TEXAS STATE EDITION
A Supplement to:
®
June 26 2016 Vol. I • No. 13
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded in 1957.” Your Texas Connection • Dale Agnew, Carrollton, TX • 1-877-877-4997
Construction Under Way on $330M Construction Up, State Highway 360 South Project Demolition Down in Houston Area
By Chuck Harvey
CEG CORRESPONDENT
Construction is under way on a $330 million Texas State Highway 360 South project that will add lanes to the highway stretching 9.7 mi. (15.6 km) from 2 mi. (3.2 km) south of I-20 in Arlington, south to U.S. 287 in Ellis County. The project is overseen by a publicprivate partnership between the Texas Department of Transportation, the North Texas Tollway Authority and the North Central Texas Council of Governments. Initial work on the project will feature construction of two toll lanes in each direction starting near East Sublett Road and West Camp Wisdom Road and stretching south to U.S. 287. A little more than half of the highway has two existing frontage road lanes in each direction. The remainder is one frontage road lane in each direction. Most of the highway is in Tarrant County. By late 2017, SH 360 will have two frontage road lanes and two toll lanes in each direction for the entire project length. The ultimate (second-phase) plan is to have three to four toll lanes in each direction. No funding plan is in place for the ultimate construction phase, but the estimated cost for this phase is $604 million. In addition to added lanes, initial plans call for intersection and frontage road improvements. The project will add bridges on U.S. 287 northbound and southbound over SH 360. Currently U.S. 287 and SH 360 intersect and traffic is controlled by signals at the intersection. After completion of the bridges, the traffic signals
By Amy McCaig SPECIAL TO CEG
Initial work on the project will feature construction of two toll lanes in each direction starting near East Sublett Road and West Camp Wisdom Road and stretching south to U.S. 287.
will be removed. Planners estimate 2.5 million cu. yds. (1.9 million cu m) of earth will be moved to prepare for the SH 360 road improvements and 200,000 cu. yds. (152,910 cu m) of dirt will need to be brought in. Crews will apply 235,000 cu. yds. (179,670 cu m) of concrete to pave the roads. TxDOT is financing and overseeing construction of the project before turning the roadway over to the North Texas Tollway Authority. Toll revenues would then be used to reimburse TxDOT and for NTTA to maintain and operate the toll highway. The North Central Texas Council of Governments’ Regional Transportation Commission provided financial assistance for the project. Substantial completion of the initial work is expected by late 2017. The project is expected to provide needed safety improvements, congestion relief
and economic development benefits. “This project has been on the books for some time and interest in the property surrounding the project has continued to build,” said Keith Bilbrey, 360 South Project public information coordinator. “We have heard reports for all the municipal agencies involved that economic growth is expected to blossom as the project continues and reaches completion.” Current work includes excavation and placement of embankments for the roadway, along with installation of drill shafts, extensions for bridges, drainage systems, temporary detours and bent cap. A bent cap is two or more piles driven in a row transverse to the long dimension of the structure and fastened together by capping. Equipment at the construction site includes excavators, bulldozers, loaders, mixers, off-road dump trucks and see HIGHWAY page 20
Construction in Harris County has far outpaced demolition over the last 10 years, according to a new report from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. “Houston in Flux: Understanding a Decade of Bayou City Development” analyzes how new construction and demolition varied, intersected and diverged in Harris County between 2005 and 2015. The report spotlights the effects of economic booms and busts, draws attention to the spaces where development pressures are most extreme or nonexistent and highlights instances of communities rising or being remade within a decade. Redevelopment, preservation and gentrification can be visualized on the interactive online component accompanying the report. During the research process, report authors Kelsey Walker, a postbaccalaureate fellow at the Kinder Institute, and Kyle Shelton, program manager for the Kinder Institute’s Urban Development, Transportation and Placemaking program, used data from the Harris County Appraisal District (including building and permit records). The researchers sorted each census tract into one of four groups (high-turnover, demolitionintensive, construction-intensive and low-turnover) and then analyzed tracts in each of these categories. The report’s key finding revealed that at the county level, new construction far outpaces demolition. At the end of 2015, 15 percent of properties in Harris County contained buildings constructed since 2005, while only 1.7 percent of properties had a demolition permit during that time period. The researchers also found that the area between State Highway 6-Farm-to-Market Road (FM) 1960 and the Grand Parkway has the highest percentage of construction sites in Harris County — 37.4 percent — followed by the area between Beltway 8 and State see HOUSTON page 22