Granite Construction has cemented a contract with the Texas DOT to improve one of the state’s historic “farm-to-market” highways. 

The $80 million infrastructure project on Farm to Market Road 548 near Forney will transform the existing asphalt into a paved concrete roadway while adding travel lanes and drainage upgrades, according to a Granite news release. Project funding will come from the state.

Scope extends from U.S. 80 to Windmill Farms Boulevard and includes over 200,000 square yards of 10-inch-thick concrete pavement and over 40,000 linear feet of new storm drain.

The makeover and widening will increase traffic capacity to help relieve congestion in rapidly growing Forney, located about a half hour east of Dallas, particularly in its busiest commercial section downtown, according to the release. 

Farm-to-market roads, which grew up across the country in rural areas during the mid-20th century to bring food to population centers, are particularly emblematic of Texas. 

By the 1980s, more than half of the state’s highway miles — 41,000 of 73,000 — fit into the category, according to Texas Monthly magazine, which wrote “the farm-to-market road is to Texas what the freeway is to California.” 

The state set up specific funding for the road network in 1949 and contributes money today via a fuel tax and its Highway Transportation Fund. Farm-to-market roads also benefit from federal funding administered by the Texas DOT.

But over the years, Texas’ population growth has strained this network of straight-shot and meandering byways which often conform, without grading, to the existing lay of the land, according to Texas Monthly. FM 548, for example, originally opened in 1945 as a two-lane rural roadway.

For that reason, Granite said the project will contribute to the growth and development of Forney and surrounding Kaufman County, supporting the area’s economic expansion.  

Construction is expected to begin in July and be completed in March 2027.