Stimulus funds for I-45

Segment in Montgomery County

Jon Boyd, Aug 04, 10.

Federal stimulus money will fund a segment of I-45 in Montgomery County, reports the Courier of Montgomery County (via HBJ Morning Call).

Howard Roden of the Courier of Montgomery County reports:

The project, in fact, is scheduled to finish in the spring of 2013. That timetable is shorter than two other I-45 expansion projects already underway.

The section from North Loop 336 in Conroe to FM 830 is projected for completion in fall of 2013. Meanwhile, the five miles from FM 830 to Calvary Road won’t finish until the fall of 2014, TxDOT Area Engineer Karen Baker said.

“We’re not building any frontage roads (on the final section of I-45),” Baker said. “Plus we have only one bridge to build.”

As recently as June, the northernmost section of the I-45 expansion project wasn’t scheduled to start before the first quarter 2014. However, the project was accelerated when TxDOT’s office in Conroe received word that several projects in TxDOT’s Houston District that were financed by stimulus funds came in under budget, Baker said.

Plus, a segment of the Grand Parkway wasn’t “shovel ready,” so I-45 moved up the priority list.

“It happened so fast,” Baker said. “We didn’t receive the final (engineering) plans last week.”

The Chronicle reported that Harris County developed a plan last summer to use $181 million in stimulus funds on the Grand Parkway Segment E, but voted to eschew the money in October when it appeared that the project would not be shovel-ready in time. These funds reverted to Houston TxDOT and the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) categories, and the Transportation Policy Council (TPC) reprogrammed the TxDOT portion to various regional highway projects, including the I-45 project in Montgomery County.