As traffic overwhelms North Fort Worth, should city slow development?
When Martina Treviño moved to northwest Fort Worth three decades ago, her home near Ten Mile Bridge Road was surrounded by acreage. Now, a “sea of rooftops” dominates the horizon.
Treviño enjoys her new neighbors, but she doesn’t enjoy the traffic that has come with Fort Worth’s exponential growth. Her husband’s commute to the General Motors plant in Arlington that once took 30 minutes now lasts an hour or more. For two years, as she drove to the Tarrant County College campus in Hurst, she watched cars swarm Azle Avenue at Interstate 820 until vehicles left the road and traveled along the grassy shoulder.
“It can get really crazy,” she said. “They just make their own lane.”
A lot drivers north of Loop 820 have a similar experience. Many of far north Fort Worth’s streets remain too narrow for the onslaught of traffic and become choked during peak hours, residents say.
Congestion is getting worse throughout the Metroplex, according to a Texas A&M Transportation Institute report released last year. The report, based on data from 2017, found DFW motorists spend nearly three days a year in traffic, about 67 hours. In 2012, Dallas-Fort Worth drivers wasted an average of 57 hours stuck in traffic, up from 47 hours in 2000.
Traffic congestion north of Loop 820 has gotten so dire that Fort Worth Councilman Dennis Shingleton said pausing development may be the only way for the city to truly catch up with street needs in the northern suburbs.
That’s very unlikely, Shingleton said, because of the demand for affordable housing.
“But right now, I’m at the point where, if it were up to me and me alone, I’d probably call a hiatus to any development up there,” Shingleton said, saying the biggest issue he faces is getting a handle on Fort Worth’s rapid sprawl. “We’re doing the best we can, but can we do better? I think so.”
Fort Worth has 24 street projects either under construction or in planning that are designed to improve commutes north of the loop. They total more than $186 million and will run through September 2023, according to city data. Most are funded through the 2018 bond election, and more projects may be coming if voters approve another bond package in 2022, city staff said.
Houses before roads
Some northern suburban dwellers say the city’s efforts are too late.
Rusty Fuller, president of the North Fort Worth Alliance, said he often feels the city is ignoring the congestion in order to please developers and boost tax revenue.
At a zoning commission meeting in December, Fuller spoke against rezoning a vacant tract of land at Bonds Ranch and Willow Springs roads south of Eagle Boulevard. The area is already zoned for single family homes with a small section for commercial use.
The developer, Hanover Property Company, wants to change the zoning to allow more homes on smaller lots along with an apartment complex. At the zoning meeting, a spokesman for the developer said a traffic study showed the denser housing produced about half as many vehicle trips as the current zoning. Storefronts would lure more drivers into the neighborhood throughout the day than an apartment or home, he said.
Bonds Ranch and Willow Springs Road can’t support additional traffic during rush hour, Fuller said, and argued the city should widen roads like those before allowing new development.
Fort Worth’s growth isn’t new, he said, but the city has remained behind the curve.
“It boggles my mind,” Fuller said. “The city knows it has this problem, but they let it continue.”
Brian Ketcham agreed. His commute from near Blue Mound Road and U.S. 287 to Keller High School typically takes 45 minutes. The distance is less than 10 miles. Four years ago, it took about eight to 10 fewer minutes, he said.
Regardless of how he gets to work, he has the same problem. The northbound interchange of U.S. 287 and Interstate 35W is a mess, he said, but so are the back roads.
“They were not made for this much traffic,” he said of Blue Mound and Keller-Hicks roads. “They were made for a farmer getting from the field to his house, and they have not been updated at all.”
Fort Worth’s Catch-22
The city faces a double edged-sword, said Randle Harwood, director of the city’s development services. Roads follow houses, and new houses are built where the land is cheap. That development in turn offsets the cost of new roads.
Fort Worth’s growth is nearly unprecedented, Harwood said. In 1990, the city’s population was about 447,000. Today it’s nearly double that, at just over 895,000, according to the U.S. Census.
“Very few cities have grown as fast as we have for as long as we have,” Harwood said. “Usually we have gaps in the growth when you can fill in the road system. We haven’t had a gap since the middle of the ’90s.”
To catch up, the city developed a five-year thoroughfare plan and purchased much of the right-of-way needed for street work, Harwood said. Design and property acquisition are started sooner in order to speed up bond projects and more work is done with cash on hand, he said.
One project scheduled for completion this summer — a four-lane boulevard on Blue Mound Road to Willow Springs Road and one on Willow Springs Road to Eagle Boulevard — is among two dozen road improvements under way in far north Fort Worth.
Fort Worth and Keller plan to widen Keller-Hicks Road from Lauren Way through U.S. 377 by 2022. Intersection improvements are planned for U.S. 377 at Basswood Boulevard, U.S. 377 at Kroger Drive and Park Vista at Keller-Haslet. A roundabout is planned for Avondale Haslet and Willow Springs.
But Fuller said the city should rely less on taxpayers and more on the developers, whose projects prompt the need for street improvements.
“They intentionally allow denser development, then they turn around to the taxpayers and say ‘Well, we’re going to fix this,’” Fuller said. “Well, no, you’re just working against yourself.”
Shingleton said he is trying to negotiate with developers who oftentimes want to break ground quickly to improve profits.
“I’m trying to tap the brakes a little,” he said. “I say ‘If you build this, give me six months or year to build this road first.’”
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
