Just to go back to this; while it is heavily used by CMs, this will be a main entrance for a huge amount of locals in about 5-10 years, maybe less. It would very much benefit Disney to make everyone’s lives easier by a major traffic project here. I think 6 lanes could be overkill, but intersection improvements are greatly needed, especially at BVD and 429. There’s a crash almost every (other) week it seems around the bridge section between the DAK backstage entrance and Coronado, and when that happens traffic does back up as far as 429, and I’ve seen it backed up the WDW arch even without a crash more often than I would expect. There are 4 subdivisions plus two to 4 apartment complexes currently under construction that will all likely utilize Western Way, in addition to about 6+ more developments that are either still building infrastructure or shifting dirt with probably another 400+ homes for each of them, and that’s just in the immediate area of where Western Way is likely to be the main artery not just to reach WDW, but also I-4 (I almost always cut through for the 192, 536, or 535 interchanges, or to go anywhere else south or east of WDW for that matter). Plus consider operational impacts to not having to worry about your busses of CPs constantly being late in waves because the schedule keeps getting delayed by the traffic on their one route into the property.
I expect that the intersection will be changed to somewhat resemble a much more compact version of the I-4 and 429 interchange based on the cost of the project, and that would also make the most sense to alleviate the main traffic impacts, especially if there’s no expected future development to the south of the intersection that could use it more effectively than another spot for access. Small ramps with 25mph design speeds can likely be compact enough, I expect.
