What Will Houston Get In TxDOT’s New Round Of Funding?

The Texas Transportation Commission has approved the 2017 Unified Transportation Program, a ten-year plan that will pay for $70 billion in projects around the state.

Much of that money comes from Propositions 1 and 7. Those are funding initiatives approved by Texas voters that allocate greater portions of tax revenues to the state highway fund.

So exactly how much of that money will the Houston region get?

Alan Clark with the Houston-Galveston Area Council says they expect to have a better number in the next few months.

"We'll be seeing literally billions of additional dollars," says Clark. "I think it will be in the range of three, four, five billion dollars."

As for specific projects, Clark says some of the money could go fixing some of downtown's congestion hotspots.

"Like 59 at Interstate 45 near downtown," adds Clark. "Or Interstate 10 as it crosses downtown."

Outside the state's big urban areas, TxDOT says it wants to use some of that money to better connect rural roads to interstates. The agency also wants to improve hurricane evacuation routes as well as roads that get heavy use in the energy sector.