Staffers with the cities of Round Rock and Pflugerville are looking at ways to connect a frontage road on SH 45 that currently forces drivers to pass through a neighborhood or enter the toll road.

Driving west on the SH 45 N frontage from Pflugerville, motorists are forced to either turn onto Heatherwilde Boulevard or enter SH 45. Driving east the frontage road puts them on the toll road's north side, at which point it becomes a two way road. As the two way road ends drivers are forced onto Donnell Drive.

"[The frontage roads] appear to be intended to connect at some point in the future," Pflugerville Assistant City Manager Trey Fletcher said. "People new to the area perceive it to be a gap.[] It seems to be an incomplete component of the roadway system."

Now city staffers are hoping for one continuous frontage road, but the decision is not completely up to Round Rock or Pflugerville.

"At the end of the day, none of us [Pflugerville or Round Rock staffers] have any control over what happens there," Round Rock Transportation Director Gary Hudder said. "It will strictly be a decision of the [Texas Department of Transportation."

The cities of Round Rock and Pflugerville are doing a revenue impact study to "ensure there is no negative impact" on the toll road's revenue, Fletcher said. Once TxDOT officials see the study they will decide whether to proceed with the frontage road connection.

Brad Wiseman, director of the Planning and Zoning Department for Round Rock, said the issue surfaced after a developer put in a request for a zoning change to build townhomes by Donnell Drive.

"Really this connection is not a regional issue; it's to serve the local traffic," Wiseman said at an Aug. 21 City Council meeting. "So hopefully they'll see the wisdom in connecting that regardless of this zoning change."

TxDOT Spokeswoman Kelli Reyna said the frontage road was not connected when the toll road was built because the agency only had to build frontages from roads that already existed.

Hudder said he did not know why the road was never connected before TxDOT built SH 45 N. Fletcher said it could have been because the property to connect the roads was never acquired before the state built the toll road.

Drivers sometimes use Winding Way, a residential street, to get to High Country Boulevard and then to Donnell Drive to continue along the frontage road. Robert Barrera, an engineer who lives off Winding Way, said he has seen high amounts of traffic on the street in the afternoon.

"We have three kids who use this area quite a bit, so it'd be nice [if they completed the frontage road]," Barrera said.

Barb Swetman, a Round Rock resident, said the break in the road is a "huge inconvenience" when getting to stores or services along SH 45 N.

"It adds to the confusion of the traffic pattern," Swetman said. "You go through a neighborhood you shouldn't have to go through. They just don't seem to have a purpose in how they laid it out."

Hudder said the are is difficult to deal with because of high amounts of afternoon traffic getting fed into it from the toll road. He said the cities of Round Rock and Pflugerville and Williamson and Travis counties all converge in the area, giving no one entity total control.

"It's a fairly intricate shared responsibility," he said. "That's in addition to [TxDOT]."