Point A to Point B -- Exploding traffic volumes in Parker, Palo Pinto counties leave officials scrambling

Weatherford Democrat
March 21, 2023

Getting from Point A to Point B in Parker and Palo Pinto counties is a game of catch-up.

Or, Whack-a-Mole.

“There’s never been more going on since I’ve been county judge than right now,” Parker County Judge Pat Deen said recently. “Dealing with the growth that’s happening is literally becoming a life or death issue.”

The judge entered his second four-year term in January. He is the administrative chief for one of the fastest growing counties in Texas.

“It caught everyone off guard, with the growth that we are having out here,” he said, predicting his county’s 160,000 population will kiss 200,000 in the coming decade.

One consequence of that is Deen’s membership on more than a couple of regional transportation committees, each trying to herd a growing stampede of planes, trains and — especially — automobiles.

“Transportation is really in line with public safety,” he said. “Public safety can’t be affected when we’re dealing with roads and growth and public transportation.”

Deen’s counterpart in next-door Palo Pinto County is seeing the same landscape, as an exodus from Tarrant County plows westward.

Palo Pinto County Judge Shane Long similarly turns first to public safety when the topic of transportation arises.

“That’s a big concern for Palo Pinto County,” he said. “One of the things that is obvious in Palo Pinto County is we have a much shorter stretch of I-20 than Parker County. But it’s still a major source of our major traffic incidents.”

Deen said one challenge is to balance the need for massive infrastructure expansion with a characteristic drawing new residents.

“The key will be dealing with this growth and maintaining that rural nature that is Parker County,” he said.

Both judges are members of a working group studying the Interstate 20 corridor. That effort, driven by the Texas Department of Transportation, stretches the 635 miles of the interstate from the Louisiana border to I-20’s merger with I-10 southwest of Pecos in Reeves County.

The judges, and Weatherford Mayor Paul Paschall, are on the Central Corridor Working Group examining the highway through six Metroplex counties with Palo Pinto County at its western edge.

The panel has honed in on, among other priorities, making frontage roads continuous to ease congestion.

“How those frontage roads tie into that is obviously a priority for us in Palo Pinto County,” Long said. “It ties into the capability of the area (to handle) the growth, and use of the property, that’s coming to I-20.”

The Central Corridor Group also recommends lengthening some exits.

One recommendation, for instance, moves the westbound Dennis Road exit to east of Coy Road, near the Guns and Ammo shop. That would relieve the evening rush hour stack of drivers stretching dangerously down the short ramp onto the I-20 shoulder — inches from the 70 mph traffic.

(That ramp hosts 5,883 drivers leaving the interstate daily, by TxDOT averages).

Other recommendations include adding lanes — going from four lanes to six on six sections in the two counties, and from six to eight in two stretches. But new lanes won’t be a magic wand, Deen said, urging a more expanded roadmap.

“The challenge we have, adding a lane to I-20 will not get it,” he said. “Adding a third lane will help relieve the congestion on I-20. It will not solve the problems. What will is another, alternate route going east and west.”

White Settlement Road coming out of Fort Worth could provide a corridor, Deen said, though TxDOT spokeswoman Bethany Kurtz noted the road is not part of the state highway system.

“TxDOT will continue to coordinate with county leaders as needed as they work to improve and expand the county roadway system,” she added.

Kurtz described two corridor studies occurring in Parker County, one that dovetails with the I-20 group’s work.

The first examines Farm-to-Market Roads 51, 920 and 730 and is scheduled to begin this year. The second, which starts in 2024, will look at those I-20 frontage roads — from Farm-to-Market 1187 to Farm-to-Market Road 1189. It also could lead to additional lanes on I-20 itself, something the Central Corridor Working Group also is probing.

Kurtz said the transportation department also has identified U.S. 180, from Mineral Wells west to the Stephens County line, for a so-called Super 2 highway. That means passing lanes, usually on inclines.

She declined to make either Fort Worth District Engineer David Salazar Jr. or Weatherford-based Area Engineer Korey Coburn available for this story, a U-turn from past TxDOT policy. She did not reply to email asking when the policy changed.

“Our public information officers are the media liaisons, and formally and officially represent TxDOT Fort Worth and all of our district’s staff,” she said. “This operational policy and practice allows our technical and engineering staff to maintain their focus on project delivery for the communities we serve.”

Jacob Holt, the new Precinct 2 commissioner in Parker County’s northwestern quadrant, foresees FM 51 being four lanes with a median “in the far future.”

