Completed months ahead of schedule, the North Tarrant Express Capacity Improvement Project delivers enhanced capacity and improved mobility along one of North Texas’ busiest corridors.
Construction is complete for the North Tarrant Express (NTE) Capacity Improvement Project, featuring a new 10-mile free general-purpose lane and an additional managed lane to help relieve congestion.
With expanded capacity now in place, NTE can continue to support future growth while helping to improve travel reliability for commuters, freight carriers, businesses, and emergency responders throughout Northeast Tarrant County. Funded entirely through toll revenues, the $414 million expansion was completed without taxpayer funding for design or construction.
The ongoing need for expansion was anticipated in the original agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Average daily traffic has grown by more than 25% since 2009; however, has continued to provide reliable travel times, with average peak-period speeds of 45 mph in the general-purpose lanes and 70 mph in the TEXpress lanes.
TEXpress celebrated the project’s completion during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 25 in Fort Worth. During the event, Javier Tamargo, U.S. CEO of Cintra, a Ferrovial company, highlighted both the corridor’s evolution and its future potential. He emphasized that the project’s significance extends beyond transportation, helping drive economic growth, job creation, and broader community investment across the region.
Texas partnered with the Ferrovial-led consortium to finance, design, build and operate the North Tarrant Express (NTE), which officially opened in 2014. The success of the project led to the development of the TEXpress Lanes network–NTE, NTE 35W, and the LBJ Express. Collectively, the lanes have generated an estimated $25.1 billion in economic impact and $18 billion in traveler and community benefits, while serving more than one million trips each day.
