Georgetown Future Mobility Plan looks ahead to population growth

GEORGETOWN, Texas (KXAN) — Earlier this month, the nation's fastest growing city adopted its Future Mobility Plan. It laid out improvements that could help local roads keep up with the rapidly growing population over the next 10-25 years.

The Georgetown City Council adopted the plan at its December 14 meeting. The plan analyzed traffic data across the city, identifying several high-crash areas and areas prone to traffic bottlenecking.

In its recommendations, the plan suggested realignments of certain thoroughfares in the city, road classification changes, additional roadways that could extend connectivity, and roads that could be removed in the future.

The plan said many of these areas identified area already undergoing some form of improvement, such as the areas around Williams Drive and the county's Southwest Bypass Extension project.

Lua Saluone, Georgetown transportation manager, said the last time the city evaluated its transportation master plan was back in 2015. He said the rapid growth that's happened since then, which is projected to continue, prompted this new assessment.

He said the new plan has mostly tentative ideas laid out in it, depending on growth over the next couple decades things could change.

"We model it out 10 years, 15 years, 25 years, right. So there's not necessarily a plan of when these roads would come in. It's as it develops and as as it's needed, right. So if we see a dip in development or growth we're not going to go ahead and build these roads," Saluone said.