Already a year behind schedule, construction nears end on this Alliance corridor freeway
Researchers reckon that 91.5% of large infrastructure projects finish late and over budget. The Texas Department of Transportation’s alterations to Texas 170 are no exception.
Planners expected to wrap up the $99 million revamp in the booming Alliance corridor by February 2023. One year on, road workers are still making tweaks to the six-mile stretch, which runs from Interstate 35W in far north Fort Worth to Texas 114 in Roanoke.
“Weather permitting, the new mainlanes are estimated to open to traffic as soon as this month,” TxDOT spokesperson Val Lopez wrote in an email. “The remainder of the work through early summer will include some work on the frontage road, other smaller items, and landscaping.”
Improvements began in September 2020. The updated highway will include four new lanes and five new bridges to connect them. State officials pitched the changes as a way to accommodate the area’s “land development and the associated population and employment growth.”
Originally constructed in 1992, Texas 170 slices through a now packed landscape of ranches, warehouses and new neighborhoods straddling the border between Tarrant and Denton counties.
The highway also links key nodes in the region’s business network. Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport, on the highway’s western edge, is one of the busiest cargo airports in the country, hosting regional cargo hubs for both Amazon and FedEx. At the other end of the highway, where Texas 170 and Texas 114 converge, sits Charles Schwab’s global headquarters.
