Colleyville roundabout is confusing and potentially dangerous, motorists say

Driving through the roundabout at Cheek-Sparger Road and Central Drive/Jackson Road is not for those who are directionally challenged.

In recent weeks, as the construction project at the busy intersection nears one year, the addition of a traffic island in the middle of the traffic circle has created a new a layer of confusion and is potentially dangerous, motorists say.

Mainly, motorists eastbound on Cheek-Sparger wishing to turn north on Jackson Road must now drive into the middle of the roundabout on temporary pavement, and stop at a makeshift stop sign. For those motorists, waiting at the stop sign can be an intimidating experience. They are essentially stuck in traffic on an island, encircled by roundabout gridlock, hoping other drivers will obey the ocean of temporary signs so they can safely get through the intersection.

Motorists heading northbound on Central Drive and wishing to either continue straight on Jackson or turn west onto Cheek-Sparger must also take their turn on the island.

“Making a left turn going north on Central to Cheek-Sparger is a death trap in its current form,” an area resident identifying himself as @captain_insano wrote on Twitter.

Another resident, Michael Wang of Colleyville, said he doesn’t understand why the city completed construction of the roundabout curbs in October and started allowing traffic to move in a circle, only to switch gears in early December and place temporary pavement and the makeshift stop sign over the center of the circle.

“This construction on the roundabout has been ridiculous,” Wang wrote in an email. “Our subdivision is just to the east of the Jackson/Central intersection, and with the current configuration of four-way stop signs, from about 5 to 6 p.m., if you had to make a left turn going east from our subdivision, it was impossible to see oncoming cars because the intersection was backed up.”

Cheek-Sparger is a popular east-west commuter route in Northeast Tarrant County, but the four-way stop at the Central/Jackson intersection could not keep up with growth in the area. Long lines of cars became commonplace at the intersection, especially during rush hour.

Construction delays

The roundabout has been under construction since January and was originally supposed to take eight to nine months. But Colleyville officials say they’ve now pushed back that completion date to the end of February. Officials say the main culprit has been relocation of utility lines, which is a common cause for delayed road work throughout the region and has added at least four months to this project.

The project has presented several challenges, said Jeremy Hutt, Colleyville city engineer.

Mainly, the quest to keep traffic moving in all directions forced the city to take unusual steps. A temporary patch of pavement was laid down so that Cheek-Sparger through traffic could continue uninterrupted, he said.

Also, early in the project, some of the utilities owned by AT&T, Atmos Energy, Verizon and others forced the city to send home contractors, until those companies had time to do their part of the project.

“Trying to build a roundabout without closing the road makes it more difficult,” Hutt said, adding that the construction of a small drainage bridge under Cheek-Sparger has also been a challenge.

The roundabout has widened the footprint of the intersection, and with northbound Central Drive traffic being moved temporarily onto the southbound lanes there is no simple, safe way to create a temporary, four-way stop because the lanes don’t align properly, Hutt said.

As a result, eastbound and northbound traffic is forced to use the temporary lanes and the makeshift stop sign in the middle of the roundabout. Meanwhile, traffic flows a bit more naturally for southbound and westbound traffic, which may use the roundabout lanes — albeit only after pausing at temporary stop signs.

The city’s fourth roundabout is being built for $1.93 million. Money is coming from the city’s street capital projects fund, Tarrant County bond funds and North Central Texas Council of Governments toll revenue funds, according to a fact sheet on Colleyville’s website.

Roundabout revival

Colleyville is among several cities taking part in a roundabout boom. The smaller version of traffic circles have recently been completed, or are under construction, in far north Fort Worth, Kennedale, Southlake and Trophy Club. In many cases, roundabouts are seen as a safer, more efficient and prettier alternative to four-way stop signs.

Residents along Cheek-Sparger themselves — or at least their predecessors — may be partly to blame for the mess. In the 1990s, Cheek-Sparger was set to be expanded to a multi-lane thoroughfare with a median, but residents protested, saying they didn’t want additional traffic coming through their south Colleyville and north Bedford neighborhoods and didn’t want trees along Cheek-Sparger cut down. Those same arguments are now being used as the reconstruction of Glade Road, just to the north, is being discussed.

Cheek-Sparger, which connects to Mid-Cities Boulevard in Hurst to the west and Euless to the east, has become a 3-mile-long, two-lane bottleneck in a 16-mile-long corridor that otherwise provides a nice alternative to Loop 820 and Texas 121/183 for motorists between Saginaw and Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Most of the Mid-Cities Boulevard corridor — also known as Western Center Boulevard and Watauga Road — is six lanes wide, with left-turn lanes in many spaces.

The corridor also cuts through parts of north Fort Worth, Haltom City, Watauga and North Richland Hills.

But Colleyville residents do benefit from a Cheek-Sparger corridor that remains green and scenic. And once the roundabout is complete, city officials say travel time through the Central Drive/Jackson Road intersection will be reduced dramatically.

This story was originally published December 28, 2014 at 10:05 AM with the headline "Colleyville roundabout is confusing and potentially dangerous, motorists say."