I strongly OPPOSE closing the Wood Street crossing, and favor closing Brooks Street instead.
1.The Brooks Street crossing is basically a “crossing to nowhere”.. It does not feed a subdivision, school, or business.
2.To the contrary, Wood Street feeds three subdivisions, three schools and numerous Daycare facilities.
3.Their “study” of traffic flow that showed Brooks as having more traffic than Wood Street does NOT take into account that 100% of the Brooks Street traffic is actually going up MAIN STREET, and the drivers are only using Brooks to play “traffic light roulette” with the light at Main Street… The only effect of closing Brooks will be to require the Main Street traffic to actually USE Main Street.
4.Traffic on Wood Street actually goes to residents of Wood Street!
5.To check their study findings, I stayed at the Brooks Street crossing for 6 hours – from 8AM to 2PM while the Main Street crossing was closed for service. During those 6 hours, only FOUR vehicles crossed at Brooks: one railroad construction vehicle, one 18-wheel delivery vehicle, which turned LEFT and went up Ulrich to the new subdivision, and two vehicles that attempted to turn right to go to Main Street, and had to turn around. Proves non-use
6.Their contention that Brooks Street will EVENTUALLY bring traffic to the Imperial Development has no substance, since the more direct crossing now is Ulrich, and the actual entrance will be the new University crossing – which is the reason they WANT the University crossing in the first place. Ulrich will then be the secondary entrance. Brooks will remain an unnecessary crossing, still feeding only Main Street traffic.
7.Even IF the Brooks Street crossing is intended to serve a development/Event area at the Imperial Sugar building, having traffic CROSS at Brooks to get there, would cause major traffic bottlenecks. Every other venue has their parking or facility entrance at a place AWAY from the venue, so traffic flow can be controlled.
(such as at; Houston Zoo, NRG, Toyota center, Hermann Park theater, etc)
8.Closing Wood St would require upgrades to Kempner between Wood and Main, and the complete reworking of the Main St crossing to accommodate this intersection's expansion. making a "left" from Kempner at Main to cross the tracks - especially when the tracks are doubled - is a hazardous proposition at best.
9. Closing Wood St increases the traffic on Main, which is now a bottleneck between 90A and Jess Pirtle. Adding the Wood St. Traffic to a street that can NOT be widened or improved will cause impossible traffic conditions through The Hill.
I am a long time advocate of more north/south mobility in Sugar Land, the closure of any street has a negative impact. As a former member of the Sugar Land City Council, a member of the Houston - Galveston Area Transportation Council for five years, and the Ft. Bend Mobility Committee, I have strongly support the proposed crossing of University BLVD into the Imperial Redevelopment project. This is the final section of this important mobility project.
As a resident on the north side for 30+ years, I have used everyone of the intersections multiple times, so there will be an impact regardless of whether Wood Street or Brookstreet is closed. However, given the fact the Imperial Redevelopment is going forward with the announced locations of the Ft. Bend Children's Discovery Center and The Sugar Land Heritage Museum, the forthcoming residential components that Planning / Zoning is now reviewing, the proposed office and retail space, as well as the potential for a hotel and entertainment venues in the former refinery site, the closing of Brookstreet would be detrimental to the redevelopment!
The Plan Development (PD) for this project shows the extension of Brookstreet into the redevelopment. The PD has been through both Planning & Zoning and City Council processes which included public hearings, traffic impact studies, etc. To close the Brookstreet crossing now would undermine the above City processes!
Sincerely,
Dennis Parmer