City unveils four options for new Trace Crossings connector to John Hawkins Parkway

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Hoover officials this week unveiled four potential routes to get a new road connection from the Trace Crossings community to John Hawkins Parkway.

City officials say they hope to divert some of the traffic currently using Stadium Trace Parkway, providing relief for a road that will gain more traffic as development continues.

Initially, there were 20 different routes being considered, but they were all variations of five base routes, said Tim Westhoven, the city’s chief operations officer. One of those base routes was eliminated because it would have cost about $35 million, City Administrator Allan Rice said.

That leaves four base routes, all of which would connect to Buccaneer Drive on the north side of the ring road around Hoover High School.

ALTERNATIVE 1

The first alternative would go through the Willow Trace part of Trace Crossings and would cost an estimated $3.1 million.

It would involve building a short connector between Buccaneer Drive and Trace Crossings Trail, which connects to Trace Crossings Drive to get to John Hawkins Parkway. That project also would include a modification to the intersection of Trace Crossings Trail and Trace Crossings Drive.

Option 1 would be expected to serve about 3,050 vehicles per day, sending traffic past 57 homeowners’ driveways and affecting traffic for 204 homes in total, Westhoven said.

ALTERNATIVE 2

The second alternative would go through the Cahaba River Estates community and cost an estimated $7.9 million. That route would use a portion of the existing Cahaba River Estates Road but also include a brand new section of road to bypass part of Cahaba River Estates Road. It would reconnect with Cahaba River Estates Road next to the Carmax used automobile dealership.

The second alternative would be expected to serve about 1,750 vehicles per day, impact 30 residential driveways and affect a total of 67 homes, Westhoven said. It also would include three traffic circles to discourage speeding.

ALTERNATIVE 3

The third alternative would take up part of an existing golf cart trail that leads to Hoover High School. A portion of that trail would be converted into a road that would be extended to connect with the parking lot at Hunter Street Baptist Church. It would go behind the church’s youth building before connecting with Hunter Street, which feeds into John Hawkins Parkway.

Option three would cost an estimated $4.5 million and serve an estimated 2,560 vehicles per day, Westhoven said. It would go behind some homes in Trace Crossings but impact no driveways or existing residential traffic, he said.

However, the problem with option three is that there is no traffic light where Hunter Street meets John Hawkins Parkway, and Hoover officials are not optimistic that the state would approve a traffic light there, Westhoven said.

ALTERNATIVE 4

The fourth alternative on the table would start out going between the Riverchase and Cahaba River Estates communities, then cut through part of Cahaba River Estates but not use much of the existing Cahaba River Estates Road. The through traffic would mostly be using a completely new road that connects back with Cahaba River Estates Road near Carmax.

Option four, which includes three bridges and two crosses over the Cahaba River, would cost an estimated $17.9 million and would be expected to serve about 1,620 vehicles per day. No residential driveways would be on the main thoroughfare, but about 32 existing homes would be affected to some degree by new traffic, Westhoven said.

Westhoven emphasized that city officials are still in the preliminary stages of identifying a good connector route and that no decisions have been made regarding any preferences or a prioritized list of the various options.

SCHOOL BOARD PROPERTY

Rice said he has had a preliminary discussion with Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy about the city’s desire to use Buccaneer Drive as a new route from Trace Crossings to John Hawkins Parkway. Buccaneer Drive is a private road owned by the school system.

Some school board members were present when Westhoven presented the four alternatives to the Hoover City Council’s Public Works Committee Monday night, but Rice said city officials plan to make a similar presentation to the full school board at its meeting this coming Tuesday, April 9, and be available to answer any questions that Murphy or school board members may have.

If the school board agrees to let Buccaneer Drive become a public road, there likely will need to be some modifications to the intersection of Buccaneer Drive and Learning Lane to accommodate extra traffic that is likely to use the new access route, Rice said.

“This is not a just a road to serve the high school or the Met complex,” Rice said. There likely will be traffic from some residential sections of Trace Crossings, too, he said.

There also has been some consideration given to the possibility of an ornamental fence to separate Buccaneer Drive from the high school, Rice said.

In the past, school officials have expressed reluctance to the idea of bringing non-school traffic to Buccaneer Drive.

School board President Craig Kelley said he definitely wants to do what is best for the city, but he and other school board members have concerns about whether making Buccaneer Drive public would pose a safety issue for students and others visiting the school campus.

He would like to see more research done on that issue but is willing to listen to hear more from city officials, he said.

Rice noted that Jaguar Drive, the access point for Spain Park High School, has a fair amount of non-school traffic as well, including traffic going to Jefferson State Community College and Veterans Park. Jaguar Drive stretches from Valleydale Road to Caldwell Mill Road.

Plus, it would be to Hoover High School’s advantage to have more than one way in and out, Rice said. The city just built two additional roads leading to Hoover High School, but they both connect back to Stadium Trace Parkway.

Having a second connection to John Hawkins Parkway would be good from both a traffic and public safety standpoint, Rice said.

“It would have been advantageous if the largest high school in Alabama had not been built on a dead-end street,” he said.

MORE INPUT SOUGHT

City officials have not had discussions with Hunter Street Baptist Church yet about the possibility of building a road through the church’s property but will do so if that option appears to gain momentum, Rice said.

The city administration wants to hear feedback from council members as well as the public about the four alternatives, Rice said.

“This is a huge project,” he said. “This is a long-term discussion, and it’s got a lot of moving parts."

Councilman Mike Shaw said he would like to see how this proposed connector road fits into the broader planning to handle traffic for Trace Crossings. There also have been discussions about building a new connector road from Trace Crossings or the Blackridge community just to the south of Trace Crossings, over to South Shades Crest Road.

Westhoven said that potential connector road to South Shades Crest is still a part of the proposed comprehensive plan.

Councilman John Greene, chairman of the council’s Public Work Committee, said getting a new connector road built for Trace Crossings is his No. 1 priority.

“I’m going to push forward with this as hard as I possibly can,” Greene said. “This is a safety issue that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.”

Mark Puhnaty, a resident in Willow Trace, said it would be ludicrous to put the access road through an existing subdivision. It would lower property values, congest traffic there and impact kids who live there, he said.

Dennis Daigle, a resident of the Bridgewater Park subdivision, which branches off Cahaba River Estates Road, said none of the four potential routes on the table would directly affect his neighborhood.

Of the four on the table now, he thinks the second alternative, which would use part of the existing Cahaba River Estates Road, makes the most sense. It would directly impact fewer people’s driveways than the route through Willow Trace, he said.

And the fourth option, at an estimated cost of $17.9 million, is too expensive, he said.

Barry Vickery of Cahaba River Estates said developers should be responsible for helping with the cost of access to their subdivisions.

This story was updated at 10:21 a.m. on April 5 with comments from residents of Willow Trace and Cahaba River Estates.