By Andy Sevilla

The need for substantial road improvements in Kyle pushed voters to approve a $36 million road bond last May to address five streets. 

Now, the first reconstruction project, the Bunton Creek Road improvements — identified by city leaders as a “dangerous road” due to its deterioration — is expected to cost $1.6 million more than initially expected.

Based on preliminary numbers, the Bunton Creek Road improvements could cost $6.6 million, City Engineer Leon Barba told council members at an Aug. 20 meeting. But under cost estimates provided to voters in 2013, those improvements were expected at only $5 million.

“It kind of blew me away how over budget we’re going to be on just that first road,” Kyle Mayor Todd Webster, who was not in office when voters approved the road bond, said at the meeting.

Bunton Creek Road, a main thoroughfare to Lehman High School in Kyle’s east side, would be improved from Interstate 35’s access road east to Lehman Road. Under the current improvement plan, the road would begin with three lanes at the access road and expand to four lanes and then to five lanes in some areas; the road then would transition back down to four lanes just past Dacy Lane and down to two lanes just before Lehman Road. 

Council member Samantha LeMense, a safety professional at texas Lehigh Cement Co., expressed concern with the hazards posed by the roadway continuously transitioning into different lane counts. She said that’s not how she envisioned the project.

Barba told the council an alternative improvement for Bunton Creek Road, would have only three lanes from the access road to just before Lehman Road, which would bring the project’s cost closer to its allotted budget.

He said right-of-way acquisition and utility line relocation costs would substantially lower with the alternate improvement proposition.

Piggy-backing off of Barba’s alternate plan, LeMense asked why Bunton Creek Road was being considered for more than three lanes, especially since FM 1626 in the future is expected to be extended to Goforth and Lehman Roads to help ease traffic off of Bunton. 

LeMense asked council if there are traffic benefits to have Bunton Road reconstructed to more than three lanes, or if it was just to try and get federal and state money through CAMPO (Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization).

“There’s not really a point of extending this much,” she said. “It handles traffic just fine. It’s just horribly designed. There are potholes where you could lose your car.”

Webster agreed with LeMense, saying Bunton Creek Road handles the current traffic well. The existing problem, he said, is that the roadway is serving as more of a one-lane road now. Everybody is driving in the middle of the road to avoid potholes and disappearing and deteriorating roadway on its sides, he said.

“My opinion is three lanes max, and don’t go cheap on the material, because we have way, way, heavy, heavy, heavy trucks that go down that road,” LeMense said. “And we actually need to make sure that it’s structurally sound enough to hold that weight.”

Mayor Pro-tem Diane Hervol, who seemed poised to keep the current project plan and not decrease the road extension to only three lanes, argued that the city’s explosive growth demands the added lanes. 

“In the next couple of years you’re going to see some growth in there,” she said.

With Walmart opening next year, Hervol said the company’s trucks would likely use Bunton Creek Road., despite it not directly connecting to Walmart. She said school busses and increasing traffic also use the road. With not knowing the date of the potential FM 1626 extension, the roadway should be structurally sound and have extended lanes. 

Ultimately, council members directed staff to set up a workshop with the engineer to decide on how many lanes to reconstruct the roadway.

At the Sept. 2 meeting, council members recommended designing the road within the right of way and within monetary parameters to “the extent possible,” according to Webster.

The city also will have a third meeting to discuss the Bunton Creek Road project with stakeholders and the public at 7 p.m. Sept. 9 at Lehman High School.