Leaders Push for Jacksboro Highway Funds

Texas 199 among several in DFW vying for $1.3 billion

A group of elected officials in Northwest Tarrant County will join with survivors of serious car crashes Tuesday to make a public pitch to the Texas Department of Transportation for a share of $1.3 billion being made available to ease traffic congestion.

The group will make the case that Texas 199 — Jacksboro Highway — deserves the $56.5 million that has been sought for a plan that would build bridges for traffic to cross over the road and eliminate traffic signals along a stretch of the road between Nine Mile Bridge Road in Lakeside and Hangar Cutoff Road in Azle.

"It went from OK to horrible to now it’s just a disaster," Azle's Robert Spracklen said of traffic congestion.

Spracklen walks with a cane and wears braces on his back and both knees following a 2012 crash where a driver crossed the grass median and broadsided his truck.

"If there had been a barricade there, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you this day," he said, frustrated about what he sees as Jacksboro Highway not being treated like an actual highway.

Daily traffic count numbers provided by the North Central Texas Council of Governments show that traffic on certain stretches of Texas 199 are comparable to the most congested highway in all of Texas. A stretch of the road near the Lake Worth Bridge saw 41,064 vehicles in one day in 2013.

A separate stretch of Interstate 35W north of downtown Fort Worth, currently being widened as part of the North Tarrant Express Project, saw 52,670 vehicles on the day its traffic was counted.

State Rep. Charlie Geren (R-Tarrant County) is expected to join with the Mayor of Lake Worth and other local leaders Tuesday for a news conference where they will make a plea for TxDOT to consider improving Texas 199.

Later this month the Texas Transportation Commission will vote to approve 14 projects totaling $1.3 billion. Two of those projects are in Dallas County and three are in Tarrant County.

The project would be part of the state's Congestion Initiative Funding, focused on the state's four largest metropolitan areas and projects that can be finished on an "accelerated pace."

If approved on Feb. 25 at the commission's quarterly meeting, $56.5 million would head to project on Jacksboro Highway.

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