County judge provides update on loop around Graham

An update on a traffic congestion relief route for Hwy. 16 was provided by Young County Judge Win Graham who is working with the city of Graham on the feasibility of the project.

The county judge spoke during the Transportation Improvements Committee meeting Tuesday, Oct. 21 regarding the project. 

“I have been working through Nortex (Regional Planning Commission), our council of government, to try to get a loop around Graham approved through (the Texas Department of Transportation),” Graham said. “The reason for it is I believe it has been a core piece of the Graham strategic plan for a while.”

Graham said the reasoning is twofold–safety due to the amount of truck traffic along Hwy. 16 and to potentially expand the limits of the city.

“Graham is landlocked and I believe a loop around Graham would give us an opportunity to annex the city limits out to the loop and give us an opportunity for primarily housing that we could acquire land inside the loop, annex it into the city, set it up with infrastructure for housing and then also for economic development,” the county judge said.

The city’s highest priority in their strategic plan is making residential housing available and affordable. City Manager Eric Garretty said the city is working on a comprehensive plan that will incorporate future projects such as a traffic congestion relief route.

“The loop would define areas for potential future land use and would also integrate into our overall transportation plan,” Garretty said. “...(Transportation committee representative) Johnny (Ford) will bring back to this group what the comprehensive plan is talking about with regard to the loop and the land use, and get y'all to say what you feel about the transportation part of it, and then feed that back up to the comprehensive planning group.”

Housing has been something that multiple entities have spoken about in Young County, with the city of Graham working to incentivize developers through programs with the Graham Economic Improvement Corporation.

“(This loop) would give the city the opportunity to purchase land, annex it into the city, put streets, put infrastructure out there and recruit housing developers. This could all be new housing that we crave,” Graham said. “...Every time we talk about problems, it's housing. ...To me, this could be a plan to get the housing that the city of Graham needs to grow and the housing that the county needs.”

Local comments were submitted in May 2024 in favor of the project during the 2025-2028 Rural Transportation Improvement Program meeting for the Wichita Falls District of TxDOT.

“There were 24 total comments in that entire district, that nine-county district, (and) I think 19 of them were about this issue, or about this reroute. ...Of all the 19 comments they were all similar in support of this endeavor,” TxDOT Graham Area Engineer Zach Husen said in December 2024.

TxDOT is required to respond to each comment from the public. The official response was a loop or bypass around Graham was being added to the Cross Plains Regional Transportation Council’s list of prioritized projects, and was placed as the top priority project for the council.

“Nothing happened (with the project), it just sat number one on the list for the whole year,” Graham said. “We voted again last week, so I'm hoping it'll again be ranked up highly.”

The county judge said he has applied for a $1.2 million federal grant that could provide a feasibility study to see if the project was viable in the area. Graham said he is moving forward with the project because he feels it is in the best interest of the city.

“If y'all tell me y'all don't think it's in Graham's best interest, I'll be happy to stop. I really see this as a Graham project, more than a county project. But I have access to some tools through the county that if the city continues to put this on their strategic plan, and to think it's an interesting project, I have access to try to help and make that happen,” the county judge said.

In December, Husen said the goal would be to move the project to TxDOT’s Unified Transportation Program (UTP). 

The UTP is updated annually and approved by the Texas Transportation Commission. The program serves as a roadmap to define, prioritize and assign funding to thousands of transportation projects across the state over a 10-year period.

“They have a big, long list and they prioritize that list. As they get their federal funding, their state funding, whatever it is that comes in, they roll down that list on that priority and then hopefully you move up,” Garretty said in December. “...When you get on that construction list, that’s where you’re there and you’re really waiting. You’re just waiting for there to be enough funding to drop down to you. So that’s a 10-15 year timeframe.”

The UTP does not serve as a budget or a guarantee that a project will be built, but authorizes TxDOT and local agencies to prepare projects for construction based on future cash flow.

Husen provided a map of a proposed route in December and two further expansions that could occur at a later time connecting Hwy. 16 and Hwy. 67 and Hwy. 16 and U.S. Hwy. 380.

“Phase one, the initial prioritized part of the project, was intended to be from State Hwy. 16, south of town, to State Hwy. 16 north of town, and then the options to later, or in this part of the same project, build out all the way to 380 or over to 67 on the bottom legs,” Husen said in December.