Photo by Andrew Richardson

Harris and Montgomery counties are in negotiations to move forward with plans to create tolled main lanes from Spring Cypress to FM 1774 on Hwy. 249.

In a March 19 meeting at Magnolia City Hall, officials with the 249 Partnership from Tomball, Magnolia and Navasota provided updates on the construction of the Tomball Tollway and future phases of the Hwy. 249 expansion project.

The 249 Partnership, chaired by Magnolia City Councilwoman Anne Sundquist, meets every few months to improve lines of communication between officials in the three cities along the route of the future Hwy. 249 expansion project.

Plans for the roadway expansion from Hwy. 249 in Tomball to Hwy. 105 in Grimes County have been on the books with the Texas Department of Transportation since 2000, according to TxDOT documents. The project is now in the draft environmental impact stage and must go through engineering and environmental studies before construction can begin within the next two years, TxDOT officials said.

David Hamilton, Tomball Tollway program manager with Binkley & Barfield Inc., said the construction of the first phase of the Hwy. 249 expansion—known as the Tomball Tollway—is scheduled to open to traffic by the end of April. The city of Tomball is sponsoring a public Stroll the Toll event April 12 from 2-4 p.m. to celebrate the grand opening.

"That's going to be a walkathon—you'll be able to walk the full segment of the tollway that has not been opened up yet," Hamilton said. "The chamber is actively engaged in that. It's really going to be a time to celebrate what's been done out there."

During the meeting, Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal told the story of how the plans for the Tomball Tollway came to fruition. In December 2011, Doyal, who was then Montgomery County Precinct 2 commissioner, organized two meetings with Jack Cagle, Harris County Precinct 4 commissioner, with the help of several other county and city officials.

In the weeks shortly before the meetings, a few Tomball officials approached Doyal, and the group briefly revisited the idea for the Hwy. 249 expansion project with TxDOT. Doyal displayed the map he and Cagle signed a little over three years ago when the two agreed to form a partnership to expand the roadway.

"[Cagle] said, 'I want to make this [project] so,' and signed it 'Jack Cagle,' and I wrote 'Me too,'" Doyal said. "We signed [the map about] three years ago when [some people] told us that this project would never happen and it can't be done. From that meeting and this agreement, we went to work. This 249 partnership was formed. We went to TxDOT with an impossible project and got funding to make this happen."

Doyal said construction on the next phases of the Hwy. 249 expansion project in Harris and Montgomery counties is scheduled to begin in August 2016 and finish in August 2018.

Hamilton said project officials received authorization in October to develop the schematics for Phase 2 from the end of the new Tomball Tollway near Brown Road north to Spring Creek. The consultant selection will be made in April or May, and design plans will begin in June, he said.

Around the same timeframe, Montgomery County officials plan to develop design plans for next phase of the project from north of Spring Creek to Pinehurst in early summer. They hope to put the project out to bid later this year, Doyal said.

"We want to match the time schedule that Harris County has and start construction early next summer with the same 2018 finishing date, so that both projects coincide with the completion of the bypass at Tomball all the way up to Pinehurst," Doyal said.

TxDOT is working on plans to extend the road from Pinehurst to FM 1774 north of Todd Mission and up to Hwy. 105 in Navasota in the coming years. However, the Hwy. 249 expansion project has faced some opposition by Grimes County residents in public meetings this year.

"Tomball put the brakes on this [expansion] project 12 years ago, but Tomball is who revived it," Doyal said. "I hope [Navasota officials] can convince the residents of Grimes County that [they are] sitting today right where we were 15 years ago. You have an opportunity now to take true advantage and have that project ahead of the curve instead of like where we are [now], so congested in Magnolia. We are dying for this project."