Council removes 4‑lane expansion from consideration and asks staff for non‑vehicular options for Pebble Creek Parkway

College Station — The College Station City Council on Sept. 25 signaled it would not pursue a four‑lane widening of Pebble Creek Parkway and asked city staff to develop alternatives that preserve neighborhood character while meeting public‑safety needs.

The workshop drew dozens of council questions and more than 40 public commenters — most of them Pebble Creek residents — who urged the council to remove a southern extension and any implied four‑lane cross section from the city’s thoroughfare maps. Jason Schubert, the city’s transportation planning administrator, told the council the contentious green line on map 6.1 had caused confusion: "That map was intended for illustration; there is no project to widen this roadway," he said, adding the classification change in a 2017 metropolitan plan meant only to indicate a function, not an immediate capital project.

Residents described daily use of the parkway by pedestrians, school buses, golf carts and children and warned that construction traffic and higher speeds would make the corridor unsafe. "This expansion would be dangerous," said Courtney Cannon, a Pebble Creek resident. Speakers repeatedly asked the council to preserve the neighborhood’s "integrity," citing petitions and local crash history near the country‑club crossings.

Fire department GIS modeling presented to the council showed the possible travel‑time benefit a southern connection could provide to future development: in some locations it could shorten response times by up to about three minutes from Station 5, the chief said, while noting that where homes are ultimately built would determine the actual effect.

Councilors balanced those safety considerations with residents’ concerns. By the end of the meeting the council reached a consensus to direct staff to: - pursue a comp‑plan amendment process that removes any active intent to retrofit Pebble Creek Parkway to four lanes; and - return with alternatives for connectivity that explicitly exclude continuous vehicular through‑traffic (examples discussed included pedestrian/bicycle connections, emergency‑only access, and engineered treatments such as roundabouts or physical bollards), and with an analysis of public‑safety tradeoffs and costs.

Mayor John P. Nichols said the intent of the direction was to give residents certainty that the city does not plan to force a retrofit of the parkway’s existing cross section. Council members emphasized that any formal change to the city’s adopted comprehensive plan will have to follow the statutory amendment and public‑notification process before becoming effective.

Next steps: staff will produce options and analyses for council review, including costs, potential emergency‑access designs and the formal comp‑plan amendment path and timeline. The council also reiterated that, as Schubert put it, "there is no project" now to widen the corridor and that developer obligations and future rezonings would be considered through formal process.