Drivers, get ready: More funds will fuel more roadwork in 2022

Flush with green, Houston area transportation officials have a whiteboard full of highway and transit projects poised to start in 2022, but rolling out all that blacktop will mean drivers see many more orange cones and construction zones, leaving some feeling blue.

Texas Department of Transportation construction spending is expected to top $2.2 billion for the Houston region for fiscal 2022, which began Sept. 1, nearly double the 2021 total. The projects that money pays for are spread across the region, said James Koch, director of transportation planning and development for TxDOT in Houston, during a discussion with local transportation officials.

“(2022) is going to be a very big year for our region, for the contractors and whatnot,” Koch told members of the Houston-Galveston Council’s transportation advisory committee on Dec. 9. “You will see a lot of barrels and cones out.”

Among the major projects set to break ground in the year are new bridges across Texas 288 to remove many at-grade crossings from the highway and transition more of it to a freeway-like form. Across five different projects, TxDOT has teed up $135.6 million worth of work on overpasses in Brazoria County, along with a $70.9 million planned widening of Texas 36.

Various other projects are also planned around the area, including:

• Widening Texas 99, the free portion of the Grand Parkway in Fort Bend County, from FM 1093 to Harris County, at an estimated cost of $59 million.

• Widening FM 723 in Fort Bend County from the Brazos River to FM 1093.

• Constructing the first 2.2 miles of a planned Texas 35 rebuild to connect into Spur 5 near the University of Houston, at an expected cost of $77 million.

• Widening Texas 105 between Loop 336 in Conroe and FM 1484 for an estimated $78.4 million.

Metropolitan Transit Authority, meanwhile, will continue construction on smaller improvements included in the agency’s long-range plan, such as making all bus shelters accessible and targeted street repairs along some key routes, including Westheimer within and outside Loop 610.

Those new cones are in addition to work along the region’s busiest freeways. Workers are still months from completing the rebuild of the Interstate 69 and Loop 610 interchange near the Galleria, which will have a larger effect on traffic as crews prepare to demolish the main lanes of Loop 610 spanning I-69 in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, other crews are widening Interstate 10 from Brookshire to Sealy and Interstate 45 south toward Galveston from League City.

“It feels like anywhere you drive, there is construction going on,” said Luc Baricevic, 44, who moved to Houston in 2018. “It has always felt like that to me.”

Houston’s growth for the past 20 years has led to constant construction, with much more on the way. Every area freeway has some planned expansion envisioned in the region’s long-range plan.

Funding for the projects comes from various sources, notably additional spending state voters set aside as far back as 2014. Combined, state officials said Prop. 1 passed in 2014, and Prop. 7, passed in 2015, have shifted $19.88 billion from other state accounts to highway spending, aimed at relieving congestion without tolls.

Upcoming construction, meanwhile, does not reflect work spurred by the recently approved federal infrastructure bill. The federal framework, which continues many of the same methods for funding highways and transit, is likely to jump-start a litany of other projects, officials said. Tapping those federal dollars, however, will mean as drivers see more construction zones, local and state officials — along with the engineering and planning firms they hire — will be preparing for even more work.

Much of that work is already planned for Metro, which received voter approval for $7.5 billion in new projects and upgrades in 2019, weeks before COVID changed commuting patterns worldwide. Since, Metro officials have prepped for many of the projects to proceed, with some of the earliest work likely unveiled this coming year.

Metro is likely to choose a preferred route and potential station locations for a planned busway along Interstate 10 in the next two or three months, allowing transit officials to get in line for federal transit money by mid-2022 as they continue design.

The project is the linchpin in Metro’s expansion of rapid transit from downtown west into Uptown, which is crucial to park-and-ride service in western and northwestern parts of Harris County, officials said.

“The benefits extend beyond those seven miles,” said Amma Cobbinah, a senior transit planner with Metro overseeing the project, noting how the lanes connect downtown to the Northwest Transit Center at I-10 and Loop 610, a major stop for park and buses.

Now past the transit center, those commuter routes crawl along I-10 with car and truck traffic to and from downtown, making them far less efficient and timely.

Provided the project stays on pace, officials said they hope to begin construction by late 2023 and start service in 2027.

Work on the so-called Inner Katy is just one of two major bus rapid transit projects Metro is moving forward on in 2022. Transit officials in December unveiled an online open house outlining plans for the University Corridor project, a 25-mile BRT line planned from the Tidwell Transit Center north of Kashmere Gardens, south through Fifth Ward and the Eastside. The line then turns west through Third Ward and Midtown and then through Greenway Plaza and south of Uptown, where it connects to the Silver Line that runs along Post Oak.

Eventually, the University Corridor will connect to the Westchase Park and Ride near Westpark and Beltway 8.

Likely built in five phases across 19 Houston area ZIP codes, it is the largest rapid route Metro is planning. Construction of the line is not expected to start until 2025, though Metro officials said dozens of public meetings will be held as the project proceeds, some early ones likely in 2022. dug.begley@chron.com