North Texas is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, but it doesn’t come without its fair share of growing pains.
The commute through far West Fort Worth is marred with gridlock and growing frustrations for those who travel on Interstates 30 and 20.
Some wonder if a bottleneck is in the future of the area.
“I don’t know that I would say in the future, unless you mean at 4 this afternoon, because I think we already have the bottleneck,” said Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley.
The issue is the symptom if major growth in the area; particularly in the Morning Star and Walsh developments.
“The forecast is tens of thousands of homes. Not just thousands, but tens of thousands of homes. All that traffic is coming in in the morning and all that traffic is going out in the afternoon,” Whitley said.
Tarrant County, Fort Worth and the Texas Department of Transportation are looking for solutions.
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“We’ve been looking at everything west of 35 for a number of years, TxDOT has some expansion of I-30 from 820 to Linkcreast,” Whitley said. “But, that’s not even scheduled to start construction until 2023. We’re doing a lot of work on 199 to bring that in.”
Whitley said funding remains a challenge.
“I think that some of the legislation we are seeing right now is going to put roadblocks on our ability to try to at least stay up with the growth, because we you don’t stay up with it, then I think you being to discourage it,” he said. “I always say, if we are going to keep people moving here, then we’ve got to keep them moving after they get here.”
Whitley said he isn’t sure governing bodies can ever get ahead of the growth, but should at least keep up with it.
“I think it is going to be difficult to see any meaningful building or completion until somewhere around 2023 [or] 2024. It’s a long time in coming,” he said.
