Beginning spring 2012, Harris County Precinct 4's road and bridges department targeted dozens of roadway and intersection projects for expansion, realignment or improvement, adding them to the list of capital improvement projects projected for the area. About a year later, work on several of these projects are wrapping up while others are slated to begin in the near future.
"We are working very hard to take the small set of resources we have available and try as strategically as we can to apply them in the best way possible for a magnitude of mobility issues in our area," Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle said. "We have a small pot of money and a huge cauldron of work that needs to be done."
Throughout Northwest Houston, Precinct 4 has nine capital improvement projects in design with an estimated construction value of more than $38 million, 10 improvement projects under construction with a value of about $58 million and five traffic signal and intersection improvement projects in design with a construction cost of more than $2.7 million, said Pamela Rocchi, special projects coordinator.
"It is significant to point out that in years past it would take Precinct 4 about two to four years to design a traffic signal package," she said. "Now we are able to get those from project initiation to project completion within 90 days. The timeline has changed significantly. Last year, we completed about 17 traffic signal projects."
Several road projects in Cy–Fair—specifically along the Hwy. 249 corridor—will be realigned and upgraded to four-lane concrete boulevard to facilitate increased mobility and public safety and for future infrastructure purposes. Louetta Road is in design to be extended and expanded near Imperial Woods.
"The need for this was not because of traffic volume, but because of everything else that is going to be ultimately going on in this area, such as the widening of Grant Road and the need to extend Louetta Road farther north of Spring Cypress connecting to Telge so that motorists [will] have an alternate route," Rocchi said.
The precinct also expects to open the first two changeable lane intersections at Louetta and Kuykendahl roads and N. Eldridge Parkway at W. Little York. As a joint project between Precinct 4 and TxDOT, the intersections will allow for left-turn only traffic movements during normal hours, but they will be modified to provide dual left turns during peak traffic times. Similar interchanges exist in other major cities, but these will be the first in Harris County, Rocchi said.
