re: How would closing the washington exit help traffic?

i think the plan is to actually move the washington st exit itself to the left side. they probably have traffic models that show most of the traffic exiting washington st is coming from 110 and not 10. i speculated before that moving the exit might be phase 1, then that'd open the door to extending the elevated outer lane through to (at least) the next exit, like my business partner upgrayedd alluded to. if we take this discussion any further, i'll need to write up a manhour estimate.