Our community in Northwest Fort Worth has exploded with growth. The census taken in 2020 showed a growth of 79% . We need to provide a safe route to school! Kids have been hit walking along the streets in this Northwest section of Fort Worth. These streets north of 820 have no shoulders, sidewalks, streetlights or proper pavement markings .  The busses are overcrowded, so many kids walk to and from school. Not to mention others who walk these roads to the grocery store. Our community walks in unmowed bar ditches or at the edge of the road to stay out of the weeds. The cars drive very fast along this road as well as other surrounding roads.

•Bryson Elementary,  Lake Pointe Elementary,  Wayside Middle School and Boswell High School are the school within less than 5 mile radius of West Bailey Boswell.

•TX Dot has reported  293 wrecks on this particular stretch of roadway. Of these wrecks some were  teenagers who have died just minutes after leaving school.

•There is continued neglect from city of Fort Worth's TPW dept to improve our slick asphalt roads that are full of potholes and lack lighting and proper street paint markings.

•Another fatality occurred on WJ Boaz as a teen walked along the side of the road with NO sidewalks and unsightly neglected  bar ditches with weeds well over 2 feet tall. This could have been prevented if our roads had safe routes for children to walk on. There are NO shoulders and NO sidewalks!!

•After school activities are another dangerous realization for families. Students are walking in these same conditions only under the camouflage of darkness. There are no street lights lining this road. If a student leaves an event or practice to walk home it is with the threat to their safety because it is dark and there aren't crosswalks to get to their homes or Churches. There is no median for a student to safely cross traffic and have a moment to pause to wait for the other direction of traffic. They have to dart across 4 lanes of traffic in two directions. 

 • This story was shared with me from an EMSISD school board member.

One early evening as the sun was setting I drove westbound leaving Kroger. Two students were running across all 4 lanes of traffic and had judged the timing just fine from my point of view. I wasn't yet accelerating too quickly and I could see their figures to know to go slow, however because they were running to a ditch and not a sidewalk she lost her footing twisted her ankle and fell into my lane. I feel very lucky to have been able to adjust and avoid what could have been the worst day of both of our lives. 

•We could really benefit from police patrol, however there's no shoulder to have speeding cars to pull over to.

• We are asking for IMMEDIATE ACTION to provide SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL AND TO MAKE OUR ROADS SAFE.