Capital Improvement Projects

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CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS

The City of College Station takes extreme pride in its infrastructure: streets, water and sanitary sewer lines, parks and public buildings. These capital assets significantly affect the character, growth patterns, and quality of life in College Station. Over time the City modifies, expands, rehabilitates or replaces some of its existing infrastructure and adds new assets to meet the needs of our Citizens in accordance with the Comprehensive Plan and the City Council's Strategic Initiatives. Each year we assist other departments within the City of College Station to identify and prioritize capital improvement projects as part of the development of our five year Capital Plan.

The Capital Projects division consists of Project Managers and Land Agents who manage and deliver the projects included in the Capital Plan and acquire any land (easements, right-of-way, and real property) needed to support the improvements in the plan. We have professional engineers licensed in the State of Texas, so when our workload allows, staff completes the design work on selected projects. When our workload is high and/or we have more complex projects, our staff will manage the efforts of consulting engineers, surveyors and architects who provide professional design services to the City. Our staff is responsible for each of the projects from conceptual design through construction. The division ensures that projects are of the highest quality, meets the needs outlined in the project scope, and delivered on schedule and within budget.

The funding sources to design, build, maintain, and upgrade these capital improvements are diverse and are obtained through many sources such as: general obligation bonds, certificates of obligations, and utility revenue bonds. For a complete listing of the Capital Projects Budget, please click here.

Click here to view the City of College Station Comprehensive Plan

A connectivity challenge to the west is the Union Pacific railroad tracks, which parallel Wellborn Road for the entire length of the roadway. Due to operational efficiency and safety, limited crossings exist to provide access to Wellborn Road from the west. The crossings tend to be undersized and don't require Wellborn Road traffic to stop. The city is starting to improve these crossings to increase traffic capacity and connectivity, and improve safety at the crossings and the intersections with Wellborn Road.

One of the crossings is Capstone Drive, which crosses the railroad then intersects and dead ends at Wellborn Road from the west. It intersects within 350-feet of the Barron Road intersection that connects and dead ends from the east. The offset intersection created by these two roadways causes safety, capacity and efficiency issues for the Wellborn, Capstone, and Barron roadways.

The Capitol Improvement Citizen Advisory Committee recommended a project to realign Capstone and Barron to meet at the same junction along Wellborn Road. The project would widen Barron Road and the railroad crossing at the intersection to increase capacity.

In the spring of 2016, the city hired Halff & Associates, an engineering consultant, to perform an analysis of the intersection and potential routes for the realignment of Capstone and Barron. A public meeting was conducted on March 23, 2016, to gather community input before the analysis. Halff then performed its analysis and produced a preliminary engineering report of their findings. A second public meeting was conducted on June 28, 2016, to discuss the report.

Please see attached the links for the finalized Preliminary Engineering Report and the presentation slides from the June 28 public meeting.

NEXT STEPS
Halff & Associates and city staff will make a presentation to the city council about the analysis and the report's recommendations so that council can give direction on how to move forward.

DOCUMENTS (PDFs)

If you have any questions about the project please contact:

James Smith, PE
Public Works Department
City of College Station
979-764-3877
[email protected]

The City of College Station continues to experience exponential growth, especially to the south and west. As a result, Wellborn Road has become an increasingly critical highway to serve the area's booming population.

One connectivity challenge to the west is crossing the Union Pacific railroad, which parallels Wellborn Road for the entire length of the roadway. Due to operational efficiency and safety, there are limited crossings providing access to Wellborn Road from the west. The crossings that do exist, however, tend to be undersized and don't require Wellborn Road traffic to stop. The city is starting to improve these crossings to increase traffic capacity and connectivity, improve safety of the railroad crossings, and the safety of the intersections with Wellborn Road.

One of these railroad crossings is South Dowling Road in the Wellborn Community. South Dowling is a two-lane roadway that crosses the railroad and intersects then Wellborn Road. The roadway continues on the east side of Wellborn Road as Madison Street.

The city started studying this intersection in 2016 trying to find a solution that increases safety and east-west mobility across Wellborn Road and the railroad. A public meeting was held on Feb. 3, 2016 to discuss some options for South Dowling. The first option being to relocate the crossing to the north along with a relocation of Greens Prairie Road to create a new intersection at Wellborn Road and a thoroughfare that would go from I&GN to Victoria. The second option was to improve the South Dowling crossing at its current location; however, that required the closing of driveways, relocation of parking, and possible impacts to adjacent buildings. At the time the city was recommending the first option.

Since that meeting, several tracks of land have started to develop coupled with the building of three schools just south of the Wellborn area has changed how the city is approaching transportation planning in the area.

Another public meeting was held on Sept. 12, 2017 to discuss a new option to help improve safety and mobility in the Wellborn area, taking into consideration the recent developments.

Due to the development of three schools close to the intersection of Greens Prairie Trail, the city has been working to improve the roadways around them. As part of these improvements the city worked with a local developer to purchase ROW to realign Royder Road to tie directly into Wellborn Road. This will improve the mobility of traffic to and from the schools. The city now believes that the point where Royder will tie into Wellborn Road is the best place to relocate the South Dowling crossing to get a good east-west connection. Due to the development of the property at the intersection of Greens Prairie Road and Creek Meadows Blvd, the option presented at the February 2016 meeting has essentially blocked off the realignment of Greens Prairie Road to the existing South Dowling/Madison intersection with Wellborn Road.

---> SEPT. 12, 2017 - ALIGNMENT OPTION

---> SEPT. 12, 2017 - PRESENTATION

NEXT STEPS
Add the new crossing at the Royder location and closing of the South Dowling crossing to the thoroughfare plan. There is currently no budget for this project.