Managing safety and success at the Stockyards

FORT WORTH (CBSNewsTexas.com) - The iconic Fort Worth Stockyards attract people from all over the world. Within the past few years, the city has seen a surge in visitors and it's prompting the city to look at ways to make it safer for everybody whether you're walking or driving in the area.

Last year, the city did a mobility study and the consultant came back to city leaders earlier this month to go over the results. The consultant suggests a price tag over $31 million for all of the upgrades. The study looked at 10 corridors and 17 intersections in the Stockyards.

According to the city of Fort Worth, since 2017, there are 5 million more visitors a year in the Stockyards, totaling about 8 million a year now.

"Wonderful success story. It's something that we have to manage," said Fort Worth City Councilman Carlos Flores. "So we want people to still come to the Stockyards, be able to visit the Stockyards with the best mobility plan that we have and that includes parking."

Part of that parking plan would include getting rid of some on-street parking on North Main Street and put in metered parking in some places.

"We received a lot of input from business owners in the Stockyards," Flores continued. "We are looking at metered parking. Metered parking, in reality, amounts to only about 10% of the entire parking scope of the Stockyards but we need it so that you have higher turnover. When people come to visit the Stockyards and they may not be able to find parking, well metered parking will give them that option."

Also on North Main Street, one option would be to add in a flashing beacon light on 24th street to alert drivers when pedestrians want to cross the street.

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Other recommendations by the consulting firm: make the area more ADA accessible, add more ramps where some stairs are located, widen some sidewalks, rework some cross walks, restripe some roads creating turn lanes on North Main Street and even install bike lanes.

At this moment, according to Flores, it's still unclear where the money would come from and the timeline on when you may see some changes is also unclear depending on the particular project. Some are short-term projects, which could take just a few months to a year, or longer-term projects that could take multiple years to finish such as connecting the Stockyards to I-35W.

What is clear, change will come to the timeless historic Stockyards in some fashion with the goal of keeping everyone safe.