You just entered the construction zone on Interstate 35 through Temple, a scary place according to people who regularly drive through it.
Several times a week, Tivis Hitt drives this two-mile section to pick up truck parts for the half dozen tractor-trailers he maintains for a Belton trucking company.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” said Hitt, maintenance supervisor for Bar-J Trucking in Belton. “You get a wide vehicle or something going through, you have to slow it down, get as far right as you can. It needs to be widened a bunch.”
Retiree Stanley McCorcle sits at a large table full of coffee drinkers at the Nifty’s ’50s & ’60s café and holds his hands up like he was telling a fish story. But he’s not talking about the one that got away. He’s demonstrating the additional room drivers need on the sides of their vehicles in the construction zone that runs right in front of the restaurant.
“If they’d just widen it 18 inches, it would be all right,” McCorkle said. “If a man had to pull a boat or trailer, I don’t think they’d make it. If you bobble any at all, you’re going to hit the wall.”
The wall that McCorkle is worried about scraping with his 2007 Chevy Silverado is at one point about 25 feet high on the right. On the left, a row of concrete barriers effectively seal off traffic from making any evasive moves in the case of a blowout or other emergency.
Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ken Roberts drives through the construction zone twice a day. He said the absence of a shoulder, and driving beside the wall, could create an “illusion” that makes the lanes feel narrower than they actually are.
“That’s what scares folks,” Roberts said. “It’s just the lanes aren’t as open to what was there before.”
The lanes in question are 11 feet 6 inches wide, a half-foot narrower than a standard lane, Jon Obr, TxDOT engineer for Bell County, said. The lanes were recently moved against the wall so workers can excavate the section where the freeway will eventually run. Obr said it’s not something they wanted to do, but to keep traffic moving, they needed two lanes open in both directions.
But moving the lanes has created a slight curve, and semi-trailers sometimes bounce and fishtail, inching toward vehicles in the next lane. The truckers don’t like the construction zone any more than automobile drivers.
“I understand they had to take a piece of this lane and a piece of that lane, but it’s too tight,” said Bragg Kelly, a long-haul trucker who settled in Belton when he separated from the Army at Fort Hood 14 years ago. “They try to squeeze us big trucks in with little cars.”
The 41-year-old Kelly pulls a 53-foot box van with his 400-horsepower Freightliner. He said a steady hand is key to keeping that trailer tracking straight behind.
The American Automobile Association spokesman for Texas agrees. Dan Ronan (who recently drove through Temple) says stay in the middle of the lane, and “thread the needle.” Ronan urges drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and off the cell phone.
Temple-area drivers complain that drainage through the construction zone is poor, causing water to back up in large puddles that force cars out of their lanes.
Other than slowing down, drivers’ next best approach might be to practice patience. TxDOT officials say construction should be finished by year’s end.
