Planning for roadway improvements along the I-35W corridor between downtown Fort Worth at I-30 north to I-820 (what has become Segment 3A) began with a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) study in 1992. TxDOT continued to advance a schematic design periodically throughout the 1990s to refine interchange configurations and to include the addition of a reversible high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane in the median, which would be available to multiple-occupant passenger vehicles only.
A separate TxDOT study conducted in the late 1980s to early 1990s examined improvements to I-35W north of I-820 to SH 114-a corridor that now includes Segments 3B and 3C-and resulted in a series of small improvements to frontage roads and the addition of new interchanges near Fort Worth Alliance Airport.
While TxDOT endorsed expanding I-35W, little was done in the early 2000s as pay-as-you-go funding from gas-tax collections was insufficient to complete a major widening in a timely manner. In addition, regional priorities were focused on the I-820 corridor-a corridor that would become part of the first phase of the NTE. To overcome the funding constraints delaying the project, TxDOT sought to capitalize on a 2001 change in Texas transportation law that permitted the state to issue bonds against the collection of toll revenues. It began to examine tolled managed lanes rather than HOV lanes as a means to provide an ongoing revenue source against which to issue bonds.