Interstate 27 (I-27): Lubbock to Amarillo, Ports-to-Plains Plans and Safety Data

How long is I-27?

FHWA's Route Log, current to January 2026, puts I-27 at 128.44 miles, all of them in Texas. Wikipedia gives 128.332 miles and Interstate Guide 128.47. Equipment World put the road at 124 miles before the 2024 extension, so the Route Log and Wikipedia figures appear to include the 4.2 miles added south of Lubbock. Interstate Guide's 128.47 comes from a TxDOT map on a page last updated in February 2024, before the extension. TxDOT has been renumbering I-27 mile markers since July 2025, and Wikipedia's exit table has switched to new mileposts that take in that extension, starting at 526.0 in Lubbock and ending at 654.1 in Amarillo.

The Route Log books none of I-27's pavement to another Interstate, and the crash rate below uses the full 128.44 miles without an overlap adjustment. US routes do share it. Interstate Guide describes I-27 as following US 87 for its whole length, with US 87 on its own road between old exits 63 and 77 and again between 88 and 110, and Wikipedia has US 60 joining from exit 110 north of Canyon into Amarillo. Those shared miles stay with I-27.

Where I-27 starts and ends

The south end moved in 2024. I-27 used to begin at Loop 289 and 82nd Street in Lubbock; the extension carried it 4.2 miles farther south on US 87, and Wikipedia now places the start 0.1 mile north of County Road 7500, where access control begins. The north end is at exit 70 of I-40 in Amarillo, an interchange that US 60, US 87 and US 287 pass through as well.

Northbound from Lubbock, the freeway passes New Deal and Abernathy, then Hale Center and Plainview, both of which have an I-27 business loop. Kress and Tulia come next, then Happy and Canyon before Amarillo. Along the way it crosses five counties: Lubbock, Hale, Swisher, Randall and Potter. Lubbock and Amarillo are the only control cities on the signs.

Interstate junctions along I-27

The Interstate list for I-27 has a single entry. Heading north from Lubbock, the road meets no other Interstate until its final interchange with I-40 south of downtown Amarillo. Interstate Guide says a three-year, $33 million rebuild of that junction, finished in 2001, lifted I-40 above I-27, and a flyover from eastbound I-40 to southbound I-27 opened for good on November 15, 2018.

The US highway interchanges come earlier. In Lubbock, Wikipedia lists US 84, US 62 with SH 114, and US 82 on the Marsha Sharp Freeway, and US 70 meets the road near Plainview. If the Ports-to-Plains extension gets built, the corridor would add Interstate junctions with I-20 at Big Spring and Midland and with I-10 at Sonora, and its planned south end at Laredo is where I-35 begins.

Fatal crashes on I-27

FARS records 31 fatal crashes on I-27 from 2020 to 2024, with 38 people killed, or about 8 a year. Over 128.44 miles that is 5.9 deaths per 100 miles each year, well under the network-wide average of 9.5. I-27 ranks 41st of the 56 routes we rate, counting 1st as the highest rate. Because the whole road is in Texas, its Texas rate and its route rate are the same number.

Deaths dropped each year from 10 in 2020 to 8 in 2021, 7 in 2022 and 5 in 2023, then climbed back to 8 in 2024. Lubbock County, at the south end, accounts for 15 of the 38. Randall County had 11, Hale County 8 and Swisher County 3.

Counties with the most I-27 crash deaths

Bridges on I-27

In the 2025 National Bridge Inventory, 94 bridges carry I-27's main line. None of them rate Poor: 34 rate Good and 60 rate Fair. The median one was built in 1985, in line with a freeway that went up mostly between 1975 and 1992.

Through the towns the road changes level often. Interstate Guide says it dips under the Main Street overpass in Abernathy, drops below grade at Cleveland Avenue in Hale Center and runs below grade through Lubbock south of downtown. Near the north end, the I-27 bridge over SE 26th Avenue in Amarillo was widened in spring 2019 during the I-40 flyover project. Wikipedia also notes where I-27 crosses the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River.

Tolls on I-27

No tolled facility on I-27 shows up in FHWA's inventory dated January 1, 2023, so getting from Lubbock to Amarillo costs nothing in tolls. Neither Wikipedia nor Interstate Guide mentions toll lanes opened on the route since then.

From US 87 to I-27, and the push toward Laredo

The road is older than its number. Wikipedia traces it to SH 9, the Puget Sound to Gulf Highway, in 1917; the route became part of US 385 in 1926 and was absorbed into US 87 in 1935. Amarillo's stretch, the Canyon Expressway, was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a US 87 and US 60 freeway with a 45 mph design speed.

I-27 was not one of the original Interstates. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 authorized it, and Wikipedia credits Rep. George H. Mahon with helping secure the money. Interstate Guide dates FHWA approval to December 12, 1968 and the Texas State Highway Commission's to February 1, 1969. Work on new freeway started north from Lubbock toward New Deal in 1975. The Happy to Canyon bypass opened December 5, 1986, the road was finished north of Lubbock by 1988, and the last Lubbock section, 19th Street to 54th Street, opened September 3, 1992. Wikipedia puts the total cost at $453.4 million. Since 2005 the route has also carried the name Marshall Formby Memorial Highway, after the former state senator.

Talk of a longer I-27 goes back at least to a 1995 study of a southern extension. In 1998 the TEA-21 transportation law placed it inside the Ports-to-Plains Corridor, a High Priority Corridor from Laredo to Denver. Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 1079 on June 10, 2019, calling for a study of taking I-27 to Laredo. On March 15, 2022, the federal Consolidated Appropriations Act added the extension south to Laredo and north to Raton, New Mexico, to the Interstate system.

Interstate Guide sketches the southern path along US 87 to San Angelo, with a western loop to Midland on SH 349 from Lamesa and SH 158 to Sterling City, then US 277 to Del Rio and Carrizo Springs and US 83 to Laredo. A 2019-era estimate cited by Interstate Guide put the upgrade of the roughly 500 miles from Lubbock to Laredo above $5.2 billion. North of Amarillo, the legislated route follows US 87 through Dalhart to I-25 at Raton.

The I-27 Numbering Act, signed March 22, 2024, set the branch numbers: I-27W for the loop through Midland, I-27E for US 87 between Sterling City and Lamesa, and I-127N for US 287 from Dumas to the Oklahoma line. Reports in June 2024 went further, describing an I-27 that could follow the Heartland and Theodore Roosevelt Expressways through Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana toward Saskatoon.

So far the new I-27 mileage is short. AASHTO approved the 4.2-mile extension from Loop 289 to County Road 7500 at its fall 2023 route numbering meeting, FHWA signed off, and the Texas Transportation Commission adopted it on September 26, 2024. It runs on US 87 toward a planned interchange with Lubbock's future Loop 88. Equipment World reported that later phases are meant to carry I-27 to the Mexican border and eventually the Canadian border, and gave no construction timeline for them.

I-27 traffic and road conditions

DriveTexas, TxDOT's statewide conditions map, covers I-27 from Lubbock to Amarillo. Check it when heavy thunderstorms move through, since Interstate Guide says they can close the freeway in Abernathy and Hale Center.

I-27 questions