Transportation committee recommends Elm, Cherry, Austin intersection redesign

The Graham Transportation Improvements Committee approved a recommendation this week to the Graham City Council to redesign Elm, Cherry and Austin Streets for added safety. Included with the recommendation is new signage as well as changes to the Cherry Street entries onto Elm Street.

The recommendation from the committee is to add candlestick delineator cones to stop traffic from entering Austin Street from Elm Street and from exiting Austin Street to Elm Street. Cherry Street will be one way with traffic coming off of Elm Street and 'no left turn' signs will be placed on Austin Street.

“The idea behind this was to try to encourage people to use the Brazos Street signalized intersection if they want to go back into that neighborhood or to go along to Montgomery to turn into that neighborhood if you’re coming from the north,” Graham TxDOT Engineer Zachary Husen said.

The committee said they believed with the construction of a new Starbucks planned for 1324 Hwy. 16, added traffic will be coming to the intersection and the potential for more crossing traffic.

“So when people come into or leave off of Austin Street, they’ve got to cross... that double white (line) to get out onto Elm Street and they commonly come into conflict with people trying to use that turn lane for something else,” Husen said. “It’s been that way and nothing’s really changed and it’s been for a long time, but we’re kind of worried about what’s going to happen when you sit at that sign at Austin Street and Starbucks is right across the street from them. I don’t want people to go for it.”

In the recommendation the Cherry Street middle stop and turn lane to Elm Street will be closed and a stop sign will be placed at the exit onto Elm Street closest to the corner near Aaron’s. Husen, who also serves on the committee, said the closing of that turning lane onto Cherry will eliminate some safety concerns.

“Another thing this is really helping with is from the skewed leg of Cherry Street, which is a really bad angle for you to be able to see to pull out there, it keeps people from even worrying about southbound traffic when they exit,” he said. “Since they can only see northbound traffic, they just get themselves into that turn lane. And having a good place to make a turn where you can see clearly in both directions will hopefully keep people from racing into the turn lane.”

Committee member Terry Bishop asked why they could not close off Austin Street entirely to entry from Elm Street. Husen said the reasoning behind not making that change is to accommodate for emergency services.

“One of my main concerns with looking at something like that is going to be the disruption of emergency services. Either fire rescue EMS, or police,” he said. “The thing about this is that a fire truck could barrel right over those (delineators) if they needed to get anywhere.”

Bishop said the board will have to see if the changes create more traffic on Montgomery Street or in the United Supermarkets parking lot. City Manager Eric Garretty said one of the changes that was approved by the city council will help on Montgomery Street.

“We’re mitigating Montgomery with the speed humps over there. If there is increased traffic load we can at least make it slow down. That’s going to be a part of this plan,” Garretty said. “What I was told by (former city manager) Larry Fields and some others was that people are going to get through the United parking lot no matter what you do.”

Garretty said the city will develop a flier for the community and get information posted on the city Facebook page regarding the changes to the intersection. The recommendation will be included in a future Graham City Council meeting for consideration.

Husen said if the changes are not working for the city they are able to be changed back to the previous layout.

“We’re not doing any demolition with this plan,” he said. “We’re not doing anything that’s extremely permanent. So if it crashes and burns, and sometimes they crash and burn, we can pluck it all right back out of the ground and put it right back like it is.”

“All we’re talking about is gluing stuff to the ground and installing some signs... (and) we’ll probably even add some other things. I’ll probably add a barricade or Type 3 (Barricade) to make sure it’s very apparent that the leg of the intersection is blocked off, that it’s no longer in use.”