FORT WORTH -- At 7 a.m. Monday, four of Fort Worth's main arteries in the busy West 7th area will become one-way.
Foch will become southbound, Bledsoe will be westbound, Morton will be northbound, and Norwood will be eastbound. Crockett and Currie will remain two-way streets.
It's a big move to address a big problem.
"It is a dangerous situation," Assistant City Manager Fernando Costa said. "It’s an accident waiting to happen."
Costa is talking about the chaos that ensues when the bars let out on the weekends. WFAA has covered it extensively over the past year. Bar-goers flood the streets, and vehicles, including ambulances, can hardly get through.
"They create what amounts to a mob scene," he said of the bar-goers who file out of the bars at 2 a.m.
After a year's worth of studies and discussions with police and area stakeholders, the City decided that turning the roads one-way would be the best way to keep traffic flowing.
"It also promotes safety for pedestrians, so they only have to look one way when they're trying to cross the street," Costa said.
Javier Martinez is an Uber driver in this area and sees the issues every weekend.
"People just walk whenever they want," Martinez said. "Cars will take advantage of other cars and two or three cars will go at once without stopping."
He worries the new one-way process may be bumpy at first, but he says he's open to it.
"Something needs to be done," he said. "I'm not an expert on it, so if you tell me that’s what’s going to work, I have to kind of trust it."
The City has spent around $75,000 on turning the roads one-way, said Richard Martinez of the transportation and public works office.
"The one-way streets will make the streets much more passable and safer for everyone, so this is a public safety measure," Costa said.
The move is part of a larger effort to make the West 7th core area safer and smoother when it comes to traffic. Fort Worth will also install parking meters in August, at a cost of $180,000 to the city. And soon crews will repair existing sidewalks and build new ones. They've also assigned more police officers to the area on a temporary basis, and if it appears to work well, Costa said they'll continue to do that, especially on weekend nights.
Monday morning, crews will also re-open Currie where it meets Lancaster, an intersection that's been closed for months.
Crews will be painting one-way stripes on the roads Monday afternoon.