(Seguin) — The city is officially signing off on the completion of the first phase of Seguin’s Rudeloff Road Expansion and Improvement Project.
City officials celebrated the milestone Tuesday morning with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the intersection of Huber Road and Rudeloff Road.
Melissa Reynolds, Assistant City Manager of Transportation & Development Services Capital Projects / Engineering, says the improvements are already changing how residents travel through the area.
“This was a grant opportunity that was funded through FHWA, through TxDOT, and granted to the city through the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization,” said Reynolds. “Those grants were applied for back in around 2014. So this has been a long time in the making, as you all know, COVID happened, delayed things, along with a lot of other things. Regardless, we’re here at the finish line.”
The first phase involved improvements to a 1.5-mile stretch of Rudeloff Road between State Highway 46 and Huber Road. The approximately $15.4 million project widened the former two-lane road, added a divided roadway with center turn lanes, installed 10-foot concrete hike-and-bike paths on both sides and included drainage improvements.
Reynolds says the project also improved two low-water crossings and included new water lines, “an important addition as the city continues to expand its infrastructure to accommodate growth.”
Reynolds says the shared-use paths are already attracting regular users, despite questions raised during the planning process about how many people would actually use them.
“Oh, my goodness, the amount of walkers and bikers I see on this road is incredible. And it’s daily. There’s so many of them. When we awarded this project and talked about putting in shared use paths, we had a lot of pushback on who’s gonna walk. They’re here. And they’re walking, and it’s really exciting,” said Reynolds. “It’s great for the health of Seguin, and it’s great for our future.”
Meanwhile, the improvements and the completion of the project proved timely especially for motorists navigating the city, especially as Interstate 10 construction and closures affect traffic patterns.
But the work on Rudeloff Road according to Reynolds is not finished.
She says Phase II will extend the improvements from Huber Road to State Highway 123 near FM 20. The approximately $23 million project calls for a new four-lane divided roadway, center medians, drainage features and about 170,000 square feet of shared-use paths.
Reynolds says the next phase is currently out for bids and will continue the effort to improve east-west mobility across Seguin.
“Seguin will have multiple corridors parallel from Cordova to Rudeloff to I-10 to get that east-west connection across town, which is really increasing mobility with safer routes and more routes to help reduce the bottlenecking that you see today,” said Reynolds.
City officials say they expect construction on the second phase to begin in January 2027, with completion anticipated in May 2028.
Meanwhile, the city is also preparing to move forward with improvements to Cordova Road, another project intended to provide motorists with additional travel options. Reynolds says the plans are complete, but utility relocations have been at the center of delaying the start of construction.
The city last night was slated to ask the city council to approve a management plan that would allow road construction to begin while utility relocation work continues in other areas, potentially allowing the projects to move forward simultaneously.
“We have a plan. We expect to be in construction by next,” said Reynolds.
The Cordova Road project is anticipated to take approximately 2.5 years to complete.
That corner celebrating the ribbon cutting for the roadway will also be the future entrance to the city’s newest park and fire station — the first of their kind north of Interstate 10.