FM 920, the Peaster Highway, is more immediate for Holt. He said he began holding discussions with TxDOT staff after his wife joined many FM 920 drivers in having heart-thumping near-misses, this one with a truck trying to pass her on the left as she waited to turn left into a neighborhood.

“Praise God nobody was hurt,” he said, agreeing with assessments the once-rural county was not prepared for the rate of growth hitting it. “We haven’t built up the infrastructure that we needed to, historically, because we didn’t need to.”

Now, we do.

“We’ve got to do as much as we can as fast as we can,” Holt said. “Because we can go as fast as possible and still not keep up with growth.”

He said easy steps such as radar alerts, telling drivers their speed, have helped along Farm-to-Market 920. So has making the former blinking yellow light at FM 920 and FM 1885 in his precinct a four-way stop.

The blinking yellow “made sense at the time,” he said. “Not now.”

The narrow Peaster Highway also is hazardous to law enforcement, Holt said, when they need to pull to the shoulder.

“TxDOT’s aware there’s a need,” Holt said. “When I started to meet with TxDOT, we talked about 920.”

Holt said he also lobbied for turn lanes and more lighting for visibility.

“There’s a degree of complexity there,” he said. “It is just going to take them some time. Realistically, we’re looking at a few years before they are moving some dirt.”

Meanwhile, he added, growing subdivisions add to the load the local roads must hold.

“What we’ve got is a challenge on our plate,” he said. “We need to find as many short-terms as we can to bridge the gap.”

Down the road, Holt sees the highway department widening the Peaster Highway.

“That is part of the plan, long-term,” he said. “One of the things that makes 920 difficult is it’s narrow.”

Deen praised the short-term safety safety enhancements such as the radar signals along FM 920.

“We’re being very proactive with this, much more so than we’ve done in the past,” he said.

The judge pondered a reinvigorated Bankhead Highway as part of east-west relief. Disjointed and even overgrown at spots now, the Bankhead Highway was considered a superhighway connecting Shreveport to El Paso when it was laid in 1916.

“As well as just a whole, new road,” Deen added. “And they are doing an analysis on that right now.”

A couple of online TxDOT traffic tools reveal the weight of traffic in the two counties.

Its Texas Planners Programming Division offers a District Web Viewer of the annual average daily traffic in key spots.

That benchmark is 34,868 vehicles on I-30 coming out of Fort Worth near Walsh Ranch Parkway. It’s 75,405 a few miles west as I-20 merges heading into Willow Park and Hudson Oaks.

Passing Tin Top Road, the count has dipped to 61,762 vehicles, with 47,337 passing beneath the Dennis Road bridge.

One Working Group recommendation is to create a U-turn at the Dennis Road bridge, which also fills with vehicles turning east onto the frontage road heading to new housing in the Diamond Ridge Road area. (TxDOT also has the Dennis bridge in its sights for replacement).

The daily average along I -20 at Farm-to-Market 1189, the exit to Brock, is 35,808 vehicles. It’s 27,190 at U.S. 281, holding steady to just west of Farm-to-Market 4 at 27,255.

Continuing west to Farm-to-Market 919, the exit to Gordon, the average daily count is 25,884. and I-20 is averaging 25,859 vehicles at the Eastland County line.

As for Farm-to-Market 920, its heaviest load is unsurprisingly as traffic leaves Weatherford, with 10,372 vehicles at the city limit. Another 4,280 vehicles head west on Farm-to-Market 1885, the former site of the blinking yellow.

The traffic county at the heart of Peaster rebounds to 7,010 tapering to 6,065 continuing north. It’s fallen off to 3,297 crossing Gourdneck Creek but built back to 4,385 entering Poolville.

Another TxDOT online report, the Traffic Count Database System, indicates how volume has grown on the interstate and other highways in recent years.

That database marked the 2016 annual average daily traffic count at Willow Park/Hudson Oaks at 83,601 vehicles.

The volume rises annually to 98,821 by 2021, the latest year on that database.

As anyone who drives that stretch of the interstate knows, it just gets more crowded from there, though there is some relief as Weatherford traffic comes off at U.S. 180, the Fort Worth Highway. That exit counted 9,798 vehicles daily in 2018. The count rose to 11,403 the following year, but fell to 9,921 in 2020 before rebounding to 12,123 in 2021.

Traffic diminishes drastically by the Millsap Highway exit at Farm-to-Market 113, though the upward trend continues.

It rose from 502 vehicles in 2017 to 739 the following year, but tapered to 671 by 2021.