AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[freerover]

Originally Posted by JAM

Tesla Inc. will launch “unsupervised, self-driving” Cybercabs as a paid service in Austin this June, owner Elon Musk announced in a recent stakeholder call.

https://communityimpact.com/austin/south...-race-austin-launch-set-for-summer-2025/

These are going to kill someone. Lidar should be required for state certification. I've been happily using the Waymo beta for months and it's a perfect driver because it can map 3d space.

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by enragedcamel

What website can I check to see I-35 contruction/expansion progress in its various sections throughout the Austin area? I'm looking for something that shows timelines as well as percentage of completion.

These are the best info. on the projects I've found.

http://txdot.gov/en/mobility35/projects/capex-north.html

http://txdot.gov/en/mobility35/projects/capex-central.html

http://txdot.gov/en/mobility35/projects/capex-south.html

[enragedcamel]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

These are the best info. on the projects I've found.

http://txdot.gov/en/mobility35/projects/capex-north.html

http://txdot.gov/en/mobility35/projects/capex-central.html

http://txdot.gov/en/mobility35/projects/capex-south.html

These links don't seem to work for me. They take me to a generic "not found" page.

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by enragedcamel

These links don't seem to work for me. They take me to a generic "not found" page.

Google Capital Express I-35. There's a TXDOT website for the North, Central, and South sections.

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by enragedcamel

These links don't seem to work for me. They take me to a generic "not found" page.

Try this link

[gillynova]

I was wondering what is happening south of 71 on 183, right next to the airport? I see construction going on but I wanted to know what is happening.

Cant seem to find anything on here: https://apps3.txdot.gov/apps-cq/project_tracker/

[gillynova]

Feb 2025 of South i35:



290 as of February 2025:

[zrx299]

TxDOT going full speed ahead with their 1960s urban planning. This will solve absolutely nothing to fix traffic or offer any reasonable alternatives. Just another colossal waste of materials and energy. And now we'll get to look at a hulking dystopian concrete table overtop anyone going down 35. All so people can get to Buda/Kyle 7 minutes faster.

[WestAustinite]

Originally Posted by zrx299

TxDOT going full speed ahead with their 1960s urban planning. This will solve absolutely nothing to fix traffic or offer any reasonable alternatives. Just another colossal waste of materials and energy. And now we'll get to look at a hulking dystopian concrete table overtop anyone going down 35. All so people can get to Buda/Kyle 7 minutes faster.

Well said and it's amazing to me that the Texas Department of Only Automobiles - given the perfect opportunity to do so - did not incorporate room for a future rail line to run right down the middle of I-35 from Slaughter to SH-45. Once outside the city core, expanding the rest of the rail line to the outskirts of Dallas and SA is far easier. But lacking long term vision, now that they are replicating Houston's I-10 in downtown Austin, that will never happen.

[drummer]

Originally Posted by gillynova

Feb 2025 of South i35:

My OCD won't let me not tell you about your sticker date...I tried hard to leave it alone, but....I failed.

[gillynova]

Originally Posted by drummer

My OCD won't let me not tell you about your sticker date...I tried hard to leave it alone, but....I failed.

It can wait another year

[drummer]

Originally Posted by gillynova

It can wait another year

We're here to help each other.

[hookem]

Originally Posted by gillynova

It can wait another year

It’s a Tesla so you probably don’t need to worry about rules.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by zrx299

TxDOT going full speed ahead with their 1960s urban planning. This will solve absolutely nothing to fix traffic or offer any reasonable alternatives. Just another colossal waste of materials and energy. And now we'll get to look at a hulking dystopian concrete table overtop anyone going down 35. All so people can get to Buda/Kyle 7 minutes faster.

TXDOT is not in the business of urban planning.
Every city in Texas is responsible for urban planning, via zoning laws, including Austin.
But there is a limitation on how inner cities can increase their city limits where they can make zoning laws. Amongst them is the ability to quickly provide city services, sewer, water, fire, police, and sometimes electric power. If the City can't provide ALL the services in a certain period of time, they can't increase their city limits to include the new properties. If another city can, it does. That's how suburban cities grew. For a city to annex a suburban city, both cities must approve.
So, it is very difficult for inner cities to annex and zone new residential districts being built outside their city limits. But they can make zoning changes that would make it cheaper to rent or buy a home within the city limits than outside. Too bad Austin has amongst the highest rents in Texas, doing the opposite with residential properties.
So, get off TXDOT and aim your complaints at your own city council.

[zrx299]

Originally Posted by electricron

TXDOT is not in the business of urban planning.
Every city in Texas is responsible for urban planning, via zoning laws, including Austin.
But there is a limitation on how inner cities can increase their city limits where they can make zoning laws. Amongst them is the ability to quickly provide city services, sewer, water, fire, police, and sometimes electric power. If the City can't provide ALL the services in a certain period of time, they can't increase their city limits to include the new properties. If another city can, it does. That's how suburban cities grew. For a city to annex a suburban city, both cities must approve.
So, it is very difficult for inner cities to annex and zone new residential districts being built outside their city limits. But they can make zoning changes that would make it cheaper to rent or buy a home within the city limits than outside. Too bad Austin has amongst the highest rents in Texas, doing the opposite with residential properties.
So, get off TXDOT and aim your complaints at your own city council.

