CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 A southside man with a pacemaker says construction on Yorktown Boulevard has made getting in and out of his neighborhood a daily struggle \u2014 and he fears that one day, the traffic delays could cost him his life.<\/p>\n
John Chapman lives off Spiderman Drive, near the construction zone on Yorktown Boulevard. He says the congestion has made even simple turns a time-consuming ordeal.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes you wait like three or four minutes just to make a right. Forget about the left because of the school and everybody coming, you can’t get across,” Chapman said.<\/p>\n
Chapman says the traffic situation became more than an inconvenience about a year and a half ago, when he suffered a serious medical emergency.<\/p>\n
“My heart just went down. When I went to the emergency room, I died. Then I end up getting a pacemaker,” Chapman said.<\/p>\n
Now, he worries about what would happen if he needed an ambulance and it couldn’t reach him in time.<\/p>\n
“If you have a heart attack, five minutes is a lifetime. It means life or death,” Chapman said.<\/p>\n
If that moment comes, Chapman says he already has a backup plan.<\/p>\n
“That’s called me in the back seat of the truck, and her driving. That’s it. That’s all you can do,” Chapman said.<\/p>\n
I reached out to City Engineering, which says ensuring access for emergency vehicles is part of traffic control planning before construction even begins. <\/p>\n
City Engineering says crews continually monitor traffic flow once work is underway to keep access open for emergency vehicles, neighborhoods and local businesses.<\/p>\n
The project remains on track for completion in September 2027.<\/p>\n
Chapman says his concerns extend beyond himself.<\/p>\n
“We’re not the only elderly. I’m not the only handicapped person here. You’re gonna have the same issue,” Chapman said.<\/p>\n
Chapman says he is not looking for a fight \u2014 just a road that works when every second counts. <\/p>\n
For him and his neighbors, it is a waiting game, hoping the road gets safer before they need it to be.<\/p>\n
If something in your neighborhood has you worried, reach out to me at jacob.daniels@kristv.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n For the latest local news updates, click here<\/a>, or download the KRIS 6 News App.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 A southside man with a pacemaker says construction on Yorktown Boulevard has made getting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156,3370],"class_list":["post-431087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-southside-corpus-christi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}