Fort Worth is officially gearing up for a long haul on traffic and growth. Last Tuesday, the City Council signed off on a Master Transportation Plan that ranks roadway, freight, and bike-and-pedestrian projects across four, 10, and 25-year investment windows. The 314-page blueprint, part of the city's Moving a Million initiative, lays out construction priorities through 2034 and reserves key corridors, bridge locations, and right of way for many years of expansion still to come. City leaders cast the plan as a playbook to keep up with rapid growth and to zero in on safety hot spots and freight bottlenecks rather than guessing where to spend money next.
The plan was put together by the Transportation & Public Works Department and folded into the city's Comprehensive Plan at that same June 9 meeting. Staff says the Master Transportation Plan creates a data-driven Transportation Investment Program, updates Fort Worth's Access Management policy, and is designed to move the first four years of projects into motion while also launching a citywide speed study, according to the City of Fort Worth.
Big Numbers And Safety Red Flags
The technical side of the plan paints a sobering picture of what happens if the city does not keep up. It projects about a 52 percent jump in average travel times by 2036 and notes that roughly 40.6 percent of freight trips are currently running on local streets. The executive summary also logs 8,423 freight-involved crashes from 2019 through 2023 that resulted in 2,228 injuries, along with 394 bike crashes and 1,564 pedestrian injuries over the same period. Those figures are the backbone of the plan's safety push, according to the MTP executive summary.
Growth And Lane Miles
The transportation blueprint is built around aggressive growth numbers. City projections used in the plan assume Fort Worth will add roughly 300,000 residents over the next 25 years, pushing the population past 1.3 million by 2050, which is about a 38 percent increase from 2023. A presentation included in the council packet puts the 2023 baseline at about 4,706 lane miles and estimates roughly a 36 percent increase in lane miles by 2045, figures noted by Community Impact.
Projects To Watch
Some big-ticket corridors rise to the top of the priority lists. Westport Parkway work, including a four-lane divided roadway and a bridge, shows up in the 2030 Investment Cycle with construction line items that add up to about 92.1 million dollars. A multi-phase Heritage Trace Parkway program appears with several construction entries that together represent tens of millions of dollars in near-term spending and larger totals over the full life of the plan. The largest single 2034 construction item is the Old Denton Road and Riverside Road widening, estimated at about 23.4 million dollars, according to the project tables in the MTP executive summary. Earlier this year, the city also applied for a 25 million federal grant to help pay for a Heritage Trace bridge project, as reported by the Star-Telegram.
Paying For It And What Comes Next
Voters set the table for the first wave of work on May 2, approving an 845 million bond package. Proposition A dedicates about 511.48 million dollars of that total to streets and mobility, money that lines up with the first investment cycle in the Master Transportation Plan, according to the city's bond materials in the 2026 Bond Program. City staff says they plan to stack those local dollars with regional, state, and federal grants to move higher-cost projects ahead more quickly and to shorten design and right-of-way timelines, a strategy described by Community Impact.
Adopting the Master Transportation Plan does not trigger construction crews across the city overnight. Instead, it creates a long-range pipeline of projects that staff will continue to scope, fund, and schedule over the coming years while working through environmental reviews, right-of-way needs, and grant applications. Residents who want to get into the weeds on maps, phasing, and cost assumptions can dig through the full council packet and presentation on Legistar.
