A master plan from the Texas Department of Transportation promises a new focus on projects in Fort Worth and the surrounding area.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the State of the County address on Thursday, Tarrant County Judge Tim O\u2019Hare said local officials have been working on the TxDOT master plan for some time and will soon unveil it and hold meetings with the public.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Hare said the plan is key to the area\u2019s continuing economic growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to eliminating gridlock, making access easier for our people, it will also be a huge, huge boon for economic development,\u201d he said, speaking at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce event. \u201cYou\u2019re going to start seeing that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Hare did not detail what that plan will include. He said that when the Dallas district did a master plan several years ago it sped up transportation, highway and road projects for that district by \u201c15 to 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
TxDOT officials said they did a number of studies in the Dallas district that helped guide them on the projects they focused on there.<\/p>\n
Those transportation projects will not be limited to Fort Worth proper, but encompass the whole district which includes Erath, Hood, Jack, Johnson, Palo Pinto, Parker, Somervell, Tarrant, and Wise counties.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Tarrant County is the central part of the district, and we\u2019re going to be in there fighting for our share of transportation dollars,\u201d O\u2019Hare said.<\/p>\n
Victor Vandergriff, executive director of the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition, said more details on the plans would be available in a few weeks.<\/p>\n
TxDOT officials said the plan hasn\u2019t started yet, but that they could share more details over the next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something that Tarrant County officials, before me, and other people have worked really hard to make happen, and now it\u2019s happening,\u201d said O\u2019Hare.<\/p>\n
District 3 Fort Worth City Council member Michael Crain said anything that helps speed up progress on transportation improvements would be welcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m well known for saying the southwest part of the city needs more focus on transportation, so I would welcome more effort there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Hare singled out the late Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes, who represented Precinct 3 and was known for his support and focus on transportation issues. Fickes died in July at age 75.<\/p>\n
Senior business reporter Eric E. Garcia contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at\u00a0bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.\u00a0At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A master plan from the Texas Department of Transportation promises a new focus on projects in Fort Worth…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":169054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-169053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115077918799370599","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}