Woodway to add bike, pedestrian lanes on Estates, cut others

The city plans to change the traffic lanes on that part of Estates Drive from two lanes each way, to one lane each way, while adding a central turn lane and combined bicycle and pedestrian lanes divided from the rest of the road. The work will include resurfacing, and it will be done within the curb-to-curb width of the present roadway, said Mitch Davison, the city’s community services and development director.

The project also includes some lane restriping on West Fairway Road and repainting the bike lanes already on the portion of Estates Drive that runs from the Carleen Bright Arboretum to Woodway Park at Lake Waco, Davison said.

The Woodway City Council included the entire project in the fiscal year 2024 budget with $300,000 planned, city documents show. The city council last week unanimously approved hiring MRB Group PC for almost $50,000. MRB will design the new lanes, assist the city in choosing how to separate the bike lanes from the vehicle lanes, and provide oversight of the bidding and execution of the project, council documents show.

Davison anticipates the whole project to be completed by next year around late spring or summer.

Estates Drive will be reconfigured from Midway Drive, near Woodway Elementary School, to where it intersects West Fairway Road, next to the public safety department and City Hall. The project will leave unchanged the portion fronting the school and continuing to the Highway 84 frontage road, with four traffic lanes and a turn lane. The unchanged portion of Estates Drive also goes past two pharmacies and other businesses.

The stretch that will be reconfigured goes through a mostly residential area and now has four traffic lanes, with no turn lane. After the project the road will have one traffic lane in each direction, a turn lane, and a pair of bike-pedestrian lanes on the same side of the roadway as the school and Woodway City Hall.

The bike-pedestrian lanes will be separated from the traffic lanes by striping and a combination of high and low bollards.

Council Member John Williams said he believes that when people on bikes have their own lane they will be involved in fewer crashes than they would be riding in the vehicle lanes. This was what he saw in Indianapolis when bike lanes were added to some streets, he said.

The city does not have right-of-way in the project area to put in a sidewalk on Estates Drive where there is not one now, but it can repurpose a traffic lane for bicycles and pedestrians.

MRB will complete the design phase later this year. Bidding for a construction contract will be conducted early next year with the work expected to be complete by the summer.

Davison said the seal coat could be one of two types of resurfacing, neither of which would involve completely tearing up the roadway and fully repaving.

“If they use the typical TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) seal coat, they’ll put an oil down, and then they’ll put a rock material over the top of it,” Davison said. “They may do what we call more of a slurry seal where it’s more just a thin asphalt layer that would cover it.”

Before putting the project in the budget, the city hired a traffic engineer to verify that the number of vehicles currently travelling and projected to travel the portion of Estates Drive to be changed would be supported by the new configuration of lanes, Davison said.

The idea to make that part of Estates Drive more friendly to cyclists and walkers began around 2015, with a suggestion to put in a sidewalk, Davison said. Doing some research the city found it does not have sidewalk easements, and buying the easements from all the homeowners along that area was deemed too expensive, Davison said.

More recently the idea of converting one traffic lane into a walking and riding lane came up, he said. As the city’s financial reserves grew more healthy, staff put this version of the project in the budget last summer and the council approved it, he said.

Also during its Nov. 13 meeting, the Woodway council voted unanimously to add four additional handicapped parking spaces to plans for the front of the new Woodway Family Center under construction, for a total of eight handicapped parking spaces. The extra spaces will cost a total of no more than $65,000 in an amendment to the existing contract with John W. Erwin General Contractor Inc.

The council also approved an almost $39,000 design contract for plans to create a parking lot with about 20 spaces to serve the Carleen Bright Arboretum. The lot is planned on a residential lot the city owns in the 1100 block of Wood Valley Drive, next to the arboretum. The city hired Walker Partners to do the design work, oversee the bidding and supervise construction. The whole budget for the parking lot may not exceed $200,000.