Baytown Sun Article

Made it to the paper again! Thanks to Mark Fleming for the great article.

Link: http://baytownsun.com/communities/mont_belvieu/article_a94708d4-4978-11e2-a684-001a4bcf887a.html

City planner: road project on track

Posted: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 12:00 am

By Mark Fleming mark.fleming@baytownsun.com

With parts of Eagle Drive in Mont Belvieu starting to look more like the boulevard it will become, residents are continuing to ask how soon it will be finished.

Mont Belvieu City Planner Bill Cobabe said the project is on track for the road to be completed before school begins in the fall for the 2013-2014 school year, and possibly earlier in the summer.

Cobabe said the reason the earlier part of the construction seems to have moved slowly is that much of the project involved putting in underground drainage – work that is not as visible as new traffic lanes. In fact, he said, the drainage work represents two-thirds of the cost of the project.

Once Eagle Drive is completed, it will no longer be a narrow highway with ditches, but will be a wide boulevard with curbs, gutters and a grassy median.

The median, in fact, will be wide enough to add an additional lane in each direction if that is needed in decades to come.

The design of the new road is intended to help promote smooth flow of traffic, he said.

For one thing, he said, using a median rather than a continuous turn lane reduces the number of traffic conflict points, smoothing traffic flow.

Also, he said, the city has tried to encourage businesses to voluntarily close some of the driveways connecting to the road to further reduce conflict points and improve both safety and traffic flow. While only a few agreed, he said code changes will limit the number of new driveways intersecting Eagle Drive.

Also, he said, the planned extension of FM 1409, roughly parallel to Eagle Drive, will take some of the potential traffic off the road.

Another question Cobabe has been hearing a lot lately concerns the land being cleared at the intersection of Eagle Drive north of Interstate 10.

He said the owner of the property is clearing it and intends to sell it for development, but there are no plans – even tentative ones – at this time. Rumors have named a number of possible businesses that could locate there, but they are just rumors.

With the coming construction of a Walmart on the south side of the interstate at Highway 146, Cobabe said commercial development is clearly moving toward Mont Belvieu, but most developers are waiting for more home construction before committing to build.

Projects like the rebuilding of Eagle Drive, though, mean that the infrastructure will be able to accommodate development when it comes.