I started to do the calculation of how many hours of my life I’ve spent driving on Houston’s I-610 loop road, but quit when the math was showing the number would have to be measured in months and not weeks. This massive amount of time isn’t due to its size, but its terrible design and constant, ceaseless, insanity-inducing traffic. I’m pretty sure Houston traffic broke my father, who essentially rage-quit his job on the opposite side of “the loop” by telling off a client after one particularly bad commute.
A Houston-hater I am not, for Houston is truly one of the best places in the world if you can ignore the heat, the weather, the traffic, the poor urban design, and the fact that everyone has a gun. Basically, you don’t use your horn in Houston unless you’re ready to reach into the glovebox and pull out something that’s going to produce a response that’s at least nine millimeters in diameter.
There is no shortage of terrible Houston roads, but The Loop is a good place to focus your ire if you commute in the city. Because Houston is nothing if not a land of entrepreneurs, this brilliant guy decided his new sim racing center needed a full, true-to-life simulator of that road you can drive however you want without fear of getting shot (but there’s a bar, so you can also do it after enjoying some shots).
Inside Satan’s Sphinchter
For reasons having to do with history, geography, and a grab-the-epipen allergy to urban planning, a huge percentage of the Houston area population works in one of three separate office cores (Original Downtown, The Downtown With A Mall, And The Downtown That’s All Hospitals), but few people live there. According to the Downtown Redevelopment Agency, about 12,000 people live in Original Downtown Houston. In a city of 2.3 million people! That’s insane. About five times as many people live in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, and that’s less than a square mile in size.
To the city’s credit, they’re trying to encourage people to move there, and there’s even a decent light rail system that exists mostly to serve this small population of people. I had a friend whose apartment was on the light rail line, and it was incredible to be able to quickly get to enjoy Houston’s world-class museums, world-beating food, and world champion (not at the time) baseball organizations. For most other people, it’s kind of useless.
So there are three downtowns and, statistically, no one lives near the downtown where they work. When I was in Houston, I resided in various parts of town, and wherever I needed to go was inevitably on the other side of town. This meant that I would get on an interstate to go to Central Market for bananas, which is a bananas thing to do. It’s essentially a local road packed with a trillion cars.
Everyone is miserable. There are flyovers that rise high into the air, so you might get stuck 80 or so feet up, watching no one move. It’s usually 900 degrees outside, and no one appreciates the irony of a city built by oil suffering from a warming climate. It’s no coincidence that the road itself resembles Beelzebub’s butthole.
If only there were a way to exercise all of my angst at this specific piece of freeway…
Enter The 610 Loop Challenge
I’ve been to a couple of these “sim racing lounges” before, and it’s a fun thing to do for a corporate party or if you don’t have the money or space for a full simulator in your bedroom. Houston’s version is Velocity Racing Lounge, run by former motorcycle racer Viet Tran, who fell back in love with sim-racing after a bad crash sidelined him.
What do Houstonians do when they get knocked down? They get back up and open a business, and usually that business serves food in some capacity. I credit much of the city’s amazing food (both Anthony Bourdain and David Chang have publicly called it one of the best in the world) to the huge immigrant population. The rest of the credit goes to the fact that the near-constant heat and humidity mean that indoor businesses have a natural incentive to thrive.
Tran created a place that seems to fit the mold of most places, with a bar, restaurant, events built around racing, and a chance for up to 16 people to race in modern sims against their friends in a variety of racing disciplines (F1, sports cars, Indy, et cetera). Not content to rest on the fact that Houstonians will go anywhere with air-conditioning and beer, Tran worked with a simulation company to build a realistic, mile-by-mile representation of The Loop.
In the video above from Houston Life, you can see reporter Lauren Kelly nervously tackle the “610 Challenge,” which allows people to race across the city while also viewing famous sites like the crumbling Astrodome, the extraordinarily polluted Ship Channel, or the place where Astroworld used to be! Also, the Galleria.
It looks so true to life, I’m starting to get a PTSD flashback of sitting at the unholy merger of the Southwest Freeway with the West Loop south of Richmond. I used to work over there in the era before podcasts. I think I had a Blackberry Storm that could play 20 MP3s. It was misery.
