In the next few weeks, the town of Flower Mound will retime the traffic signals at and around the intersection of FM 2499 and FM 407 to help address worsening traffic congestion.
In addition to the major intersection, the traffic lights at FM 407/Chinn Chapel Road and FM 407/Marketplace will be retimed, and some of the new timing plans will change the sequence of east/west left turns during the day, according to Matt Hotelling, senior engineering transportation manager. The retiming is meant to minimize blockages and delays as much as possible, but it won’t eliminate congestion at the intersection, which now gets noticeably worse around noon on Fridays.
“The traffic along the entire FM 2499 corridor picks up a lot around the noon hour on Fridays,” Hotelling said. “We have started using our evening plan around noon on Fridays because of this increase in traffic. This increase appears to be from workers working half-day Fridays. We will continue this practice of implementing the evening peak traffic plan this early on Fridays because of this increase in traffic volume.”
The town of Flower Mound is currently working with the city of Highland Village, Denton County and the Texas Department of Transportation on plans to ultimately add some turn lanes at FM 407 and FM 2499 to improve the traffic flow. Second left turn lanes in the east, west and south directions are expected to be added, as well as a right turn lane from southbound FM 2499 and an additional northbound lane. This project is still early in the planning stages and is at least two years away from construction.
To get around the congestion at the intersection, more drivers have been taking Chinn Chapel and Dixon Lane. After the turn lanes are added at 2499/407 — which will be in several years — the town will re-evaluate traffic and may then add a bypass lane at the Chinn Chapel/Dixon roundabout, allowing west-to-northbound traffic to avoid yielding to roundabout traffic and driving straight from Dixon to the right lane of Chinn Chapel.