In March of 2015, Montgomery County Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack sought for TxDOT to include Montgomery County in its Planning & Environmental Linkages Study on I-45. In May of 2015, TxDOT informed Commissioner Noack’s office that the PEL study would include a portion of the I-45 corridor in Montgomery County starting at the Harris County line up to Loop 336 South in Conroe.
Earlier this year, TxDOT sent a letter informing Commissioner Noack that the study was set to begin in December of 2017 and is expected to last until the summer of 2020.
The purpose of the PEL study is to identify existing and projected transportation issues within the corridor and through public and stakeholder engagement create a corridor vision and identify viable solutions to mitigate congestion, delays and decrease travel time.
The study is anticipated to last three years and will be broken into two phases. Phase I is a data gathering portion of the study followed by phase II which develops and screens conceptual ideas/alternatives that support the corridor vision.
The first meeting for the Project Ambassadors Committee took place Monday afternoon and addressed many of the issues and concerns regarding the study, one of which for Commissioner Noack, was the length of the study.
“Three years seems too long before a solution is even suggested which is why I asked for the total time of the study to be shortened in order to address the immediate and pressing needs along the I-45 corridor in Montgomery County,” Commissioner Noack said.
