Area stakeholders discuss region’s surging growth at Tarrant Transportation Summit

When it comes to driving around north Texas highways you can see the congestion growing.

Tarrant County elected officials and business leaders met at the county’s annual transportation summit at the Hurst Conference Center on Friday to discuss the transportation needs of a growing population.

Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition Executive Director Victor Vandergriff said the area is prime for more growth.

“In the western region we have a lot of undeveloped land, a lot of opportunities for bigger industries, manufacturing, those big deals that bring thousands of jobs,” Vandergriff said. “I think we’re going to have to have a thoughtful approach to be ahead of that in advance of it coming in.”

The idea is to talk about current problem areas.

“So, I think we have hotspots that are a problem,” Vandergriff said. “For example, downtown Fort Worth on I-35 where it connects the freeways. That’s one of the top 10 most congested areas in the state of Texas. So, we have to fix things like that.”

Also, they want to share ideas looking ahead like possible high-speed rail between Dallas and Fort Worth.

“I believe innovation is so critically important,” Greater Arlington Chamber of Commerce President Michael Jacobson said. “We can’t just be encumbered by transportation solutions that maybe worked 80 years ago. We’ve got to think to the future and how we’re going to move people around this giant.”

When grading how our area is already handling what’s to come some attendees have concerns.

“I think recently with other events going on the increased population to this metroplex was a little bit undershot,” O. Trevino Construction Field Operations Vice President Mark Trevino said. “So, we are playing a little bit of catch-up.”

“A little bit behind,” The Rios Group President Rosa Navejar said. “Because we need to start looking at multimodal systems of what that entails connecting Denton, Dallas and Fort Worth.”