With increasing volumes of traffic threatening to raise the accident numbers higher, TxDOT officials say they have little choice but to try to fix the problem — even if it means creating more congestion in the process.
So what do residents in central city neighborhoods think of the impending I-35 debacle? They aren’t thrilled. Scott White, president of the Delwood II Neighborhood Association, wonders how the construction will affect Delwood neighbors who live just northeast of next year’s construction zone. “We’re also afraid this will dump traffic back on Airport that we thought we had lost with the close of Mueller Airport,” White says. “Just knowing how bad the traffic is already on a daily basis makes us worry.” In the long run, though, White says, “TxDOT’s reasons [for the project] are valid as far as safety is concerned, and I think it’s going to be worth it.”
Similarly, Cherrywood NA president Jim Walker is concerned that the projects — particularly the bridge closures — will make it difficult for area residents to get in and out of their neighborhoods (including Hyde Park and Wilshire Wood-Delwood), not to mention the encroachment of other vehicles seeking shortcuts from the congested roadways. The project, says Walker, “comes up at every neighborhood association meeting. Everyone is talking about how this is going to affect us. It’s definitely on our radar. We’re trying to work with TxDOT to minimize the pain. We realize we can’t stop what they’re doing. … Yes, we all realize we moved next to a highway. None of us are saying get rid of the highway. We just want a role in planning how the highway evolves.”
Elsewhere in Austin…
Even with more road work planned on I-35 and on city streets throughout town, the grim reality is that new roads and regular road maintenance may never keep pace with the city’s exponential growth. But Barbara Hankins, a leader of the North Capitol Area Neighborhood Association, and a resident of Cambridge Tower at Martin Luther King and Lavaca, believes the current traffic situation is not a result of insufficient interest or action on the part of city and state leaders, but of the economic pitfalls that hit Texas a decade ago.
“I think that because of the lack of expenditures in the mid- to late-Eighties and early Nineties due to the recession, we have to recognize that a whole lot of things piled up and got worse than they would have if regular maintenance had been going on. Now we’re paying for it in the sense that there’s so much to be done.”
Road projects along MLK and Guadalupe streets have proved a two-edged sword for North Capitol residents, Hankins explains, echoing the sentiments of many who have to noodle through construction crews and deal with delays. Current and pending road projects number in the double digits, including the hot-button revamping of Barton Springs Road.
Richard Kroger, an engineer with the city’s public works department, says the Austin map is dotted all over with new road construction and street repair work. From surveying to actual upgrades, such projects include Manchaca and Dittmar road work in the south, as well as the proposed upgrading of Rutherford Lane and an extension of South First Street from Slaughter Lane to FM1626. In addition, work on the Lamar bridge pedestrian-bicycle project is expected to begin at the end of the year, along with renovations to Loyola and Howard lanes in the north, Kroger says.
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Some residents disagree that the city has effectively addressed traffic and road safety, however. Chuck Crane, president of the North Shoal Creek Neighborhood Association, says that bringing forth his association’s traffic concerns has, in recent years, proved a “long, frustrating ride.We’ve been trying to get the city for several years to do certain things with our traffic problems here. … The city has been very unresponsive to us.”
In his area, Crane explains, residents daily must contend with traffic cut-through from US183 at the Burnet Road intersection. Much of that cut-through traffic, he adds, stems from continual road construction along the highway. To deal with the heavy flow, the association recently began to devise a traffic-calming plan that calls for speed humps and more signage on residential streets.
The North Shoal Creek NA is one of the more active North Austin community groups to lobby for neighborhood interests; it successfully fought off a second topless dance club location which was proposed to open nearby. But attempts to address traffic concerns have fallen on mostly deaf ears, Crane says. “We’ve even amassed a large fund for traffic-calming devices that the city still won’t let us spend. They do know we have been hollering about this for a long time, and we consider this our number-one concern in our neighborhood.”
Back to I-35
Apart from the present-day traffic quandaries, perhaps the single most important project is one that has yet to reach the blueprint phase — the total redesign of I-35 between Round Rock and Buda. Transportation officials, in coordination with several private consulting firms, have already begun a Major Investment Study that would eventually lead to a wider, safer I-35 through downtown Austin, says TxDOT spokesman John Hurt. According to the most recent information released by the Department of Public Safety, 16% of all vehicular accidents in Travis County in 1996 occurred on the interstate; 97% of those happened within Austin city limits, and 6% occurred on exit and entrance ramps. And another DPS study taking in the entire I-35 Austin-San Antonio corridor projects more gloom and doom on the interstate. “If the current trend continues,” the report states, “by the year 2010 there could be nearly 2,800 injury accidents and more than 330 fatal accidents…”
Nearly all ramps between Round Rock and Buda could receive some type of improvement, although a start date for construction is still years away, Hurt says. The cost of the project is yet another unknown — numbers have been broached at between $8-10 million per mile, though the final cost could be lower, since the project would involve no new road construction. The project would also likely be undertaken in increments, Hurt says, as the department gradually obtains funding for various improvements.
Exactly how this construction would affect nearby residents, particularly in the East Austin and bordering Hyde Park area, also remains to be seen. “Probably none of [the downtown ramps] are really good during commuter times,” Hurt explains. “There’s a lot of traffic coming in and out everywhere, any place you have an entrance ramp.”
One project that will begin construction soon lies just north of the lower deck widening: a $28million major reconfiguration of the I-35/ US290 interchange to create four direct connection ramps. The project should be completed in 2001, Hurt says.
People and Their Cars
What’s driving the urgency for an incremental I-35 makeover? In a word, people. On May 17 members of the CAMPO policy advisory committee approved new population and employment forecasts for its 2025 transportation plan. The forecasts, officials say, put extra transportation emphasis on areas estimated to have the highest growth in the next two decades.
In examining the local population boom, CAMPO, with consultant Hicks & Company, are predicting that most people will move into the central and northwestern portions of town — areas that currently lag behind in sufficiently maintained roads.
Employment statistics show the same blistering growth, with 400,000 additional workers expected to fill the Austin-Travis County labor market by 2025. Add in Williamson and Hays counties, and we could see more than 700,000 new employees coming into the region by the same year, officials have determined.
Viewed through the lens of transportation needs, these numbers have added up to one big headache for transportation planners. While many neighborhood association representatives have called for a stronger focus on their own specific traffic problems, some officials say CAMPO, the city, and state have created a good momentum toward fully addressing all of Austin’s traffic needs.
“Let’s accept [the probability] that population forecasting will be wrong. You can’t wish for something and make it happen. We don’t live in a planned economy,” said Bruce Byron, director of the new Capital Area Transportation Coalition, during a recent CAMPO meeting. “At least some positive things are happening here. There are a lot of people with a lot of dreams of things they’d like to see.”
Staff writer Robert Bryce contributed to this story.
This article appears in June 11 • 1999 and June 11 • 1999 (Cover).