This green light means ‘go’ — then stop, or pay Fort Worth $220

One of Fort Worth’s worst street intersections has been cussed and discussed for a decade — just never fixed.

City police were out again Tuesday, writing a $220 ticket every couple of minutes to any driver traveling west on the Southwest Boulevard access road who took the right-hand curve northbound onto Bryant Irvin Road without stopping.

Everywhere in America except at that corner, green means “go.” But if you’re curving north on a green light, you suddenly see a stop sign on the curve.

In 2007, when chef Jon Bonnell and I talked about that dangerous and tricky intersection near his restaurant driveway, I foolishly thought it would get fixed.

As long as Fort Worth can collect $220 every couple of minutes, I guess there is no hurry to get it fixed.

Here’s another gotcha: The curve is dangerous only half the time, when northbound Bryant Irvin Road traffic has the green light. Then, drivers taking the curve need to stop so they don’t plow broadside into other drivers turning into Bonnell’s.

A traffic signal would work better.

The stop sign catches drivers by surprise. They jam the brakes, and suddenly there’s a rear-end collision. Half the time, it’s when Bryant Irvin Road has a red light and there’s no traffic, so safety is not at risk.

“This has been a nuisance for all 15 years I’ve been open,” Bonnell wrote on Facebook on Tuesday after I complained.

He said there’s a wreck every day, on average.

The stop sign was originally a yield sign. That was worse.

“The yield sign was a death trap,” Bonnell wrote. “The stop sign just surprises everyone.”

He supports the police enforcement and says traffic needs to be slower at that corner. But he said a signal would work better.

I asked Val Lopez, the spokesman for the local division office of the Texas Department of Transportation. Southwest Boulevard is part of Texas 183.

He said that’s just not how Texas does it.

“Right-turn bays such as this one are not signalized,” he wrote. “This is the way these intersections are built across the state.”

The problem will only get worse — or better, from a city revenue standpoint — with the fall opening of Whole Foods Market and the new Waterside shops on Bryant Irvin Road at Arborlawn Drive.

By now, I thought even traffic engineers would see the light.

This story was originally published April 19, 2016 at 7:05 PM with the headline "This green light means ‘go’ — then stop, or pay Fort Worth $220."