Tarrant County Wants Voters' Approval To Spend $400M For Roads
TARRANT COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) - Tarrant County is asking early voters tired of hitting the brakes to give the green light this week to $400,000,000 for new roads.
If approved, half the money from the transportation bond would be used to ease congestion and improve safety on a list of 33 projects, splitting the cost evenly with cities in each location. The rest of the money would be held back for future projects.
The county would not need to increase taxes to pay for the bonds, with new development being substantial enough to cover the cost.
"It's vital that the darn thing pass," said Russ Fuller, president of the North Fort Worth Alliance. "People may not understand how vital it is."
Several of the projects on the priority list are in the northwest part of the county, an area with extensive housing growth but where a number of roads are still of the two-lane, rural variety.
"There are no good ways to get around up there because of broken up roads, and broken up jurisdictional issues," he said, referencing boundary lines that made it difficult for the county or a city by itself to expand a roadway.
Even if approved, the bonds will not be enough to catch up completely with the need. Nearly 200 projects were submitted for consideration, at more than $700,000,000 in costs.
County Judge Glen Whitley said Monday though it should help keep up with some of the growth, and pave the way for more.
"As we see growth expanding either through housing development or business commercial development, this will allow us to be a little bit more, hopefully, ahead of it, as opposed to just running behind that and we feel very good about that," he said.
