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ELGIN — Growth is happening to our region at breakneck speed, but a lot of it is dependent upon how quickly roads can be built, expanded, and made safer through partnerships with different agencies.
Such was the message of Tucker Ferguson, the Austin district engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation, who gave an overview of transportation challenges and solutions for our area at the first ever METT Summit held at the Elgin Recreation Center May 18, which was organized by the Elgin, Manor and Taylor chambers of commerce.
“Transportation is something that affects every single one of us every day,” said Ferguson, who oversees more than 9,500 miles of roadway through an 11-county swath of Central Texas. “When I talk, I realize we are an economic development corporation because we have to get people, goods and services from point A to point B efficiently, quickly, and most importantly, safely.”
Ferguson was addressing a crowd of elected officials, business leaders, municipal employees and community members from the three cities who were gathered together to learn what the future had in store for the area.
One certainty is that more people are coming to Travis, Bastrop and Williamson counties, he said.
Ferguson shared the estimates of Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, a federally mandated transportation planning and funding agency, of 245 percent population growth for Bastrop County, 195 percent growth for Williamson County and 100 percent growth for Travis County by the year 2045.
“As you can see the slowest growth is actually Travis County for the next 25 years at 100 percent increase,” Ferguson said. “They are expecting to double the population in that time, and that is the lowest in the region.”
Ferguson said TxDOT has funding for road projects to accommodate this growth, but it’s still a balancing act.
“The challenge for us is to make sure we spend our funds wisely, plan ahead for this growth and spread it out as best we can to the places that need it,” he said. “TxDOT has a pretty healthy funding stream … (but) the one thing we always say is we can do just about anything we want to but we can’t do everything that everybody wants, so we need to make wise decisions.”
Highlights of current and upcoming projects along U.S. 290 include adding a right-turn lane at Lexington Street, leftturn lanes at Shadow Glen Boulevard, an acceleration lane west of FM 973 and a right-turn lane onto 973, and extending a left-turn lane to George Bush Street, Ferguson said.
In addition, TxDOT will be working with CAMPO next year on a study of bottlenecks in a six-county region, which will include 290, Texas 95 and Farm to Market roads in eastern Travis and western Bastrop counties, he said.
“We have all these large projects in our region, and they get all the attention, but these bottlenecks at small intersections are interim projects,” Ferguson said. “We can get some safety funding, get them delivered quickly and have some interim improvements all over our region prior to incorporating those larger projects.”
Ferguson also discussed a planned realignment of 973 from Texas 130 to 290, which will expand the roadway from two to six lanes, add overpasses at Braker Lake, Blake Manor Road, Old Highway 20 and the Capital Metropolitan Transporation Authority railroad, and build bridges over Gilleland and Wilbarger Creeks.
“This will improve the north and south conditions and improve safety and mobility on this roadway,” Ferguson said.
Above 290, work is also planned in the next few years to expand 973 from a two to six-lane roadway in the next few years, contingent upon funding, and CAMPO is updating the regional freight plan to determine future demand on 95 between Bartlett and Bastrop, Ferguson said.
In the Taylor area, Ferguson pointed to a current construction project that involves the widening of FM 3349 from a two to four lane divided roadway and the construction of an overpass over the Union Pacific Railroad and U.S. 79 as an example of an effective partnership TxDOT has engaged in with the City of Taylor and Williamson County.
“This project just came up on our radar two years ago,” Ferguson said. “Samsung (Austin Semiconductor) was very secretive about where they may locate their chip plant, and now it’s just a crane city driving up to Taylor. But we, in record time, put together a highway funding package in the neighborhood of $70 million for some of the roadways up there. It was truly a partnership between city, state, and local officials to get this underway.”