The reporter here doesn’t even know how to drive fast in a simulation. If you go out at 4 am, there are definitely times you can quickly get around The Loop, but for most normies, it’s a road experienced in rush hour. She eventually gets up to speed but runs into traffic and, because they put her in a McLaren race car, she gets to learn the joys of lift-off oversteer.
“The best bit is you didn’t hurt anyone,” exclaims Tran, who also pointed out that you can listen to a Houston playlist (presumably Paul Wall, Lightnin’ Hopkins, MTS, Travis Scott, UGK) while driving.
In theory, the goal here is that people can set up a race with their friends and have a “virtual” race around town. The appeal seems to be that you can drive in a way you couldn’t in real life, which, for some, would be going as fast as possible. I would swap out the McLaren for some form of 18-Wheeler and just plow through traffic, knocking over anyone who gets in my way, which was always my secret wish.
The poor reporter here makes another go at it, but almost immediately makes the same mistake, causing one host to cover her eyes and the other to coldly remark that “Okay, Lauren, next time we’re going somewhere together, I’m driving. Terrifying.”
If you’d like to see a better version of racing, YouTube channel A Casual Racer has a better video:
This is still a brilliant idea, and something I could see on other hated roads from the various places I’ve lived and visited:
- The Santa Monica Freeway Grand Prix
- The 24 Hours of the Major Deegan Expressway
- The Dan Ryan TT
Is there a road you’d love to see on one of these simulators?
Photo: Houston Life, Velocity Racing Lounge
Eh, I see people do this on real life 610 with traffic all the time.
“Don’t mess with Texas”
Well, I wasn’t planning on it… with your terrible traffic, government and ridiculous heat. No point in messing with it. They can have it. While we’re at it, they can have Ohio and Florida too.
“Basically, you don’t use your horn in Houston unless you’re ready to reach into the glovebox and pull out something that’s going to produce a response that’s at least nine millimeters in diameter”
You know the horn was intended for people’s safety. The idea that using it in any circumstance could provoke a rogue assassin speaks volumes about our society.
Where I’m at, the horn is an extension of one’s personality… an outlet for creative expressionism, without resorting to the use of cuss words… although those are two great tastes that taste great together. So as you can see it’s a blank canvas for you to fill in the auditory landscape.
I am just back from a Wyo/Montana vacation and the Beartooth Highway needs to be added. Traffic isn’t that bad (post-labor day, anyway), but ho-lee crap was it great. And I have spent a lifetime chasing good roads. If you get frustrated you can just yeet yourself over a 9,000 cliff.
Hopefully they could also recreate the Snow Creek Inn once you reach Red Lodge. I won the bingo jackpot twice.
The problem with the Beartooths is that the scenery is so beautiful nobody is paying attention to the road. 😉
For real. Some local in Red Lodge showed me a pretty gnarly, but non-fatal, crash when a mustang realized it was in the wrong lane with a van approaching. Then he complained about Californians as Rocky Mountain residents are wont to do.
There could also be a time trial of the 80/94/294 exchange at the IL/IN border too, especially if the time setting is always a Friday afternoon. You’d need minutes between close checkpoints. I like this idea.
Might as well add the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel to this one. It would mostly just be sitting there, so it would be a nice bonus if they add a function that lets you get out of your car and at least get a look at the idiot that slowed down in the tunnel for no reason.
The consistency of cars braking when going into the tunnel, on a straight road, is both fascinating and maddening.
My theory is that it’s not going into the tunnel that’s causing the backup. It’s leaving the tunnel. Hampton Roads doesn’t have hills. People don’t pay attention to their cars losing speed going up the grade at the end and slow down to 40mph. That causes the cars behind them to brake, compounding the slowdown until we’re stopped. Plus some people will brake leaving the tunnel because of the sudden lighting change.
When the construction project was in the planning phase, I literally wrote the governor, begging them to green light replacing that tunnel with a 4-lane each direction suspension bridge. Problem would be solved. He actually wrote back and explained that it couldn’t happen because of a military airstrip in Newport News – the bridge’s towers would interfere with its air clearance. Everyone assumed we didn’t use a suspension bridge because an attacker could collapse it and block the waterway and that simply isn’t true.
My idea is a little less terrible road, more great roads but too crowded, limited, or closed:
The Blue Ridge Parkway at speed would be perfection in something interesting.
TotD needs the stuck semi and the occasional flipped car causing rubbernecking.
