Saturday's Internet Edition, May 17, 2008.
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| FAIRFIELD AREA RESIDENTS and city employees look over blueprints for relocating southbound I-45 exit ramps at FM 27 and U.S. 84. Texas Department of Transportion plans to move the ramps to ease traffic congestion. |
The meeting, attended by about two dozen people, was conducted by the city council last week as a preliminary step to approving a resolution in support of the project.
“This is just the first in a series of meetings,” city administrator Mike Gokey says.
No representatives of TxDOT attended the session, but Gokey reports the state agency plans to conduct public hearings before the project receives final approval.
Questions were raised about plans to turn the interstate access roads between FM 27 and U.S. 84 into 1-way traffic and about the proposed location of two southbound exit ramps.
But, Gokey points out that any requests for changes in the TxDOT proposal could delay, or cancel, construction.
The city administrator reports that the highway department has been planning the new exit ramps for five years, and it may take another five years before they are built.
Drawings viewed at the meeting show that the exit ramp to FM 27 will be relocated either a half-mile or a mile north of its present location, the shorter distance requiring purchase of some right-of-way.
The U.S. 84 exit ramp would start near the FM 27 bridge.
Relocation of the two exits will eliminate an I-45 access ramp near FM 27.
Gokey says part of the impetus to build the exit ramp to FM 27 is traffic problems since Love’s Travel Center opened at that intersection.
“It’s a problem, a serious problem,” the city administrator says.
He reports that Love’s plans to build an entry further north on the feeder road when a new exit ramp is built, which should relieve some of the congestion at the FM 27 and I-45 west service road intersection.
A bonus to relocating the FM 27 exit further north is that it will open up property for development along a new stretch of the access road, and Gokey says another hotel is in the planning stages for Fairfield.
One homeowner, Brenda Isaacs of the Willow Creek Farms subdivision a mile west of Fairfield on FM 27, is ready for traffic relief.
She reports that trucks have been routed from Love’s to her subdivision to turn around and have damaged her yard.
Former Mayor Larry Ivy points out that TxDOT concerns itself with safety, not economic development, when building roads. Safety features in the design of the exits is to alleviate traffic backups and changing flow on access roads to 1-way travel in which vehicles exiting I-45 merge with traffic.
Perhaps still smarting from a meeting a week earlier in which the council killed a public parking lot downtown and turned back a $150,000 grant, mayor pro tem Linda York declares: “I’m surprised to see the people concerned with safety issues last week are not here.”
“I think it’s good so see some new faces,” council member Jo Olive Zickuhr adds.