Relief is in sight on Trinity Boulevard projects

Taneisha Jackson has been stressed by the condition of a section of Trinity Boulevard for almost the entire three years she’s lived in the Lakes of River Trails.

“Everything is blocked,” said Jackson, 42. “It keeps knocking my wheels out of alignment. I can’t keep my truck clean.”

Tough as circumstances have been for Jackson and her neighbors in River Trails, a subdivision on Trinity Boulevard between Precinct Line Road and Loop 820, there is relief on the horizon for construction projects along the busy commuter route, all of which should be finished by or in 2016.

Two of the projects are being done by the city of Fort Worth: One is called the 9700 Trinity Boulevard Drainage Improvements and includes the construction of a bridge on Trinity near the Norwood Drive intersection; another is rebuilding Norwood from Trinity to Texas 10.

The Texas Department of Transportation is rebuilding Precinct Line Road, also from Trinity to Texas 10.

Despite significant setbacks since its December 2013 start, the bridge work is on schedule and budget, said Jayce McMahon, one of the owners of McMahon Contracting. The $3.789 million project includes removing six culverts and replacing them with a four-lane bridge structure.

Fort Worth expects the project to be completed in spring 2016, said city spokeswoman Cindy Vasquez.

The project has not been without its setbacks.

“Since the project started, we had storms last year that washed away the work we were doing,” McMahon said.

Torrential rain in March 2014 took out all but a sliver of the old bridge, making that stretch of Trinity Boulevard that borders Bell Helicopter Textron impassable for more than a month while half of the bridge was rebuilt well enough to open two lanes for traffic. The temporary fix has remained in place for more than a year and has endured this spring’s record rainfall that frequently covered the bridge with runoff.

Help with flooding

The historically flood-prone area will be much less likely to cause problems when the new bridge is finished, McMahon said, because the culverts that effectively form a storm runoff choke-point will be gone.

“With the new bridge, the culverts will go away and it will just be a bridge with piers,” he said. “It will just be open with water flowing underneath it like a regular bridge over a river.”

Another Lakes of River Trails resident, Jett Stanzione, thinks the bridge work is a good sign. The 31-year-old has worked from home most of the 31/2 years he’s lived there, so his driving on Trinity Boulevard is limited. The road’s condition has been bad for as long as he can remember.

“I’ve had to put new shocks on my truck,” he said.

The second Fort Worth project is completely rebuilding a stretch of South Norwood Drive, just west of the bridge.

The $2.9 million project is funded through an agreement among Bell Helicopter Textron, Tarrant County and the city of Fort Worth, Vasquez said.

Norwood should be open to traffic in September and the work completed in December, Vasquez said.

More homes being built

The roughly 15 miles of Trinity Boulevard that wind like a snake from Interstate 820 in Fort Worth to Belt Line Road in Grand Prairie switch from two lanes to six and back again. Occasional flooding and potholes and long waits at traffic lights plague drivers mostly on its western end.

Heading east from Loop 820, the boulevard dissects the 1,400-home Lakes of River Trails, a still-growing subdivision. A huge mound of dirt south of the road will become pads for another 1,000 homes, said Royce Lee, a spokesman for the developer, Newell Companies.

Also coming are multifamily units and a mixed-use development called Trinity Lakes, Lee said.

The development’s western-most entry, Seguin Trail, is where orange-and-white traffic cones first spring up on Trinity, which became a popular alternate route for commuters during the North Tarrant Express reconstruction project on Airport Freeway.

Just past Seguin Trail, on the north side, construction on Precinct Line Road has reduced traffic on Trinity Boulevard to one lane in each direction at the intersection. Precinct Line is now closed for widening from Trinity to Texas 10. But construction should never shut down Trinity, said Val Lopez, a Texas Department of Transportation spokesman.

It will be awhile before anyone can use that stretch of Precinct Line, Lopez said.

“The Precinct Line bridge over Walker Branch Creek is closed due to recent flooding eroding the abutments,” he said. “We’re assessing what we need to do to repair it.”

Until those assessments are complete, the project’s cost won’t be known, Lopez said.

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Relief is in sight on Trinity Boulevard projects."