One thing I found remarkable about Houston when I visited (I’m from the PNW) was that my buddy and I spent an hour in his Corvette going about 90 mph, and we were STILL in Houston. It just keeps going and going and going and going….
I just moved to Portland from Houston and the definition of whats “far” here is definitely different than it was in H-town
Its 3 ever-increasing radius loops are something else
Had a friend from southern California and he had no qualms about driving for two hours to get somewhere. I get bored after about 30 minutes. The PNW is built different.
My ex lived there and it amazed me every time I visited that no matter where you were going, it was going to take 45 minutes minimum to get there. Other side of the highway or in another downtown, somehow both were an hour away.
A good one would be 95 from DC to NYC
This is genius but I drive 610 twice a day coming and going from work. It’s the only loop left in Houston that you don’t have to pay to drive on, I’m not gonna pay to virtually drive on it.
I couldn’t imagine paying to play such a simulator, especially since there is a very real chance that the traffic it simulates still isn’t as bad as real-life traffic.
As a former Houstonian who left after a decade due to the terrible traffic and insufferable heat and humidity, this definitely triggered the rage within me. I spent a few years commuting between Katy and Baytown through downtown Houston, and the number of hours I spent on 610 north is best left uncounted. I recently started a new job with what I now consider a brutal commute, but by Houston standards it is on-par with driving to the grocery store. The only redeeming quality for Houston is the food options are excellent, which my friends and family use to justify still living in that pit of despair.
610N is the worst, everybody is always in the wrong lanes at the I45 and 59 interchanges. I’ll put up with I-10 traffic to avoid it.
It was the worst just before I left, because they were in the middle of both the I-10 expansion and the 610 north repairs, so it was a crap sandwich no matter what. Some days I’d be trapped on 610N for 3-4 hours. I took a new job near I-10 and the beltway on the west side, which meant only an 1.5-2 hours to get from Gessner to Eldridge due to the I-10 construction. When my company asked if I would move to another office, I was already packing up my office before they finished the question…
I work in the Galleria area and for years lived down by Clear Lake which was 1.5-2 hrs each way every day. Now I’m up by Cypress which is a far more reasonable 35-45mins each way. I do miss the days when I had a 5-10min commute.
I was in Katy, then Cypress, then I moved to the Memorial area. I was only there a few months before I was asked to relocate, but it was unbelievable how bad traffic was on the city streets in the Memorial area during the I-10 expansion. My place was exactly 3 miles from my office, and it would routinely take me 75-90 minutes to get home. It luckily only took me 30 minutes to get to work…because I went in at 4am.
I feel you. I decided to pay high rent for that reason alone: I truly appreciated the reverse commute from Midtown to near IAH. Hustling 20 miles in 20 mins toll free was incredible compared to the alternative.
Your review of Houston does not make me want to visit.
This is accurate. I just posted that the only redeeming quality of Houston is the food, and it really is true. In my experience, the only place that can rival Houston’s food options and quality is DC, which is another place that can claim its only redeeming value is the food.
The food is awesome. Within minutes of my office are countless tex-mex spots, a half-dozen awesome BBQ joints, country cooking, a greek seafood place and several mediterranean spots, an afghani place where you sit on the floor and the naan is 3′ long, and a halal restaurant run by a family from Jerusalem that cooks the best fried chicken I’ve ever had which a statement from someone who grew up in the south. I’m pretty sure it’s Mother Mary’s own recipe. Oh, and there’s a Whataburger too I guess plus too many more to mention.
I-15 from LA to Vegas. It’s either 100mph or a parking lot. Or if you don’t want to do the whole thing, start in Baker and pick a direction.
only if I can do it in Hunter S Thompson’s car
The Red Shark! 1973 Chevrolet Caprice convertible, cherry red, with a 454.
With or without the briefcase accoutrements?
Garden State Parkway but only if you make it a Saturday in the summer.
Experience the thrills of a 50 mile stretch in a single digit MPH, bumper to bumper slog filled with angry (more so than usual) New Yorkers.
Could we get an Atlanta Perimeter one? 285 was my nightmare because I grew up southwest of Atlanta and most of my extended family lived northeast of Atlanta. 285 was built to ensure large trucks did not go through the Downtown Connector (the spot where 75/85 came together and went through Atlanta) and deal with the mountains of bullshit that road had (looking at you Grady Curve and the 20 split!). Imagine, a multilane highway that ran through various suburbs, clogged with semis traveling through Georgia, the road abused by all the semis traveling through Georgia, and similar to Houston, it is best not to honk unless you are ready to FIGHT. Plus, you’ve still got 2003 Altimas and third-hand Chargers winding through traffic like a Walmart Roll-Back Schumacher.
