PARKER COUNTY — You could call it “growing pains” — the build-up of businesses and homes and the traffic that comes with it.

For the people who live along the Parker-Tarrant county line, the problem is with the exit off Interstate 20 at FM 1187. Traffic in that area backs up well on to the interstate.

Everyone there agrees that the problem to be solved. But on Monday night, in talks with the Texas Department of Transportation, they learned that improvements can carry a big price tag.

Families are discovering the small town America of their past, and sometimes their dreams, in Parker County. Communities like Aledo are a short commute from Fort Worth, but a world away from big city traffic.

That is, if you can make it off the interstate.

This is the problem: Thanks to the population boom, traffic now often backs up the exit from FM 1187 to I-20. “It’s usually a couple of minutes, five at the most,” said one driver.

“It just becomes a safety issue any time that there’s traffic stopped in the main lanes,” said TxDOT spokeswoman Holly Hughes.

Hughes was among a team of the department’s engineers and staffers dispatched to Aledo Monday evening to present TxDOT’s solution. They are planning to turn four miles of frontage road along I-20 from two-way into one-way roads, making it easier to move cars off the interstate quickly.

“The signal will last longer for the green light, and there will be two lanes of traffic flowing off the highway instead of just one,” Hughes said.

It sounds simple, but a small group of business owners arrived concerned. They are literally caught in the middle, located just off I-20.

Gary Herron runs a concrete business. Those extra miles the trucks will have to drive mean extra dollars lost. “It’s going to come in and add eight miles to the trip," Herron said. "Our freight surcharges on our materials are based on mileage.”

Herron says that as many as 100 trucks come to his company every day. They would have to travel through the intersection if TxDOT’s plan goes through.

It was the congestion at the intersection that was causing the problem in the first place. TxDOT says they are going to listen to all comments and respond to them, but regardless, construction is set to begin this summer.

E-mail chawes@wfaa.com