City of Austin, activists respond to possible design changes for I-35

AUSTIN, Texas - The I-35 rebuild still includes the plan to dig down, in order to beef up, the constantly congested interstate corridor through downtown Austin. 

A memo released late last week indicates some design modifications are being considered by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). 

Adam Greenfield, with Re-Think 35, is not impressed with what he saw in the document. "This is not good enough. This is still fundamentally a major highway expansion in an era of climate change," said Greenfield.

Specific details about design adjustments from TxDOT are expected later this month. According to the city memo, modifications include more bike access, safer areas for pedestrians, revamping some frontage roads, and possibly lowering the interstate on the other side of Ladybird Lake, past Woodland Ave. 

The ideas are not worth the investment, according to Greenfield.

"We have existing facilities in the Austin area that were explicitly built as a go-around Austin, such as 130, before spending five billion dollars on expanding a highway that will accomplish nothing. We should be looking into using existing facilities more effectively?" said Greenfield.

Mike Trimble who leads the city corridor program told FOX 7 Austin he’s looking forward to seeing what TxDOT has come up with. "This is definitely a moment in time because this is the moment of the opportunity. Right now, the opportunity is with the Capital Express Central, the highway through downtown. If we try to retrofit this after the fact, it would cost us a lot more money."

One idea to possibly bridge the socioeconomic divide is still on the table. The memo indicated that TxDOT remains open to the idea of creating what’s called a cap and stitch design.  But the agency has made it clear if Austin wants it, Austin will have to pay for it.

It involves a large top of parkland and public space over the interstate; which would be cut deeper into the ground. Several street bridges could also be widened in what is called a stitch. That includes public gathering areas on either side of the road. But this idea to cap and stitch through the city core is nothing more than band-aids to community activists like Greenfield.

"Underneath that cap and stitch is just the veneer of a highway expansion. We know what's going to happen. It's going to kill more people. It's going to pollute the air, it's going to be noisier. And a few small parks on top is not going to cut it," said Greenfield.

Eliminating the interstate is not what city officials are pushing for.

"Well, what I would say is the highway definitely needs to be addressed. This is a real chance to, you know, kind of rejoin the community, reunify the community, you know, creating these series of caps over the highway to where, you know if you're on a cap, you won't know that there's a highway underneath you. And I think having that type of creating recreating that sense of place that was there with East Avenue before the highway was created, I think is a key opportunity, an outcome that we're trying to achieve here," said Trimble.

The city has a design team to help determine just how much adding caps and stitches will cost.

TxDOT remains committed to eliminating the upper deck that runs by UT. As of right now, city officials tell FOX 7 Austin the goal is to start breaking ground sometime around 2025.

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