2024 was a banner year for the North Texas Highways – the North Tarrant Express (SH 121/183 and I-820), North Tarrant Express 35W, and the LBJ Express (I-635).

In early 2024, we kicked off construction on the North Tarrant Express Capacity Improvement Project, 13-mile, east-west corridor. The expansion of this project was triggered by traffic milestones achieved eight years ahead of projection. The expansion is 25 percent complete, with an expected finish in 2027. This $414-million expansion is funded solely by toll revenues, with no taxpayer or public funds utilized to expand the highways.

In October, we marked the 10th anniversary of the opening of the North Tarrant Express corridor. We hosted a VIP reception for over a hundred stakeholders at the John Wayne Museum in Fort Worth, where we thanked our many partners.

A few facts about the North Tarrant Express:

  • Since 2014, drivers have made 175 million trips along the NTE corridor. In the last 10 years, traffic has grown by 55 percent, but the managed lanes have mitigated congestion during peak hours by 30 percent, yielding a time savings of three million hours.
  • Despite significantly higher traffic counts, traffic in the free main lanes is averaging 55 mph, as more drivers choose to travel in the dynamically tolled TEXpress lanes, which have maintained average speeds of 70 mph.

This coming September, we will mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of the LBJ Express corridor. We are working on plans now to celebrate this important milestone.

In terms of our work in the community, we continued our robust Corporate Social Responsibility program across the North Texas region in 2024:

  • We awarded $25,000 in STEM teacher grants and $25,000 in STEM student scholarships across five Independent School Districts, continuing our efforts to inspire future engineers.
  • We granted $20,000 to the North Texas Food Bank and Tarrant Area Food Bank, in addition to volunteering in the distribution warehouse.
  • We continued our focus on driver safety, with an emphasis on teen drivers, hosting a series of Teen Driver Safety Fairs in multiple school districts, in collaboration with Teens in the Driver Seat®. We have impacted several thousand driving-age, high-school students in just the last year.
  • We continued our partnership with Dallas ISD and Dallas Cowboys’ Charles Haley and his Tackle Tomorrow Foundation, hosting STEM-focused bridge-building competitions in high-need elementary schools in South Dallas.
  • We held another successful TEXpress Gives Back campaign around the holidays, which annually spotlights and awards funds to area nonprofits doing good works in our communities.
  • We once again turned out in force for the annual Jude Walk/Run, a nationwide fundraising effort to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and its efforts to beat childhood cancer.

Looking ahead to 2025 and our collaborative work on key issues in the North Texas region, we are working on implementing a toll assistance program with several public agencies and nonprofit partners to alleviate the financial burden of tolls on lower-income families.

We are also actively engaged in discussions around fake license plates, working with law enforcement, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA), and others to address this significant issue.

We continue to support workforce development initiatives with our local community college system, Tarrant County College, along with the Texas Workforce Commission and the Department of Labor to help attract and develop the next generation of road engineers, technicians and operators.

As always, we continue to focus heavily on safety as our top priority. We worked with TxDOT to update the Statewide Snow & Ice Management Plan, which was put into action with recent winter weather in Texas in January.

We expect 2025 to be a busy year for us between advancing construction on the North Tarrant Express and celebrating milestones along the way on all three of our corridors. A special shout out to the entirety of the North Texas team that keeps this region moving!