County commissioners voted Aug. 16 to call for an election to fund transportation projects—its first since 2008. The Outer Loop will stretch east to west for about 20 miles from the Collin County/Denton County line to I-35, though the precise location of the Outer Loop has not been defined, officials said.
Denton County Transportation Consultant John Polster said $30 million of the bond will be specifically allocated toward the Outer Loop project.
“It’s about a billion-dollar project overall, from Collin County to I-35, including all the major interchanges,” Polster said.
Denton County’s portion will feed into the larger proposed Outer Loop—a project that in its entirety will not be finished for several more decades, but would span seven counties, including both Collin and Denton counties, and 240 miles around the northern portion of Dallas-Fort Worth, officials said.
While all construction on the Outer Loop will take place outside of Frisco’s borders, officials said the project will provide “regional connectivity” and “mobility options” for Frisco residents.
“The project can bring people to the [Dallas North Tollway], who can then easily travel to Frisco for work, shopping and entertainment,” said Brian Moen, Frisco’s assistant director of engineering services and transportation.
A pathway to progress
The $30 million allocated to the Outer Loop would help fund environmental studies to move the project forward, Polster said. Denton County is using federal funds to build the road, making the study mandatory, he said.
“The environmental clearance ... is just getting the alignment established and getting it environmentally cleared so that we can protect the corridor from future development,” Polster said.
The process is expected to take about three years, but it could go as long as five years, he said. Following this phase, Denton County crews would move to right-of-way acquisition and utility relocations.
“Basically, you’d be making the corridor empty of all utilities and whatever structures that were in the way that we had to purchase,” he said.
Denton County’s population is almost 1 million people, and it is projected to grow to 2.3 million by 2050, state projections show.
“We’re seeing development blow up in our county, and it’s causing these corridors to close in, and so we’re moving out on [the Outer Loop] now, because we have to because of the development that’s going on,” he said.
Stormwater issues through the Denton County Outer Loop corridor present a challenge, Polster said. The county has aspirations to make its portion of the Outer Loop project tie into best management practices from an environmental standpoint. That means the water in the surrounding area will be filtered through natural processes, such as gravel and grasses, to clean the water and then send it on to the county’s aquifer.
“We want to build a road that fits into the community as best as possible and does more than just convey traffic—it also should do something to help the environment,” Polster said.
Because the entire Outer Loop project is an integral regional connection, if the bond election fails and the county does not pursue the project, then the state will, Polster said. However, the county would lose control.
“They’ll decide what the displacements are, and the public involvement will just be what is mandatory and not what the county would do, because we live here,” Polster said.
The benefits of recharging the aquifer and making the freeway more rural will also go away if the bond election fails, Polster said.
Jeff Neal, a senior program manager at the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said the Outer Loop project is “absolutely critical.”
“We need to be sure that, over time, there is another viable, high-capacity corridor that people can travel east-west other than [US] 380,” Neal said.
Neal said the region relies on US 380 and FM 455 as primary east-west roadways, but finding a viable path to build another is difficult due to environmental considerations. Both the Denton County greenbelt and the Lake Ray Roberts dam place limitations on where road building and road improvements can occur, Neal said.
“We don’t want to open up any new crossings at the [Denton County] greenbelt in order ... to try to make the greenbelt as viable and as healthy, environmentally, as it can be,” Neal said.
Collin County connection
In addition to providing a path through Denton County, the Outer Loop will also connect to Collin County, with Collin County’s portion of the Outer Loop extending from the county line to US 75 north of Frisco, then south to Rockwall County once complete.
Collin County’s plan for the freeway is to build it in phases, with the service roads constructed ahead of the main lanes and the center of the roadway reserved for a potential rail corridor.
After completing a project earlier this year on a two-lane service road between the Dallas North Tollway and Preston Road in Celina, work is now underway to extend that service road across Prosper, north of Frisco. The two-lane service road will stretch to Custer Road.
The project is necessary to support growth in the county, said Duncan Webb, the regional Transportation Council Chair and Collin County Precinct 4 commissioner.
Collin County is growing even faster than Denton County, data shows, with a population of about 1.1 million people and projections of growing to between 2.5 million-3.5 million by 2050.
This is evident by the demand for the newly constructed service road between the tollway and Preston Road, Webb said. When it opened this spring, it immediately became congested, Webb said.
With that road already at capacity, the county is now working to build an additional lane in each direction for that service road, so it will have two lanes moving in each direction. Construction is expected to begin in 2024, but the duration of the construction has not been determined, Webb said.
In 2018, Collin County taxpayers approved a $750 million bond issue, with $600 million reserved strictly for the design, planning and construction of a freeway system in the county. That included building the Outer Loop out from the Collin County and Denton County line to US 75, crossing north of Frisco through the cities of Celina, Prosper, Weston and north McKinney.
A major hurdle to cross has been funding the Outer Loop project, which the Collin County bond helped with, Webb said. But major freeway projects like this take time.
Between the initial planning phase, environmental clearance processes, right-of-way acquisition, moving utilities and constructing the road, freeway projects can take about a decade from start to finish, and that is if things go perfectly, he said.
Regional connections
Additional major roadways are in the works to help address the growth in Collin County. TxDOT is working on a potential bypass freeway for US 380, which will arc north of US 380 and south of the Outer Loop, although an exact route is still being determined. TxDOT is scheduled to identify a preferred US 380 bypass alternative and further develop its schematic design by the end of the year. This will be presented at a public hearing in early 2023.
The Outer Loop and the US 380 bypass are two projects that will complement each other, Webb said.
“The Outer Loop is going to be the midpoint between [US] 380 and the county line,” he said. “What we were trying to do—but development has been occurring so rapidly—was put in a grid system for freeways.”
To that extent, Collin County commissioners are in the process of a corridor study examining where to place another north-south freeway east of US 75 that connects to the Outer Loop, which would put it through the Frisco and McKinney border. The goal is to provide some additional regional connectivity, Webb said.
“Although that area is building out so rapidly, it’s going to be a challenge to find another corridor to put a freeway,” he said.
