When will Loop 820/US 287 construction be finished? Here’s latest timeline or SE Connector
Construction on the $2.2 billion effort to widen and rewire roughly 16 miles of highway in southeast Tarrant County will continue to bedevil Metroplex commuters until early 2028, according to the latest updates from the Texas Department of Transportation.
Work on the Southeast Connector Project — an expansion of Interstate 20, Southeast Loop 820 and U.S. 287 often lampooned as a “boondoggle” — began in late 2022, with an expected five-year turnaround. The ensuing delays and detours have tormented the highways’ daily users, prompting Tarrant County commissioner Alisa Simmons to organize a Jan. 23 town hall on the project’s progression.
Simmons described the undertaking as a “necessary nightmare” to an audience of roughly two dozen TxDOT planners and local government officials gathered in a subcourthouse conference room in Arlington.
“This is necessary,” she told television reporters after the meeting. “This is progress.”
The three roadways twist and tangle around Lake Arlington, traversing four municipal boundaries. TxDOT has long pitched its plans to enlarge and reconnect the highways as an integral step toward accommodating the swell of people and vehicles they anticipate in the coming decades.
“TxDOT does a great job of future-planning,” said Jason Thomas, Simmons’ director of field of operations, before passing the mic to an agency engineer. “They don’t just wake up one day and all the growth is here, and then they’re scrambling trying to fix stuff.”
The Southeast Connector is the Fort Worth TxDOT division’s priciest ever project. The agency and its contractor, South-Point Constructors, decided to “defer” the western, northern, and easternmost branches of the rebuild, putting off their construction until they can make up budget shortfalls.
“That entire package wasn’t exactly feasible with the funding that became available,” said South-Point Constructors public information manger Nicholas Andryshak. “But they did realize that this was still a very important project that they wanted to build.”
Construction on the bankrolled segments will chug ahead in the meantime, Andryshak said. The firm plans to demolish and rebuild the Craig Street Bridge in east Fort Worth this coming spring. A bridge along Anglin Drive in Forest Hill with be torn down for a facelift this summer.
Several audience members questioned TxDOT’s belief in highway expansion as the region’s ideal congestion remedy. Many urban and transportation planners note that lane additions, over time, tend to invite more traffic, not ease it.
“I was a little surprised not to see anything, with future growth on the way, like having a rail system,” one spectator asked. “You know, it eliminates some of this traffic and make things move a little faster.”
“The question that you had discussed is being discussed at a higher level,” Prapti Sharma, a TxDOT engineer, replied. “They are looking at mass transit.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM.
