interstate Highway design requirements. The reconstruction started in 1975 and was completed in the 1980s. In 1988, the last section of I-27 was constructed at Lubbock. I-27 then terminated on the north side of Lubbock on what is now Spur 326.
The last stretch across Lubbock was not built until the 1990s, and was completed in 1992, completing the Interstate Highway system in Texas. A study was then made to see if I-27 could be extended to Interstate 10, but that was not considered economically viable, and alternatively, other routes southward were widened and upgraded. The route through Sweetwater is the closest thing to an Interstate Highway today.
As of 2021, the northernmost 5 kilometers of I-27 in Amarillo has been reconstructed, but not completely widened.
Future
widening
It is planned to widen I-27 between Western Street in Amarillo and the split with US 60/87 at Canyon from 2×2 to 2×3 lanes over a distance of 14 kilometers.
Southward extension
For decades, there have been wishes to extend I-27 further south. Various extensions have been suggested in the past. The most obvious is an extension to I-20, in Big Spring or Sweetwater. Other extensions have been suggested even further south, such as to San Angelo, the future I-14 south of San Angelo, or even cities in South Texas. For the time being, the political priority appears to be low. An extension of I-27 should be seen in context with the Ports to Plains Corridor.
US 84 between Lubbock and Sweetwater could easily be upgraded to I-27. There is only one built-up area on the 180-kilometer route where a detour is necessary, at other places the US 84 already has detours, partly as freeway and partly with frontage roads. The area is very sparsely populated with few roads, so no major works of art are required. US 84 already has 2×2 lanes on this corridor.
Another option is an extension southward via the US 87 corridor. This too is already a 2×2 divided highway with several diversions around places. This corridor could run to San Angelo via Big Spring. This upgrade requires few costly adjustments, a bypass at Big Spring was completed in 2018 and bypasses at Lamesa and Sterling City are the only major route diversions necessary to upgrade US 87 to a freeway.
A third option goes a little further west, via US 87 and SH 349 to Midland. This connects the important oil region around Midland-Odessa with Lubbock and Amarillo. This route needs the biggest upgrades because SH 349 is a single-lane road, and also has the disadvantage that there is no logical extension to the south.
In short, the route to Sweetwater has the greatest potential for through traffic, connecting the Dallas-Fort Worth and Abilene region to the east and Lubbock to the west. This route runs more east-west than north-south. A route through Big Spring offers the greatest potential for an extension south to San Angelo or beyond.
Traffic intensities
The data below concerns intensities after the relevant exit.
| Exit | Location | 2007 | 2013 | 2016 |
| 1 | Lubbock | 67,000 | 75,000 | 66,000 |
| 4 | Lubbock | 31,000 | 30,000 | 37,000 |
| 6 | Lubbock | 23,000 | 27,000 | 34,000 |
| 49 | plain view | 10,500 | 15,500 | 20,000 |
| 74 | Tulia | 8,400 | 8,400 | 11,000 |
| 110 | Canyon | 29,000 | 33,500 | 36,000 |
| 123 | Amarillo | 53,000 | 62,000 | 60,000 |
Lane Configuration
| From | Unpleasant | Lanes | Comments |
| Exit 1 | Exit 7 | 2×3 | Lubbock |
| Exit 7 | Exit 119 | 2×2 | |
| Exit 119 | Exit 123 | 2×3 | Amarillo |
