McKinney | September 2022

•CELINA the region A PATH FOR DENTON COUNTY Map key

After years of discussion, progress was recently made on the Collin County portion of the Outer Loop with the completion of a two-lane service road that will ultimately be expanded to a freeway.

Key

Collin County’s Outer Loop portion

Completed

In progress

In design

COLLIN COUNTY

•CELINA

•WESTON

WESTON•

A two-lane service road between the tollway and Preston Road is open, but will expand to four lanes in 2024.

SRT TOLL

BLUE• RIDGE

•MELISSA

A November bond in Denton County will also allocate funds for the Denton County portion of the Outer Loop.

•MELISSA

DNT TOLL

•PROSPER

•NEW HOPE

Denton County’s Outer Loop portion

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A two-lane service road between Custer Road and US 75 is in design. Work should start in summer 2023 and take two to three years.

A segment of the Outer Loop between US 75 and SH 121 has already been completed.

•PRINCETON

•MCKINNEY

•FRISCO

•FAIRVIEW

FARMERSVILLE•

A two-lane service road between Preston Road and Custer Road is under construction.

SRT TOLL

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DNT TOLL

•ALLEN

•PROSPER

LEVON LAKE

•PLANO

NEVADA•

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•NEW HOPE

DNT TOLL

PGBT TOLL

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•FRISCO

•DENTON

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•MCKINNEY

MAP NOT TO SCALE N

•RICHARDSON

500 ft.

Ramp

FREEWAY DESIGN

Ramp

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Council Chair and Collin County Pre- cinct 4 commissioner. The county is sitting at a population of about 1.1 million people, and it is pro- jected to grow to between 2.5 million and 3.5 million by 2050, Webb said. Earlier this year, crews completed work on a connecting segment of the frontage road and a portion of the Collin County Outer Loop main lanes between the Dallas North Tollway and Preston Road in the Celina area. When the two- lane service road between the tollway and Preston opened this spring, it imme- diately became congested, Webb said. With that road already at capacity, the county is now working to build an additional lane in each direction for that service road, so it will have two lanes moving in each direction. Construction is expected to begin in 2024, but the duration of the construction has not been determined, Webb said. McKinney Mayor George Fuller said he is excited about progress on the Outer Loop and how it will benet McK- inney residents. “[The Outer Loop] will provide regional mobility in an area that will

Ultimately, the Outer Loop will be 500 feet wide to allow for up to ve main lanes with some buer for future light rail in the center. It will also have service lanes on each side.

Future rail

Main lanes

Access road

SOURCE: COLLIN COUNTYCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER

continue to grow fast over the next 20 years,” Fuller said. Paving the way Since 2000, Collin County has been in the process of planning for the Collin County Outer Loop, starting with a corri- dor study and leading up to identifying a preferred alignment for the freeway, according to the county’s website. The freeway is being built in a phased approach, with the service roads con- structed ahead of the freeway main lanes and the center of the roadway reserved for a potential rail corridor. The loop already has a two-lane service road that runs between SH 121 and US 75 in Melissa, just north of McKinney. Mobility plans going back to 2002 and updated in 2007 and 2014 helped rene the proposed regional roadway and its alignment to accommodate the needs of anticipated growth, Webb said.

In 2018, Collin County taxpayers approved a $750 million bond issue, with $600 million reserved strictly for the design, planning and construction of a freeway system in the county. That included building the Outer Loop out from the Collin County and Denton County line to US 75, crossing through the cities of Celina, Prosper and Weston as well as the northern portion of McKinney. Collin County is using the 2018 bond funds, so the Texas Department of Transportation is not involved. That helps the process go faster, Webb said. “TxDOT [uses] federal money, and then you have a more complicated pro- cedure for environmental clearance,” Webb said. Ultimately, the county will have to use TxDOT funds to build the main lanes of the freeway and to assist with clearances needed to build the main lanes. At that

point, however, all the service roads should be in place, Webb said. A major hurdle to cross has been funding the Collin County Outer Loop, which the bond helped with, Webb said. But freeway projects like this take time. Between the initial planning phase, environmental clearance processes, right-of-way acquisition, moving util- ities and nally constructing the road, freeway projects can take about two decades from start to nish, and that is if things go perfectly, he said. One other factor complicating road- way construction is ongoing develop- ment happening throughout the county. Ocials have to reroute future road- ways if something is built too close to the proposed alignment, Webb said. “Those plans have had to be tweaked and tweaked and tweaked because the developers keep building, building, building,” he said.

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