Let's clear up two minor issues at the outset:
The brand-new signal
on Boerne Stage Road at Baywater Stage is not a TxDOT asset. That signal belongs to
Bexar County Public Works.
They are working on any timing issues and, by now, should have most of
the kinks worked out. As with any signal, there's about a week's worth
of growing pains before engineers find that sweet spot of timing that
works best for traffic flow.
We've gotten a few complaints about a signal head that's turned on
Boerne Stage Road at HEB. This signal belongs to the city of San Antonio and any issues about that signal should be
directed to them.
Now, on to our issues.
Buckle up, this is going to be a longer post....
The
biggest frustration has been from the new arrangement of the bridge
over Leon Creek near Rudy's, with it cut to one-way only so crews can
reconstruct the bridge. The bridge is being built in two halves,
requiring us to have a single lane open only. This has created
significant issues during the morning hours, though we're not seeing
issues through the remainder of the day.
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| Once
SAWS signs off on this valve and bypass, work to reconstruct this
bridge will begin. During that time it will be a one-way road; it will
reopen to two-way traffic when its complete. That will be this summer. |
Some have asked how we couldn't have seen an issue
like this occurring prior to work beginning. To be as simple as possible
on this, we do conduct traffic studies during the planning processes.
Our traffic control plan is based on an average
per-hour traffic
volume. This whole area, beyond early morning traffic, is really quite
manageable. In fact, beyond a brief lunch rush through Leon Springs and
an evening rush for folks getting home, traffic through the area is
incredibly light.
While we did
try to account for the issue of elementary school traffic, the sheer
volume of traffic during the hours of 6-9 a.m. was simply far beyond our
own projection.
All that said,
here's a run-down of proposed solutions by those in the community and
the results of our discussion regarding each. We'll also include some
potential solves not brought up by residents but thought of by our guys in the field.
Option 1: Place officers to control traffic around Ralph Fair Road intersection during morning hours.
This
option was introduced by a number of folks who called or emailed us
regarding traffic problems. Unfortunately this won't solve the capacity
issues at the heart of the whole situation, and there's no reason to believe having officers direct traffic will do any better than what the traffic signal is doing for us now - the gridlock being experienced will still exist.
Option 2: Have Bexar County Sheriff patrol the Ralph Fair Road intersection to stop dangerous driving behavior from happening.
We've
heard about a "black truck" that's been making its own lanes wherever
it feels inclined to go, including the grassy median and within areas
where our workers are busy doing their jobs. Whomever the driver of the
truck is ... well, you're now
infamous and have your neighbors taking pictures of your license plate
to report you. While we can't do any enforcement of these things
ourselves, we can ask the county to help with traffic enforcement.
Unfortunately we aren't able to provide compensation to guarantee law
enforcement on-site. That's all up to the sheriff's office to respond to
community requests.
Option 3: Open the eastbound between Ralph Fair and Boerne Stage to capacity (two lanes) as soon as possible.
Discussing
with the contractor, the eastbound frontage road between Ralph Fair and
Boerne Stage roads should be opened up to capacity around
the end of the school year. The sticking point is the new bridge over
Leon Creek, which is a work item being accelerated on this project. We
know we're on a clock here, and expect traffic to get a bit tougher near
the end of April when Wal-Mart opens up. While we do have some items to
finish that will ease traffic between Ralph Fair and Wal-Mart - and
those items will be taken care of - our primary focus is on that bridge.
Once that bridge is opened back up we'll be able to open the whole
frontage road up and traffic will start flowing a little easier.
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| This
eastbound bridge over Leon Creek is being accelerated as much as
possible and traffic is about to be switched to the left side (new
side), but we still expect the duration of this work to last through the
end of the school year. |
Option
4: Open the eastbound frontage road between Ralph Fair and the new
eastbound entrance ramp to full capacity (two lanes), effectively
creating an auxiliary or an exit lane – also a merge lane for traffic on
the west-to-east turnaround.
There are a few items to address here. First is the new entrance ramp that opened this week. That should give
drivers a better experience getting onto the main lanes and affording a
better flow for traffic coming from Ralph Fair. That said, we'll take a
look at traffic and see what all else can be done, including extending
that second lane. This isn't an option our engineers are excited about,
because of the way it may impact driver behavior; that said, if the
need exists after we've got the new ramp in place we'll re-examine some
of our options.
 |
| Crews
are expected to open the new eastbound entrance ramp from Ralph Fair
tonight; this should help the morning traffic flow a bit. |
Option 5: Open up Boerne Stage Road under the I-10 overpass.
This will happen this week, meaning we'll have two lanes in each direction on Boerne Stage under I-10. This should help get more folks into Leon Springs and help the traffic headed to Leon Creek Elementary in the mornings.
Option 6: Contraflow the roadway between Boerne Stage Road and Aue Rd for morning traffic.
A contraflow
is a roadway that goes one direction at one time during the day and is
switched to the other direction at another time. The idea here is to
make that roadway eastbound during the morning hours and westbound the
remainder of the day. This is an option we've looked at long and hard,
but ultimately had to defer to safety. Contraflowing could lead to some
confusion for drivers who may not be keeping track of the hours the road
flowed in a specific direction. The ultimate fear is having a wrong-way
driver collision, which can often be catastrophic. Because of these
issues the contraflow option has been determined as not feasible.
By the way, the reason we have that road going west and not east? There's no other way to go west, period. That's part of why we have the problems we're having - there's only one route to go each direction.
This
kind of falls in the same arena as the contraflow system we just talked
about. With so many signals and intersections in this area already,
adding another would likely result in greater problems - that is, this
option would cause more problems than it would solve.
Option 8: Reopen the frontage road between Boerne Stage and Aue roads until the eastbound frontage road work is complete.
The
real issue here is whether or not we'll be able to get to work soon -
and that's a ball that's in SAWS' court. At issue is a valve that
diverts a water line; if the valve is working properly, we'll get after
it now. If not, we'll reconsider. Our priority is to get the work done
as soon as possible, and the bridge reconstruction is going to take us
about six months (we're trying to crash that down a month or so, but
there's only so much money we can spend here). That's pretty typical,
six months. If we start now as planned, we'd be finished in time for
next school year. If we wait until the eastbound side is complete we'll
overlap the start of next school year. We really don't want that. What's
more, we'd push overall completion of the project back even more ...
and we're trying hard to avoid that.
All said, if SAWS gives us the go-ahead on that valve, we'll get rocking and you'll see bridge demo happening next week.
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| This valve needs to be signed off by SAWS before demo work on the bridge between Boerne Stage and Aue roads can start. |
