“1488 is the highest traveled road in southern Montgomery County,” said Montgomery County Pct. 2 Operations Manager Charlie Riley. “We had to widen the road to get people moving around.”

Expansion of FM 1488 throughout Magnolia and outlying areas has been ongoing for more than a year.

Montgomery county officials were able to use “pass-through” funding for the project after being accepted into the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) maintenance program in February.

The pass-through program allows local governments to pay for road construction projects up front and then be reimbursed from the state at a later time based on traffic counts.

Riley said officials wanted to get in the program in order to get the roads built as fast as possible.

“Montgomery County was the first to try this new program, and it means we can fund our projects using county money and get it done 10 years sooner than if we had waited for TxDOT,” he said.

In March, county officials celebrated the completion of a road-widening project that expanded FM 1488 along a four-mile stretch from Texas 242 to FM 2978.

Now, the construction is focused on a section of FM 1488 from Mostyn Manor Road, east to FM 2978.

The layout of the roadway will mirror the expansion on Texas 242, Riley said. It will be a continuous, four-lane road with a continuous turn lane.

Riley acknowledged that there will be traffic delays as a result of the ongoing construction, but said they will be minor.

“There will be some delays, some traffic changes, but most of the construction right now will be building the new part of the road,” Riley said. “It will be affected, but I think it will be minimum.”

So far, construction workers have began putting in drainage pipes and getting topsoil out of the way, Riley said.

Other than a minor drainage issue construction crews encountered on Nov. 2 at Honea-Egypt Road and FM 1488, construction is moving along as planned.

The project, which began in November, has a 23-month timeline, which means if all goes well, drivers should be able to enjoy the benefits of a multi-lane highway by October of 2010.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed