As plans solidify for the all-but-inevitable expansion of I-35 through central Austin, KUT has shared a truly impressive deep dive into TxDOT’s plans. Since the write-up is well over 5,000 words, I thought I’d do a write-up of the write-up and summarize the good, bad, and ugly. TLDR: It’s about 20% good, 60% bad, and 20% ugly.

Let’s start with their physics-defying intention to add four more lanes, which—it is almost universally understood¹—will leave traffic worse than it started. Add to that the decade of construction, and it’s hard to argue the widening provides any benefit (though of course many will argue it just the same; meet me in the comments).

Besides this lovingly-wrapped gift to traffic, noise, and pollution, the expansion will do what expansions always do, and push out more than 100 homes and businesses—most of them low-income—in the name of “progress.” (Go have dinner at Stars Café and buy a rock at Nature’s Treasures while you can.) 

That’s the incredibly, intolerably bad news. TxDOT will get its way, and a few years later we’ll collectively forget the construction misery, and a few years after that you’ll start hearing the same drumbeat all over again. So it goes.

But this shit sandwich is not without its pickles. TxDOT might be singing the same old song about I-35, but previous verses have been arguably even worse: over time the highway expanded not only out but up, turning the metaphorical wall between east and west Austin into a physical one.

This project will rectify that generational mistake by lowering the main lanes of I-35 below ground level most of the way between the river and Airport Boulevard—farewell, upper decks.  Even better, the design allows for so-called “caps” that hide the monstrosity in a tunnel, providing the opportunity for parkland or even buildings on top.² The upshot will be Austin’s own version of Boston’s Big Dig, which was both an infamously nasty boondoggle and an indescribable improvement to downtown Boston. That dual outcome is also plausible for Austin.

I’m so excited about this aspect that I’m in danger of sounding like I support the project. I don’t! There’s a widely-circulated proposal to execute our own Big Dig without expanding I-35, and I whole-heartedly support that. If this is what we get instead, then I’ll accept the cognitive dissonance and enjoy the improvements while I rue the drawbacks.

That’s my short summary of what’s being planned. The true nerds can keep reading for a few highlights and lowlights I noticed when I went through the KUT article. (Or, ya know, just go read it.)

The wackiest change worth mentioning: just north of the river, the northbound frontage road will jump *over* the depressed highway, and both frontage roads will run side-by-side on the west side of the highway. Check out the orange lines here:

One strange side effect of this decision is that, if you’re driving south and you wanna exit for downtown, you’ll bypass it, take a left exit, and do a crazy u-turn and crossover maneuver. 

By the time you get to the heart of downtown, the highway will be below ground level—and, if Austin foots the bill, covered by green space. It’ll look something like this (again they’re showing a fanciful number of vehicles on the road).  

To reiterate, this proposal is a lot worse than it could be—those ground-level frontage roads comprise eight or more traffic lanes, practically a highway on its own. But I won’t pretend it’s not a lot better than what we have now.

Near the UT campus, the rogue frontage roads will hop over to the east side of the highway. Everything in orange below is hidden by park land, or could be. You know UT is licking its chops at the possibilities here (Does Bevo have chops?), but say a prayer for the drivers stuck in the 22 lanes of traffic underground. Yes, traffic tunnels are generally safe; no, they’re not a fun place to wait during rush hour.

North of campus, the frontage roads go their separate ways again and the whole project gets a lot more conventional, in ways both good (upper decks permanently demolished, hooray) and bad (most of the doomed homes and businesses are in this stretch). There’s one more Big Dig opportunity from 38th street to Airport Blvd, where the main lanes are again below ground level.³ By the time you get to Capitol Plaza, it’ll be the same surface-level I-35 we have now, but (somehow) even wider. 

Unsurprisingly, there’s much more to say—the most obvious thing I haven’t mentioned is the continued expansion of I-35 north and south of downtown, road projects which are much more typical and have practically nothing to get excited about. (Hilariously, the southern component of the project includes an upper deck, the same fucking thing they’re making such a fanfare of removing in central Austin. TxDOT is like the Doozers in real life.)

I dunno how to conclude this long post, besides encouraging you to avoid downtown Austin for a decade or more, and suggesting you take your as-yet-unborn grandchildren to see the completed thing when it’s done. There’s literally no way this doesn’t experience delays and cost overruns and generate more traffic than we started with. Cause that’s how these things always go. 

1. Except by TxDOT employees, legislators, and others whose salaries depend on not understanding it.
2. Emphasis on “allows for.” TxDOT is designing the road to support road caps but not providing any money to do so; those millions (billions?) will need to come from the city of Austin. So this is a qualified “hooray.”
3. I have a sneaking hunch they won’t pay to cover this area with caps in the near term, since unlike downtown and UT, there’s not a lot of population density in this area.