Aug. 8 was a day of celebration in Germantown, as the 17-year saga to complete Father Hurley Boulevard culminated with a ribbon cutting and opening of the road’s final portion — a 1.2-mile segment from Wisteria Drive to state Route 118/Germantown Road.The four-lane road and extension will provide Germantown residents with easier access to points of interest, including Germantown Town Center and Interstate 270. It includes a bridge over the CSX railroad tracks, an 8-foot-wide bike path, a 5-foot-wide sidewalk and street lighting.

But with all the advantages, some residents see at least one disadvantage: a busy intersection turned from a four-way into a two-way traffic stop.

On the day of the ribbon cutting, two stop signs were removed from the intersection of Father Hurley Boulevard and Dawson Farm Road, said Joanne Scott, a Germantown resident who watched from her own home in the Destiny Road community as county workers removed the signs that had stopped drivers on Father Hurley.

Since then, the intersection has turned into a scene out of the Indianapolis 500, she said.

“You have people flying through there and flying to turn onto Dawson Farm,” Scott said. “A lot of people in my development are worried if people could get killed or hurt. A lot of our neighbors have heard squealing tires and I've heard slamming breaks.”

With schools set to reopen in less than two weeks, Scott and other Destiny Road residents, including Sandra Maxwell, want to know why Montgomery County Department of Transportation officials would change the stop, and if it might revert it back to what it was before Aug. 8.

There is no school bus stop for Maxwell’s daughter and the other neighborhood children who attend Kingsview Middle School, so they must walk or rely or other modes of transportation.

“There has got to be something better than what our kids are getting,” Maxwell said. “Sometimes our community is so small, it feels like we're forgotten.”

Bruce Johnston, chief of the Division of Transportation Engineering for the county's transportation department, said a four-way stop on an arterial road like Father Hurley is inappropriate.

"The driver tends to anticipate when a stop sign is warranted, and if you put something up on a four-way road like that, a driver wouldn't anticipate it," he said "We'd expect it to be ignored."

With any new road or expansion, transportation engineers and police initially monitor how fast cars travel and track traffic or driving patterns so they can adjust road signs as needed. The county transportation department is monitoring the new segment, including the intersection of Father Hurley and Dawson Farm.

Transportation officials have not ignored neighborhood complaints. For several weeks starting in late October, a study will be conducted to track traffic and driving patterns at the intersection. When the results become available in December, county officials will decide whether to install a traffic signal at the intersection, which already is equipped with conduits in case signal lights are needed, Johnston said.

In the meantime, Maxwell and Scott said they will be carpooling their children to school.

nnourmohammadi@gazette.net