TxDOT needs to do more for new Colt intersection
State highway department officials say the planned intersection meets their safety criteria. They don’t feel that stretch of 1431 needs to be widened or undergo any major modifications.
Local history concerning that winding section of road with steep drops suggests that much more needs to be done to protect the public, though. At the very least, more lanes need to be added to the intersection, and that responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of TxDOT.
The intersection will become one of the entrances to the future Colt, with the Manzano Mile leading to the campus. It could eventually provide a link or a kind of loop with the nearby Marble Falls High School and Mormon Mill Road to the north.
The elementary school is being built by the district with funds from a November 2006 $62.3 million bond issue passed by voters. The city is constructing the Manzano Mile. And the state has responsibility for 1431, but at the moment it doesn’t sound like TxDOT plans to do much at all with its road.
This seems unwise, given the dangerous nature of that portion of 1431. By next fall, hundreds of vehicles will be packing that tight section of road, which the state plans to leave virtually unchanged from what it is today.
Bear in mind that by autumn 2009, the narrow lanes of 1431 will be the entry and exit for vehicles dropping off or picking up hundreds of the 600-plus students attending Colt. The area will see a traffic jam twice a day — before 8 a.m. and around 3 p.m.
The state may put up some warning signs to let people know they’re approaching a school zone and they might extend the school zone from the nearby intersection of 1431 and Mustang Drive, which leads to the high school zone. These ideas are not bad, but they seem terribly shortsighted.
While surveys of that narrow stretch of 1431 may have satisfied TxDOT engineers there is enough space and sight-distance, anecdotal evidence from those who live here and travel that stretch of rural route says different.
TxDOT should take these concerns under advisement and incorporate them into a plan to widen 1431, just as they had to do after the high school was built. When Marble Falls High School was first opened, 1431 leading to Mustang Drive was only two lanes.
Residents and former high school students recall numerous crashes, traffic jams and confusion at that intersection until the state finally widened the road to four lanes, added a turn lane and added an exit lane from Mustang Drive to westbound 1431.
It shouldn’t be too hard to see the intersection to the roadway leading to the new Colt will need the same improvements, especially as it is closer to a curve and a winding series of dips on 1431 where fatality accidents have occurred in the past.
Contractors from Austin-based Ross Construction started work on the $7.4 million, five-lane Manzano Mile this month. Two lanes of the Manzano Mile will be ready when the new Colt campus opens.
State officials said the problems that existed with 1431 when the high school opened don’t exist with the Manzano Mile. They say a lengthy process of TxDOT safety and traffic-study requirements have been followed. A traffic-impact analysis for Manzano Mile didn’t indicate any need for changes to 1431 near the construction site, state officials argue.
The current road consists of two lanes in that area, with no turn lanes and a shallow shoulder.
TxDOT also says there haven’t been as many fatal wrecks on 1431 since a portion of the road about seven miles east of Marble Falls was completed a few years ago. Highway crews fixed many of those curves where repeated accidents once occurred.
The state’s arguments still aren’t enough to alleviate concerns about traffic jams, future fender-benders and perhaps even worse when Colt opens. Local motorists who travel that section of 1431 every day know from the evidence of their own eyes that is a dangerous road. Packing more cars filled with kids on 1431 without further modifications is just a recipe for disaster.