This attitude right here is exactly how you get 16 lane highways barreling through cities and towns. For starters, TXDOT needs to give up the obsession with frontage roads. No other state uses these the way Texas does, except in rare instances. Other places don't build "on" the highway. You get off at your exit and then go to the street grid, not 3 miles away from it and parallel the interstate on yet another 3-4 lane 'highway'. It doubles the whole width for no reason. Then we now have the next obsession by TXDOt which is the elevated tabletop HOV or toll lanes which will also do absolutely nothing except make Pulice (thats the Spanish construction firm, not "police") and other contractors a ton of money, along with everyone else involved with their hands out. Tax, spend, skim. Rinse & repeat.

The lobbying needs to stop. Traffic is traffic. The people who move to a certain place should have to deal with the traffic problems they helped cause instead of pointing fingers. That by itself would regulate growth instead of endless car-dependent sprawl.

Highways arent going anywhere in our lifetimes, but ffs can we stop the dystopian 1960s style designs bulldozing everything in their path with unnecessary width and 47 flyovers to everyone's individual street with something a bit more useful and less eye-gouging than "just 10 more lanes, bro!" ??

[gillynova]

That's funny because I've NEVER seen frontage roads since coming from California. I've visited roughly 15 other states too and frontage roads were a huge culture shock for me. When I brought my girlfriend to my parent's place in California, she gets confused why we don't have frontage roads there haha

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by electricron

TXDOT is not in the business of urban planning.
Every city in Texas is responsible for urban planning, via zoning laws, including Austin.
But there is a limitation on how inner cities can increase their city limits where they can make zoning laws. Amongst them is the ability to quickly provide city services, sewer, water, fire, police, and sometimes electric power. If the City can't provide ALL the services in a certain period of time, they can't increase their city limits to include the new properties. If another city can, it does. That's how suburban cities grew. For a city to annex a suburban city, both cities must approve.
So, it is very difficult for inner cities to annex and zone new residential districts being built outside their city limits. But they can make zoning changes that would make it cheaper to rent or buy a home within the city limits than outside. Too bad Austin has amongst the highest rents in Texas, doing the opposite with residential properties.
So, get off TXDOT and aim your complaints at your own city council.

So if the city is who is responsible, you agree the city should be able to say NO if TxDot wants to shove a highway through the middle of the city and condemn a bunch of property?

[Lobotomizer]

My only contribution is while I find much to love with our progressive city government, I'm very thankful we have a conservative state government to moderate certain aspects.

Austin is not an urban, walkable transit rich city. TXDOT isn't destroying Austin with expressway construction. There's much hyperbole in regards to this topic.

I can't wait to drive on the new and improved I35. Ditto for Oak Hill Parkway, 183N, and upcoming South Mopac.

I can have these views while simultaneously supporting Austin's updating of it's land development code, Project Connect Plan, and continued move towards a more urban future.

It's called being reasonable, and accepting reality. Let's not jump the shark

[freerover]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

My only contribution is while I find much to love with our progressive city government, I'm very thankful we have a conservative state government to moderate certain aspects.

Austin is not an urban, walkable transit rich city. TXDOT isn't destroying Austin with expressway construction. There's much hyperbole in regards to this topic.

I can't wait to drive on the new and improved I35. Ditto for Oak Hill Parkway, 183N, and upcoming South Mopac.

I can have these views while simultaneously supporting Austin's updating of it's land development code, Project Connect Plan, and continued move towards a more urban future.

It's called being reasonable, and accepting reality. Let's not jump the shark

There's no "reality". This is not the natural order of things. You can choose what to build. And yeah, you'll be able to have a nice drive when it opens but you're just spurring more extremely low density sprawl so you'll be back in bumper to bumper traffic in 5-10 years except now you have more cars on city streets too.

You're right, you can support both paths but only because you are free to support anything you want. It doesn't mean it's not an inherent contradiction between supporting both sustainability and unsustainable widening/sprawl. What are we going to tear down 30 years from now when we have to widen the highway again? Just get rid of DKR? Let's lose the convention center. And about 40 years after that? That's what we mean when we say sustainable development. You can't keep widening and increasing capacity for single rider vehicles. It does not scale.

Austin is becoming more walkable. We've committed a lot of bond money to the effort and every week a new project is being finished. These efforts will compound and build out to a more walking city but that's going to be a lot harder if we're paying 1 billion for buildout and 50 million a year in cap maintenance for the fucking highway. Especially when that federal and state funding for the highway could have gone to regional transit or even building out light rail / commuter rail even further.

TLDR: Car brain is a choice. It's not an undeniable reality.

[Lobotomizer]

Reality is there are less than a million people living in the city of Austin, with another 1.5 million living in the rest of the metro. Austin's share of the metro population will continue to decline. The surrounding area provide much of our labor force. They must be able to commute to work.