Worry and inconvenience has increased for student drivers with the start of the new year as the city of Frisco begins intersection improvement projects.
The increased presence of roadwork is part of Frisco’s new Capital Improvement Project, which will expand several main roads.
“To accommodate the city’s growth, the Capital Improvement Project will add lanes to improve capacity at seven of the highest volume intersections in Frisco,” said a statement on the City of Frisco’s Intersection Improvements web page.
Although this project is projected to aid Frisco’s population growth, it has created safety concerns for young drivers.
“It’s really nerve wracking to drive on roads where sometimes there’s only one lane open when previously there were three,” sophomore Bailey Brown said. “Everyone is crammed into one lane and you never know what people are going to do.”
Newer drivers, which includes most student drivers, are often uncomfortable driving close to construction sites.
“It makes me worried to drive on big roads because many drivers who have never driven in these new construction sites are more likely to have a collision with me,” sophomore Sydney Schwartz said.
Student drivers are also unaccustomed to driving in heavy traffic to get around town, which can be an adjustment.
“As someone that isn’t the most talented driver, being confined to a single lane with construction cones is very frustrating because you constantly have to speed up and slow down,” junior Emma Brito said.
Beyond safety concerns, students express annoyance with the additional driving time and traffic the construction has produced.
“I was driving to morning practice on Dallas Parkway recently and because of the construction they made it one lane,” Brito said. “There was a big truck going two mph and stopping everyone saying the road won’t be open till 7 a.m. This was a major inconvenience and I barely made it to practice on time.”
For some students, travel time to and from school has more than doubled.
“It takes me almost 30 minutes to get home from school, when before the break it only took me around 10 minutes,” sophomore Stiles Ferguson said.
In order to accommodate for the traffic delays, students are forced to give up time they spend on other activities.
“With the implementation of all these new road projects I am unable to get to places on time, which means I have to leave even earlier to places like school,” Schwartz said. “This is causing me to get much less sleep than I usually would as a high school student.”
