It’s never too late. Making 377 a real “Benbrook Boulevard” would also affect development further out, as it would add just the tiniest bit of friction to driving through Benbrook, encouraging drivers to use multiple routes, adjust driving schedules, and perhaps reconsider moving so far out from town in the first place. If the state turns 377 into a bigger highway, it’ll just make it easier for *even more* of that development farther out to occur, making traffic much worse in the future.

Again, just my thoughts.

And Neil, when I said I wished we hadn’t settled where we did, I meant because of the difficulty of traversing 377 daily–it’s a nasty drive, sorry!!!

Annie, sorry, I just thought that this sounded a little negative.

“I would like nothing more than to never have settled where we are.”

No worries.. Neil

Be careful what you wish for when it comes to widenings – if you think drivers are crazy on 377 now, making the road wider will make people more comfortable with speeding. I wager that making 377 six lanes would make people speed even worse than they do now. And when the congestion does come (and it will), you’ll have a lot more cars clogging the road than you do now, because of those extra lanes.

Instead, I’d like to see 377 transformed into something akin to Lancaster Avenue in Downtown Fort Worth. Highways entering towns should become boulevards. Keep 377 four lanes, add a brick & landscaped median with turn lanes at intersections & major destinations, add wide sidewalks with trees along the street edge, maybe use some of the space that would have been the two extra lanes to add protected bike lanes (just brainstorming here), add clearly defined entry & egress for businesses but design the street such that it would become a classic town boulevard in the future with new development taking a more traditional “main street” orientation rather than the parking lot & box model that exists now. In short, make the street a place that can become a real part of the city of Benbrook, rather than a traffic sewer that just shoots cars past as quickly as possible. It might take years and years afterwards, but the built environment along this new 377 could slowly start to transform into something better than the strip malls & gas stations model that’s there now. You have to plan for years and generations to come – it might seem incongruous at first, but making 377 a real boulevard rather than just a six-lane speeding highway could have a profoundly positive impact on Benbrook for many, many years to come. TxDOT’s design, I’m guessing, doesn’t care about improving the surrounding built environment – they’re just concerned with pushing cars through as fast as possible. Again, for an example of the sort of ham-fisted remakes that TxDOT does to “highways” in cities, just look at Rosedale here in Fort Worth’s Near Southside. TxDOT’s remade six-lane Rosedale is a disaster, a wasteland of pavement, tiny sidewalks, and speeding cars that serves as little more than a barrier to good growth. We’re actually spending money to *undo* what TxDOT did and take the street back down to four lanes with better pedestrian & bike facilities. I’d just hate to see Benbrook get the same sort of junk that TxDOT did to Rosedale. Benbrook could use a real sense of place – as long as the roads passing through it continue to be treated as simplistic highways, that will be difficult to achieve. 377 might *technically* be a highway, but where it passes through Benbrook the city should take hold of its own interests and control its own destiny, and not let the state traffic engineers who don’t care about the city’s sense of place decide for it. Make it a real “Benbrook Boulevard.” Letting TxDOT make it a six-lane highway won’t do that – there’s nothing “Boulevard” about it.

But that’s just my idea, of course. Your mileage may vary.

You’ve been to Bryant Irvin right? It is far from calm and really not appealing at all.

Try not to be so negative about Benbrook. Benbrook has a lot going for it good community, good schools, nice YMCA and park system, access to Trinity trails, Lake. etc.. Improving 377 would be another small step.. but like Kevin says, this stuff takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/1445519.html

I’m not sure why these engineers who do these studies are so in favor of the “bigger-is-better” approach. Is there less of an effort to change our transportation habits in the suburbs because we still have the land for expansion (versus in the central part of the city where space is already at a premium)?

Great incite on the issue of induced demand! This type of public education makes people more aware of these types of problems and will help bring about the change needed in FW/D transportation planning.

Keep it up,

Stephen

Thanks!