Residents of a condominium community in Southwest Austin are refusing to concede in their ongoing endeavor to install a traffic light at a nearby intersection.

Jesse Bennight and Art Bedrosian, residents of the Escondera Condominiums, have been vocal advocates for a traffic signal at Southwest Parkway and Terravista Drive since they moved into the neighborhood.

“There have been three to four accidents per year, and the number keeps growing,” Bennight said. “It’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed.”

Built with private funds in the late ’80s, it was not until Southwest Parkway was purchased by Travis County that any development occurred in the area, Bedrosian said. Since then, he said traffic along the road has seen a dramatic increase.

“Up until three years ago it was pretty much ranchland,” Bedrosian said. “That’s not the case anymore.”

Today, Southwest Parkway is a six-lane roadway divided by a grassy median with a speed limit of 55 mph. During peak hours, Bennight claims the average speed ranges from 70-75 mph. Even the police, Bennight said, are hesitant to enforce speed limits.

“[The police] said it is not safe, that he can’t even get into the flow of traffic to pull people over,” he said.

Bedrosian also spoke of the noise resulting from the increase in traffic, which he said regularly exceeds 67 decibels. The Texas Department of Transportation considers traffic noise louder than 66 decibels as a noise impact for a residential area, according to the city of Austin’s Department of Transportation.

“If it were a new construction, they would have had to put in noise walls,” Bedrosian said.

Instead of responding to the growth of developments in the area and installing safety measures along the roadway, Bedrosian alleges the city has handled this traffic light request the same way it has approached traffic issues citywide—by neglecting to act until the situation has grown out of control.

“What we call planning in Austin is not planning,” he said. “We have accepted the growth of traffic in this city that has resulted inaction and a lack of creativity by the city’s transportation department.”

The city’s transportation department has a queue for building traffic signals, which is prioritized based on three areas of evaluation—traffic observations, nearby establishments that might generate pedestrians, and crash history, according to transportation department’s Assistant Director Jim Dale.

“The city has a process to study, rank and construct traffic signals based on funding,” Dale said. “As signal requests are received, engineers observe and score each intersection based on a number of factors, including crashes.”

The impact of development

The 9-acre Lantana IV mixed-use project is the latest development to sprout up along Southwest Parkway.

In hopes of building a larger patio on his restaurant endcap, Bedrosian said developer Doug Ivey sought the support of the Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods in pursuing a zoning change through the city’s Planning Commission.

The commission has since approved the request. City Council also approved the request on April 20 in an 8-3 vote.

The association agreed on several conditions, including the stipulation that Ivey must contribute funds to construct a traffic light at the corner of Southwest Parkway and Terravista.

“Escondera realizes that development is inevitable, but it needs to be done right,” said Bedrosian, a member of the Escondera Condominium Owner’s Association’s board of directors. “In this case, ‘right’ means taking care of potential traffic issues that are going to occur.”

Ivey agreed to contribute $164,500 toward the light, which Bedrosian said would cost $225,000.

On April 20, Bedrosian received word from Dale that leftover funds from the construction of the first two lights on the department’s priority list would be used to construct the two highest-priority projects already partially funded by traffic impact fees, or fees paid by area developers to mitigate potential traffic. One of those projects is the light at Southwest Parkway and Terravista.

Bedrosian said he was pleased to hear the news, but he will not feel vindicated until the light is constructed and fully functioning.

“I am a firm believer in Yogi Berra,” he said. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”