Greetings From Kingwood!

[Nate99]

Thanks for the sub-board, hopefully it attracts local news.

 

If anything substantial is brewing around thoroughfare expansion in Kingwood proper, I'd love to hear it. Traffic has progressed to miserable in the 12 years I've lived up here.

[Nate99]

Finally some movement...

Construction date projected for roughly $76.2M Kingwood mobility project | Community Impact

They are estimating two years to get "Phase 1" of the Northpark expansion done after eight years of study, I'm guessing it will be more than that just to set my expectations low. 

Ford Road going toward Porter from the back of Kingwood is seeing some action too, and could add another couple of lanes of ingress/egress capability into Kingwood, though I don't think it will extend past the Montgomery/Harris line. 

East Montgomery County project to widen Ford Road gets rolling (yourconroenews.com)

Kingwood Drive will likely never be expanded given the particular love people have for the tree canopy, at least they'll be able to enjoy it for long stretches of time while they sit in traffic. 

Given that it took eight years for a simple widening of an ugly stretch of road to get started, this will likely be it for unclogging Kingwood's major roads, at least for as long as I plan to be here. Another road up the western side of Lake Houston/East Fork from the end of West Lake Houston Parkway up to 99 would do wonders, but that's just me staring at the map, I don't think anyone has kicked that around at all. 

The other no brainer would seem to be an expansion of Hamblen Road all the way to Woodland Hills along the West Fork, but I think that one was actually considered and shot down for reasons unexplained.  If the 'shroom trip moonshot Herons/Marina thing would have happened, this would have been almost a prerequisite, but I think we had as much of a chance of that thing ever getting built as we still have of it appearing spontaneously. 

I'll check back on this thread in another decade and give a progress report on that Northpark overpass. 

Edited April 14, 2023 by Nate99

[Chi-Char-Hou-Dal]

Nate, what about Woodland Hills bridge over the river into Humble? Would be a nice escape and alt to West Lake Houston Parkway or 59

 

Has this ever been considered?

[Chi-Char-Hou-Dal]

@Nate99

[Nate99]

On 5/18/2023 at 11:23 AM, Chi-Char-Hou-Dal said:

Nate, what about Woodland Hills bridge over the river into Humble? Would be a nice escape and alt to West Lake Houston Parkway or 59

 

Has this ever been considered?

 

I recall seeing a regional mobility plan that someone put together a while back. It was something of an "ignoring the cost, what would you build?" type of an analysis.  That plan imagined a bridge over the West Fork at Woodland Hills and a bridge over the East Fork at Kingwood Drive into Huffman.   The traffic in Kingwood keeps getting worse, and the Ford Road expansion will probably enable more development up toward Porter, but nothing has been done to open up another ingress/egress into the area since the West Lake Houston bridge was built over 20 years ago. 

Dave Martin and others have made runs at getting funding in place for road expansions only to be met with local opposition. The "oppose all new roads, that would just encourage more growth that we don't want" impulse seems strong in Kingwood. The new growth seems to come anyway though.  they have done about all that they could without adding lanes and nothing else seems to be under serious consideration after Northpark is expanded 10 years after it was needed. 

Here's a 2015 version - no mentions of bridges, but interestingly the #2 and #3 ranked projects wanted to widen Kingwood drive to 6 lanes. #1 was just intersection improvements. 

Microsoft Word - 150506-Draft Report Body.doc (lakehoustonra.com)

Edited May 30, 2023 by Nate99

[jmancuso]

KIngwood is being strangled by its own NIMBYism. It's not 1980 anymore and Kingwood along with the rest of Houston has exploded in population and the infrastructure is sorely lacking.