Also, if modeling Atlanta, let’s go ahead and throw in the no-longer-a-toll-road GA-400. The Connector too, but as a bonus let’s use the period of time where the road caught on fire and collapsed and everyone was routed onto the 78 Peachtree streets through Midtown!
People say Boston traffic is bad, but I will gladly take 93, Soldier’s Field, and Storrow Drive over ANYTHING in Atlanta.
I forgot to mention the added insanity of Spaghetti Junction. I can’t wait to take my kid back down there when he is old enough to drive and see if he can handle the fire that I was forged in.
Shower spaghetti junction? Ha ha
Came down here looking for the Atlanta Perimeter mention. I would definitely tear ass down the perimeter if I knew there were no stakes.
I can see GA-400 (I’ve heard it called “The Georgia Autobahn”) but it’s a little too flat and straight. How’s about the run up to Blood Mountain, GA up US-129 and US-19?
This may be the first time that “Some Genius” was used and I did not roll my eyes.
How about I70 west of Denver during weekend ski traffic? Every 10 times or so, the simulator just closes the tunnels for a few hours, resulting in just sitting motionless while the simulator shows snow building up on the hood. To counter this boring scenario, the other times could be stop and go traffic with a friction coefficient of 0.1, with semis and trucks with trailers jack-knifing all around, and an allowance to pass on the shoulder/median. Glad I don’t deal with that anymore.
summer can be just as bad. lots of RVs trying to pass trucks, random car fires, and a touch of construction
This is valid, but it is almost year-round now. I-25 from Larkspur to Fort Collins is almost as bad too. I’m in the process of moving out of the Front Range, and it will be nice to leave that mess behind.
There are plenty of dreadful roads around the country. I35 between San Antonio and Austin is my currently most hated. Basically any freeway through/around Atlanta. I-10 through Baton Rouge. I-95 from DC through NYC. Take your pick.
Personally, I always thought it would be fun to have the Pennsylvania turnpike 1:1 modeled in a racing sim, to see how fast you could get from New Jersey to Ohio in your supercar of choice. 370 miles, could you get it done in under 2 hours? Trying to get through the Allegheny tunnel at 185 mph would be a wild time!
The DC beltway, either at the mixing bowl (southern end) or at/near the 270 spur.
I have to go to Philly from Richmond next week, And I’m going up 301 and then across to the peninsula to avoild the entire DC?Baltimore area. Especially the mixing bowl. Guh.
If you want to simulate a North American highway, then pick the Boss Level.
The 401 highway in Ontario, Canada.
It’s the busiest highway in North America and is never not an absolute shit show.
MILTON!
This article reminds me of certain game modes in the Burnout series.
There was a Seattle track in, I think, Gran Turismo 3, that let you blast around the Kingdome and under the viaduct. That, during the days when I was still pretty new to driving and couldn’t legally take those roads at over thirty or safely above twenty, was a thrill.
every time I go into town I walk by the sinking ship garage and think of Gran Tourismo.
Sinking ship garage–you mean Pioneer Square at Yesler and James? If so, that’s brilliant; I’ve never heard it described that way.
That’s it exactly. I remember catching air off the cross streets coming down james in the game
I FEEL THIS. As an oddball who played ice hockey in Houston, there were just a handful of decent rinks during my time and my poor folks shuttled me around dealing with this. So cool.
This is all I want in a racing sim. This is now all I will accept in one. If I can’t drive on real city streets in the sim, I’m out.
Houston flyovers are ridiculous. I think the tallest one is like 112 feet. And one section is 26 lanes wide, the widest in the US.
I used to live in the shadow of one of the tallest and at night you can hear hum of the traffic driving over it.
This is a great idea that every major city should have.
I nominate Atlanta; don’t live there but I live close enough for sports, concerts, etc. that always take twice as long to get to the destination
The only game I want Atlanta in is one where you get to nuke cities. I’m so glad not to live anywhere near it now.
Now I have the “reeeeal men of genius” line in my head and I’ll probably cause a commuter crash just to get rid of it