Tyler Highway District Allocated Prop 12 Funding

TYLER — The Tyler District of the Texas Department of Transportation has announced it would receive just over $32.5 million from the latest round of Proposition 12 funding. The funds were approved Thursday by the Texas Transportation Commission.

The Longview and Tyler Metropolitan Planning Organizations will receive an additional $8.8 million for projects in their respective areas, all of which is scheduled to be spent on expanding TxDOT’s system. The combined TxDOT-MPO funding allocation, and in some cases additional funding from other local entities, will allow 12 otherwise under-or-unfunded projects to move forward around the Tyler District, but only two of them are scheduled to let to contract in the next year. The remainder will be funded in 2013.

The two projects funded and set to let to contract in 2012 will add alternating passing lanes on State Highway 64 west of Tyler between Farm Road 848 in Ben Wheeler and Farm Road 314, and on State Highway 19 south of Athens between Farm Road 1615 and the Anderson County Line. The project on SH 64 is estimated to cost around $7.5 million, and the SH 19 project is estimated at $7 million.

In 2013, the Gregg County, the city of Longview and the Longview Economic Development Corporation are scheduled to add a combined $11 to the Longview MPO allocation for the construction of two extension segments of Farm Road 2275 (George Richey Road) between McCann Road and Spur 502, and from Spur 502 to U.S. Highway 259.

In Tyler, the project to eliminate the West Loop 323 bottleneck just south of State Highway 31 (Front Street) by adding an additional lane in each direction and rebuilding the railroad overpass, is scheduled let to construction in August 2013 and to cost approximately $7.4 million.

Additional projects scheduled to let to construction in 2013 include adding a continuous left-turn lane to State Highway 42 north of Kilgore between State Highway 31 and Interstate Highway 20; adding alternating passing lanes on U.S. Highway 69 north of Mineola between Loop 564 and Farm Road 779; adding alternating passing lanes on State Highway 31 east of Tyler between Farm Road 850 and the Gregg County Line; adding a continuous left-turn lane on U.S. Highway 79 south of Palestine roughly between South Loop 256 and Farm Road 645; adding a continuous left-turn lane on Farm Road 349 in Gregg County between State Highway 31 in Kilgore and U.S. Highway 259; widening the bottlenecked section of State Highway 64 in Henderson between State Highway 322 and US 79/US 259 traffic star; and a left-turn bay on US 259 Kilgore Bypass at Synergy Park.

The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday approved distribution of $3 billion in Proposition 12 bond funding that will address congested highways, rehabilitate bridges and improve connectivity between the state’s metropolitan areas. The allocations will include $1.4 billion to TxDOT’s 25 districts and $600 million to the 25 Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) around the state according to existing formulas; as well as $200 million for statewide highway connectivity improvements; $500 million for bridges; and provide $300 million to begin developing projects to mitigate congestion in the four most congested regions of the state: Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.

These funds represent the balance of $5 billion in general obligation bonding authority approved by voters and first authorized by the Texas Legislature in 2007. Construction contracts for the first $2 billion in projects were approved in 2010. TxDOT worked in partnership with MPOs, cities, counties and corridor associations to identify and prioritize needs.