The Kuykendahl Road bridge over Spring Creek—along with one-mile of adjacent roadway in Montgomery and Harris counties—will soon be expanded to include two lanes in each direction.
The project will cost about $5.5 million, and will span Kuykendahl Road from the Flintridge Drive intersection in Montgomery County to just north of the Fazio Way intersection in Harris County.
Montgomery County Precinct 3 will fund the bridge and road expansion portion that lies within Montgomery County, which is about $2 million. The Woodlands Road Utility District No. 1 will pay about $800,000 for engineering, and Harris County Precinct 4 will fund the remainder for the Harris County portion, Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack said.
"Both Montgomery County and Harris County are experiencing tremendous growth around our border, and Kuykendahl bridge has been a project that has been needed for a very long time," Noack said. "Currently it's a two-lane bridge—one lane in each direction—that is experiencing an F level of service. F stands for frustration for our drivers."
Kuykendahl Road is an important thoroughfare for Harris and Montgomery county residents, who often commute between the two counties for work, said Jack Cagle, Harris County Precinct 4 commissioner.
"We are now finding that The Woodlands' greatest area of growth is in Harris County now, and [residents] are living here and many of them are working in Montgomery County," Cagle said. "So it is no longer a one-way path, but it is clearly a two-way path."
Cagle said he believes commuting trends could soon reverse if population trends continue.
"Probably in the near future we will have greater traffic going [toward The Woodlands] from residents [in Harris County] to what we have coming down," Cagle said.
The Kuykendahl Road bridge and roadway were originally built about 20 years ago with the intention to expand in the future, so the project is expected to have minimal impact on traffic, said Calvin Ladner, president of LGA Engineering, the engineering firm behind the project.
"If there are [any closures] they will be very minimal in duration, mainly for striping or handling traffic at the final phases," Ladner said.
The project is in the preliminary design stage, Ladner said. Construction is expected to begin sometime in 2015, and the additional lanes may open to commuters in summer or fall 2016, Ladner said.
