Pflugerville City Council Thursday night voted to formally call on the Texas Transportation Commission to resume a SH 130 widening project that has been stalled by the state.

The SH 130 widening project would add a third lane to both the northbound and southbound portions of the toll road, ranging between SH 45 N to Hwy. 71, at a cost of $195 million spread across two phases, according to a TxDOT fact sheet.

TxDOT had also added flyover construction at US 290 in accordance with the project. According to city documents, the entire project was originally slated to begin construction in January.

However, the project is stalled indefinitely after Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for the suspension of state funding for new toll road construction across the state in November. That messaging from the Governor’s office effectively froze toll road construction across the state.

“It [the SH 130 widening project] hit a political and policy roadblock because it was associated with tolls,” Pflugerville interim City Manager Trey Fletcher told council members Thursday night.

With the resolution passed Thursday night, the city is formally communicating with Texas Transportation Commission to revive the widening project. Those communications will include lobbying efforts from the city.

The city appears to be specifically concerned with traffic congestion woes on SH 130 during morning and evening rush hours, and Pflugerville Council member Rudy Metayer called the freeze on the project “a significant disservice to our citizens”.

Traffic numbers on SH 130 continue to increase year over year. In 2017, SH 130 tolls registered 70,241,133 transactions, an 8 percent increase from the previous year, and considerably more drivers than the toll road experienced in 2013. Just five years ago SH 130 registered 41,365,500 transactions.