On August 27, local residents sat in folding chairs with TxDOT representatives and Lynda Rife of the public relations firm Rifeline at the Cherrywood Community Center for what TxDOT called a workshop. TxDOT would answer questions about a letter they mailed to Cherrywood residents, stating intentions to build a half-mile-long, 21-foot-tall concrete wall along the Cherrywood neighborhood, against Robinson Avenue between East 30th and East 38th ½ streets, where it borders I-35.
The I-35 Capital Express Central Project, the most massive expansion of the freeway since the upper decks were added in 1975, will be under construction for the next decade. Along the 8-mile stretch that runs through Central Austin, the upper decks will be removed and the freeway buried, much to the joy of many Austinites, but it will also widen. I-35 is the property of the state of Texas, not the city of Austin, so there are no local noise codes. Construction will mostly happen through the night, as it’s too disruptive for daytime traffic.
The resulting noise pollution, according to the environmental impact study TxDOT conducted in August 2023, will particularly affect two northeast residential areas along this corridor: Cherrywood and Swede Hill.
TxDOT planned for a noise barrier in both neighborhoods to block some of the noise coming from highway traffic and construction for local residents. When a barrier will decrease noise by at least 5 decibels – as it would in Cherrywood, which represents the longest proposed segment of the planned barriers – TxDOT has to allow local residents to vote on whether or not they want it. “Noise barriers are meant to be a positive addition to a neighborhood and are normally well received,” TxDOT writes in a brochure.
However, noise walls that locals are already familiar with, like the ones along MoPac, are only 8 to 12 feet tall, not the height of a two-story building. And this one would be erected two feet from residents’ backyards. Residents last week asked if there was room for negotiation over the wall height or material (could it be 15 feet tall instead? Wood? Plexiglas?) but the TxDOT reps said no. Even though TxDOT’s noise barrier brochure lists out different materials that noise barriers can be made out of, Cherrywood was told that they had no other options than the concrete one presented.
“I would want someone to tell it to me like it is, and it’s either you get the sound barrier, or you don’t,” Rife told residents at the “workshop.” Residents quickly got the sense that it wasn’t a workshop, but TxDOT needing a green light. If they wanted this 21-foot noise barrier, great, and if not, TxDOT said they wouldn’t offer it twice.
They could submit their paper ballot vote on the wall right that minute, which the TxDOT reps encouraged, or they had until a Sept. 10 deadline. TxDOT told the Chronicle that the “height of the Cherrywood noise wall is based on the results of the noise analysis, which identifies the option that benefits the greatest number of properties.” There’d be no more workshops.
“What I see now is sky. What I’d see if we vote yes is a wall.” – Cherrywood resident PJ Raval, whose backyard abuts TxDOT’s proposed noise barrier
“I don’t know if we have an expectation, per se, but we have a desire for there to be a bit more of a back and forth with the design process,” said Jim Walker, chair of the Cherrywood Neighborhood Association. “There’s going to be a noise impact, so they have to look at some kind of mitigation. So why not work more with the neighborhood on what the mitigation options are?”
City Council Member Zo Qadri also urges TxDOT to actually workshop these sound wall projects with residents, writing to the Chronicle: “While the City has no jurisdiction over TxDOT’s decisions … I encourage TxDOT, to the extent possible, to carefully consider alternatives, including building and trail-oriented solutions, and to give residents more options and input throughout this process.”
PJ Raval, a Robinson Avenue resident whose house will be one of the most affected (in decibels, that is) by the CapEx construction, drew a mockup on Photoshop of what a 21-foot wall would look like from his living room window. “What I see now is sky,” Raval told his neighbors at the Sept. 3 CNA meeting. “What I’d see if we vote yes is a wall.”
The I-35 CapEx expansion will stretch 8 miles through Central Austin, and 10 different concrete sound walls are currently planned along the project. The groundwork for those has been ongoing for years. Cherrywood saw several of its frontage road businesses demolished last year, including the old Days Inn and a coffee shop that had only just opened during the pandemic. Trees along the I-35 property line will be uprooted. There’s not much anymore between the “chasm” of I-35, as residents like to call it, and people’s backyards.
I-35, especially as it has existed with towering upper decks, is already a wall. Since the Sixties, the freeway has been the physical embodiment of segregation between West Austin and historically Black and brown communities living on the Eastside who continue to be priced and pushed out of their homes in a heavily gentrifying, developing city.
But the Cherrywood neighborhood is predominantly white, and affluent relative to the rest of the city. Bob Schmidt, a Robinson Avenue resident who says he’s voting in favor of the sound wall, doesn’t think the east-west divide applies to the argument for or against a concrete wall in Cherrywood. “It’s sort of like separating Windsor Hills from Tarrytown,” Schmidt said.
Nonetheless, 10 segments of noise barriers will be built all along those 8 miles of I-35, not just against Cherrywood. There will be the physicality of a concrete wall down the historical east-west segregation line, built in the heart of the city.
Voting residents talked to the Chronicle about why they’re against the noise barrier: the psychological effects of living behind a concrete wall, potentially decreased sunlight and air quality, potentially decreased property value. The planned public-use path would be rather ugly if smacked between the freeway and a wall. And, with the upper decks removed and lanes sunken, the traffic noise would be already lessened post-CapEx. The construction will last years, but is still temporary. A wall is permanent.
Other resident voters, like Schmidt, are willing to make that lifetime commitment. Schmidt’s house was right behind the Days Inn, and since it was torn down in December 2024, his house feels intolerably twice as loud with the traffic. “We’re not crazy about the height of the wall. We’re not crazy about how it’s going to look. But you know, it will hopefully help our backyard and our house be more usable,” Schmidt said.
At the time of publication, TxDOT had not released the results of the vote, with paper ballots to be counted Wednesday, Sept. 10. Residents are hopeful that either way it goes, they’ll be able to wrestle TxDOT to tweak next steps and the construction timeline. “At a fundamental level, all anybody wants is some agency in what’s happening around them,” Walker said. “Nobody wants the world to happen to them.”
This article appears in September 12 • 2025.
