Fort Bend County to widen Crabb River Road
The traffic on Crabb River Road in Richmond is so bad that Greatwood resident Jennifer Frnka’s 17-year-old daughter, Sarah, a junior at nearby George Ranch High School, leaves her house every morning at 6:55 to make sure she gets to school by the 8:15 a.m. first period bell. If Sarah left at 7:15, she’d probably be late getting to class, Frnka said.
Sarah gets to school about an hour early and hangs out with friends or catches up on homework, all to avoid the gridlock along Crabb River Road that stretches a fourmile drive that should take 10 minutes into a 30-minute commute.
“It’s a nightmare,” Frnka said.
Fort Bend County and The Texas Department of Transportation now have a construction plan to decrease the area’s congestion, which will be presented informally Nov. 5 at a public meeting at the George Ranch High School cafeteria: widening Crabb River Road from having one lane in each direction to two. Inadequate roadways
Crabb River Road in Richmond runs south from the intersection of U.S. 59 and Texas 99, over Rabbs Bayou, and across FM 2759 and the railroad tracks. Its name then changes to FM 762, where it leads to three Lamar Consolidated Independent School District campuses: Ryon Middle
School, a sixth grade-only campus, Reading Junior High School and George Ranch High School.
Right now, Crabb River Road and FM 762 get backed up in both directions: south because of people heading from subdivisions such as Greatwood to the schools, and north because of commuters trying to get to U.S. 59.
The two-lane road, with a turning lane in the middle, was not designed to have thousands of cars driving on it, said Stacy Slawinksi, assistant county engineer. It was built before the area’s massive growth and before the construction of George Ranch and Reading in 2010 and Ryon in 2013, which currently have a combined enrollment of 4,217.
Students get to school either through district school buses or private transportation.
“It seems like it gets worse every year,” George Ranch and Reading parent Jeanna Hogan said.
Hogan is also a Greatwood resident. She’s been driving her children to the nearby schools since 2009 and leaves the house around 7:20 each morning. The drive takes an hour round-trip.
Plans for expansions
The current plan for Crabb River Road and FM 762 is to expand the threelane road to a five-lane road. There will be two lanes in each direction, plus a middle turning lane with a raised median. This median will prevent headon collisions in what is now a continuous left turn lane, Slawinski said.
The raised median will begin at Rabbs Bayou and extend south to several hundred feet past George Ranch High School. The county also will widen the bridge on Crabb River Road across Rabbs Bayou.
The estimated cost for the expansion is $29.5 million, which will be split between existing Fort Bend County funds and federal funds from TxDOT, Slawinski said.
The county has plans for a second phase of the road project: constructing an overpass across the railroad, which runs along FM 2759 and intersects with Crabb River Road. This would keep cars from having to cross the tracks and prevent collisions between cars and the train, Slawinski said. There is not currently funding for the $17 million project.
Ever since the George Ranch and Reading schools opened, the county has been planning to expand Crabb River Road and FM 762, Slawinski said.
It has taken five years because the county needed state funding from TxDOT, which must abide by extensive federal environmental guidelines for building a road. This process took years but is now complete.
Construction will start in late 2016 with the expansion expected to be finished by June 2018.
Other projects
The Fort Bend County Toll Road Authority is in the midst of another road project designed to decrease congestion near U.S. 59. The Toll Road Authority started clearing trees to build a southbound frontage road by U.S. 59 that would triple the capacity of the roadway.
Much further into the future, a portion of the Grand Parkway will cut through the area, from U.S. 59 South to Sansbury Boulevard.
As construction begins on the Crabb River Road expansion, Slawinski said residents should expect the traffic to get worse.
Greatwood resident Don McGee said it’s worth the traffic so that his children can go to Reading and George Ranch. Three of his children ride the bus. His 17-year-old drives, and leaves around 5 minutes before 8 a.m., to avoid the traffic, and just barely makes it to school on time. McGee doesn’t frequently drive to the campuses during rush hour, but when he does, he said as bad as the gridlock is, he’s willing to tolerate it so that his children can go to the neighborhood schools they love. But, he’s quick to add, he hopes the road expansion will get rid of the gridlock.