Mobility upgrades planned for Cypress A road improvement project on Greenhouse Road is one of many targeting Cy-Fair's booming residential areas.[/caption]

The Hwy. 290 expansion and the Hwy. 249 toll road are considered crucial by Harris County officials who want to decrease congestion and commute times for local residents. However, transportation experts say additional improvements to connecting roads are equally important when it comes to easing mobility throughout the county.

As population growth pushes farther north and west, officials with precincts 3 and 4 in Harris County are looking into the widening of thoroughfares where traffic counts have been quickly increasing. The upcoming Grand Parkway makes these projects even more urgent, Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle said.

"I call them 'rims and spokes,'" Cagle said. "Grand Parkway being a rim coming into the region is going to bring a lot of traffic. 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."

Meanwhile, the city of Jersey Village embarked on its 2015 Street Reconstruction Project in January, which involves road reconstruction, sidewalk replacement, water line replacement, drainage improvements and the replacement of street lighting.

"The main element of the current effort is the reconstruction of Elwood Street," City Manager Mike Castro said. "The existing concrete roadway will be removed in total and replaced with a new concrete roadway."

Target areas


Many of the projects under consideration in 2015 involve upgrading two-lane asphalt roads to four-lane concrete boulevards to accommodate population growth in Cypress and Tomball. Over the past decade, growth has turned suburban roads around the northern and western borders of Cy-Fair that previously saw moderate traffic counts into highly traveled thoroughfares.

The most ambitious of the projects Precinct 4 officials are studying is the five-part widening of Telge Road to a four-lane concrete boulevard from Spring Cypress Road to FM 2920. A traffic signal will also be put in at the intersection of Grant and Telge roads.

"For the Telge Road corridor, it was very evident that the need to upgrade was well-established because of the existing traffic volumes," said Pamela Rocchi, special projects coordinator with Precinct 4 at the Cy-Fair Chamber of Commerce Annual Mobility Forum. "It has just been waiting on funding availability to pursue the study and design phase."

A similar project is being studied along North Eldridge Parkway and another is in the design phase along Grant Road with construction expected to start this fall.

In Precinct 3, a widening project at Mueschke Road, which is expected to connect to the Grand Parkway, was completed last October.

Several other projects under consideration farther inbound involve extending roads to improve connectivity. Plans include extending Louetta to Telge roads from Blanco Trails Lane, extending Cypress North Houston to FM 1960 from Perry Road and extending Huffmeister to West roads from Hwy. 6. These projects are critical to developing alternate routes in conjunction with the ongoing widening projects, Rocchi said.

Construction is expected to start within the next 60 days to connect existing pieces of Greenhouse Road in Cypress, according to Randy Schilhab, manager of Engineering with Precinct 3. The project could be complete by the end of 2015.

Economic potential


Keeping mobility manageable has benefits beyond improving resident safety and quality of life, Cagle said. It is also crucial to maintaining the area's economic vitality by creating better access to jobs and commercial areas and shortening commute times.

David Ellis, a research scientist with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute in College Station, has led studies that have found connections between traffic levels and the economy. Projects that reduce travel time have the effect of creating larger customer bases for businesses in the area as well as larger pools of potential employees, he said.

"Everyone within a certain distance is a potential customer," Ellis said. "If we increase mobility, we expand the labor force as well as access to markets."

Jersey Village


Jersey Village officials declined to provide any funding for street improvements in the city's 2014 budget with plans to come back and make strides in 2015. City staff set aside $890,000 in the capital improvement fund for general street improvements as well as an additional $1.1 million for Elwood Street repairs and $190,000 for bridge and point pavement repairs.

Residents living on Elwood Street have communicated the urgent need for repairs at past City Council meetings.

"The pot holes become water ponds when it rains, which attract mosquitos," resident Ed Albracht said at a September 2014 meeting.

Castro contracted engineering firm Brooks and Sparks in January for design, bid and construction services. Construction is expected to begin this summer.