Residents Worry City's Growing Pains May Disrupt Quality Of Life
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LUCAS (CSBDFW.COM) - For many people, the rapid growth of Collin County is an exciting thing to watch, but as the population grows, so have some of the area's problems. These are the same kinds of problems, which led to people leaving more crowded areas to live in Collin County in the first place.
Some residents worry those growing pains could threaten their quality of life.
Unlike Plano or Frisco, the city of Lucas with its open fields where horses can roam, is the other side of Collin County that enjoys a calmer, slower pace.
"We moved out here to be in the country and have a little quietness," Lucas resident Fred Davis said.
When Davis and his wife Lori moved to Lucas in the mid-nineties, Country Club Road was everything the traditional farm-to-market road needed to be.
"It was great. You would go down Country Club, and you would maybe see a car every once in awhile, and people waved at each other, and they don't do that now. They give you another symbol sometimes," Lori Davis said.
As the population has grown, so has the boom in new housing and with it more traffic that has pushed Country Club Road and some of the smaller streets to the limits.
Some of the narrow, curvy stretches of road have sparked calls for expansion, but some worry that widening the roads will only draw more traffic to an increasingly congested area.
"Where there are roadways that connect through those cities, the traffic is going to be there whether they widen the roadways or not," Collin County's Director of Engineering Clarence Daugherty said.
Daugherty insists he understands the desire to protect smaller communities from urbanization.
"It is a challenge, a very difficult challenge to balance what they want with what the demands are all around them," Daugherty said.
That's why each road will have to be considered on a case by case basis, with an understanding some roads will have to grow with everything around them.
"As long as the city's able to adapt and keep the feel of what they've always said they wanted to keep Lucas as, more country and laid back," Lori Davis said.
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