Progress on Sandy Lake Road!

I talked with Coppell City Manager Clay Phillips late last week and he informed me that it appears that some of the real estate right-of-way acquisition related to Sandy Lake Road westward from Denton Tap Road has come to a successful conclusion. It will take a few weeks to get the legal formalities handled, but this is exciting progress indeed. While Clay was expectedly circumspect with regard to when the project may actually be underway or completed, he assured me that this is a high priority for the City and that progress should be apparent within a relatively short timeframe.

The disappointing part (not surprising to me) is that the project scope will only run westward to the three-way intersection with Coppell Road, and will not, at this time, include the remainder (west from there to North Coppell Road) as that section was "federalized" some time back and the bridge and wetlands related to the creek crossing will cause ongoing delays and an undetermined timeline as of now.

Hopeful progress nonetheless...

Sandy Lake Road - No progress...

I had the occasion to speak to a city council member a few weeks ago and I was assured that the long-delayed (10 years is long to me...) Sandy Lake Road widening/rebuilding project from Denton Tap westward was almost ready to go forward. I hope that proves to be true.

I pray that the City get the necessary momentum behind this critical project before someone is seriously injured (or worse). While we (as a City) have long hidden behind the idea that getting the plans done, right of way acquired and cooperation with the Federal Government arranged due to the impact on creeks and lowlands have all created the delays, the fact is that HAD we truly made this project a priority it would have been completed long ago. I know, I know - there will have to be trees removed to make this project a reality. My intuition tells me that the tree issue is one of the main reasons this has all taken so long.

It is time to get this project moving forward and off of the planning board. Our children need a safe way to get to and from the High School, we all need the reduction in traffic congestion that will ultimately result, and we need the City Council to take action on what the voters very clearly noted to be a priority some 10 years ago.

Sandy Lake Road vs. Safety of Our Kids and Timely Execution on Voter Mandates

While Coppell is, in many ways, a great city, we still have opportunities for improvement on several important fronts, the most significant of which is safety. On that topic, I have for several years been interested in seeing the remainder of Sandy Lake Road upgraded and completed to equal the rest of its length which was completed in years past.

Several generations of Coppell City Council have, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, chosen to defer, rather than act on, the mandate that the voters gave the City in the Bond election dated November 1999 which will someday see the remainder of Sandy Lake Road completed from Denton Tap westward to Coppell Road North.

As a result of the continuing delays in following-up on the voters’ mandate in a timely fashion, as school began on August 25, we once again saw (and continue to see) those high school students who, because they live too close to Coppell High School to qualify for free bus service, put their personal safety at risk as they walk to and from the High School. For those students who live directly south of Sandy Lake Road, the daily trek to school involves a dangerous crossing over Sandy Lake, coupled with, on one side or the other, a perilous walk alongside 35 mph traffic on the sloping embankment of the adjacent drainage ditch. There is no shoulder on that section of Sandy Lake Road, nor any sidewalks.

While the installation of a traffic signal at the Whispering Hills and Sandy Lake intersection affords a modicum of improvement, it is certainly not THE solution. I would never willingly choose to walk along or cross Sandy Lake Road in that area, and I strongly suspect that no one on the City Council would do so themselves, or allow their children to put themselves at such risk.

I passionately ask that the Council and the City work to immediately develop a short-term solution to this safety issue (crosswalk, pedestrian activated all-direction red light, on-site police during school transit times, SOMETHING), AND establish and honor a reasonable time line to begin and complete the voter mandated reconstruction and improvement of this important artery.

It has been nearly NINE YEARS since voters approved the project. I do recognize that there are many challenging issues that must be resolved in such a project – to include planning and design work, right of way acquisition, wetlands mitigation and countless others, but I am of the very strong opinion that we’ve all waited long enough.

In the years since voter approval of the aforementioned roadway, the Council and City have taken action (as approved by the voters) to rebuild dozens of miles of other area roads, many of which were authorized through bond elections more recent than the one that is the subject of these thoughts. Perhaps language should be inserted in future bond packages mandating that the authorized projects be sequential relative to their approval dates so that future Councils cannot choose to unreasonably defer the voter’s mandates while moving forward on later approvals.

The Council and City decided, in addition to the many miles of streets and other meaningful improvements to our fair city, to add new amenities to include the “sundial park” adjacent to City Hall along with a now-under-construction city cemetery. I just hope that we don’t one day need to use both of those amenities as a result of a lack of urgency in executing the Sandy Lake project - first as a gathering area to express our community grief and secondly as a final resting place for a student tragically lost because we’ve chosen to defer for so long the completion of this important piece of roadway.

In closing, let me cite a quote from Coppell Mayor Doug Stover’s May 2008 State of The City as extracted from the City’s website. While Mayor Stover was writing on the topic of the City’s longstanding dispute regarding extraterritorial development proposed at North Lake, I believe the following portions of his quote are equally well-placed when considered in the context of the topic of this writing: “The City's eminent domain case is still progressing through the court system, but we will not rest until the public interest is protected and public services are provided for.“