Angleton may be seeing new pathways of transportation in the upcoming years

The Facts
By Valery Rodriguez valery.rodriguez@thefacts.com
February 1, 2023

ANGLETON — City leaders have applied for a state grant that would allow people to get around more easily in ways other than their vehicles.

The money is not expected to be available until the 2025-27 biennium Texas Department of Transportation Planner Ana Ramirez told Angleton City Council last week. The grants are to benefit methods of transportation other than highways, such as sidewalks, side paths and bike paths, she said.

“We’ve never had this; this is the first time,” Ramirez said. “We’ve never funded a minimum of $5 million sidewalks or side path projects. This is really unprecedented.”

Angleton is seeking money for two projects, City Manager Chris Whittaker said.

“One is for the sidewalks downtown from basically city hall up to the courthouse on both sides because they’re not ADA compliant; they have a lot of issues,” Whittaker said.

The second grant would build a 10-foot-wide shared path along Front Street from Highway 288B West to Loop 274, he said.

The downtown project is estimated at about $5 million, while the shared path is between $3 million and $4 million, Whittaker said.

Whether the city will follow through on the applications hasn’t been decided. Angleton could face a matching share of up to 20 percent of the projects’ cost. A previous application for sidewalk grants didn’t go through for the lack of a financial commitment by the city.

“We submitted for the downtown sidewalk ADA compliance a year and a half ago, and we got told then that we didn’t get the grant and we were told to reapply,” Whittaker said. “We’ve been pursuing that. Within the last year, the Texas Department of Transportation has come forward and said ‘we think this other sidewalk project could be a great thing for Angleton.”

Ramirez sees Loop 274 as a divider between where people live and where people go to work, shop and eat. The proposed path could connect that area of the city and make it more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists.

The city submitted its preliminary applications to give it an opportunity to receive the funding. A formal application would follow in the spring if the city wants to proceed.

“I would hate to miss this,” Councilwoman Christiene Daniel said.

Daniel believes the city will have enough new revenue by the time it has to come up with its matching share to move forward with the grant requests.

“To start the planning and give them the funding, it’s going to be 2 or 3 years from now,” she said., “More of those rooftops will be finished so that’s more property tax going to our bucket of funds.”

The downtown project would improve the aesthetics of the area and amplify the connectivity and safety of the city overall, Councilmen Travis Townsend said.

“A lot of people still walk and ride their bikes on their way to libraries, parks and do laps around the track in schools,” he said. “This may be an opportunity we should explore.”

While a wait of two years or more before the projects could be started might not seem urgent, the city needs to take advantage of the opportunity now if it wants to be in the next round of funding, Ramirez said.

“In our world that is pretty fast, it may not seem so, but it does take a little bit to get projects ready to start construction and break ground,” she said.