Extreme growth in Montgomery County comes with traffic and infrastructure concerns, study shows

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- Moving to Montgomery County is what researchers at Rice University's Kinder Institute say is happening at a rapid rate.

"Definitely one of the fastest-growing counties in the country," the Kinder Institute director of the Houston population research center, Daniel Potter, said.

Potter says in Conroe, there were slightly more than 50,000 people living in the community in 2010, and he says it's now over 100,000 people.

But he says with that, affordability is now a worry.

"But even when we talked to them previously, the cost of housing was not a challenge. Today we're hearing that. That is a challenge for many of the residents in the area," Potter said.

For the Conroe/Lake Conroe Chamber of Commerce, they say even schools are a testament to the increase.

"We're seeing a lot of growth in school enrollments. Conroe ISD has just jumped to seventh in the state, the seventh-largest district in the state," Conroe/Lake Conroe Chamber of Commerce Vice President Pauline Veazey said.

Veazey says that for chamber businesses, more than half have seen a 50% increase in revenue in the last year.

However, the big issue is traffic, according to research.

"It's going to put more cars on the road. 'Are those roads ready to handle that kind of growth and development?' And so some of the things we're hearing from residents are maybe not quite," Potter said.

But Veazey says there's relief on the way.

"We just recently passed a $480 million road bond to help alleviate some of that traffic," Veazey said.

Potter says the diversity is also now changing. According to their research, he says that in the last 15 years, the Hispanic population has now grown to 28%.

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