Austin construction update: Planes, trains and automobiles – MyStatesman.com

Given all the attention the MoPac Boulevard toll lanes are getting, perhaps some of you think its the only transportation game in town right now.

Not true. Not at all.

Construction is actually moving along on schedule (at least for now) on a number of huge and meaningful projects. With that in mind, heres a midsummer look at the status of those projects. And, what the heck, MoPac, too.

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183 South. Thats what the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority calls this $743 million addition of six toll lanes and at least four frontage lanes, although it really involves what most of us would think of as the eastern leg of U.S. 183. Anyway, construction is about 20 percent complete, the mobility authority says, with overpass construction, creek bridges, miscellaneous earth-moving and new Colorado River bridge columns evident throughout the eight miles of the project from Springdale Road to Texas 71 near the airport.

The mobility authority, which seemingly learned from its unfortunate MoPac express lane experience and chose not to take the lowest bid on this project, says that the first phase (from Springdale to south of Technicenter Drive) is on track to finish by fall 2019. The south section, from Technicenter to Texas 71, should be open by fall 2020. Both dates are far away, and thus subject to change, of course.

Texas 45 Southwest. After decades of environmental resistance and court fights, including a last-minute flurry of pleas to U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel and an appellate court last fall, clearing for the $76 million construction project began in November near FM 1626. Work has moved quickly since then on what will be a 3.6-mile, four-lane tollway connecting FM 1626 near Bliss Spillar Road to South MoPacs south end.

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Go to either of those spots and the work is obvious. But based on reports and photos from the mobility authority, the most progress has occurred in the middle of the construction at Bear Creek. Both vertical columns and horizontal bridge supports are already in place there. The mobility authority says the project is 24 percent done, and should be complete by late 2019.

The lawsuit to prevent the construction or, now, operation of the completed toll road remains pending after a March 22 trial. Yeakel has not yet issued a ruling.

Expanding MetroRail. The capacity of the 32-mile commuter line from downtown Austin to Leander has been limited since its March 2010 opening by a paucity of rail cars, insufficient passing sidings on what is primarily a single-track rail line and a temporary, cramped downtown station. Although many of the north and south runs of the trains have few passengers, the morning and afternoon rush hour runs limited to 30-minute frequency by equipment and track design are usually standing-room-only.

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Capital Metro, using state and federal grants and some of its own tax dollars, is working on essentially doubling the rush-hour capacity to have trains leave every 15 minutes. The agency had four more cars built by its Swiss manufacturer and those cars have been undergoing testing for several months. Capital Metro expects to have them carrying passengers by early next year.

The addition of siding track near the Crestview, Howard Lane and Lakeline stations should begin this fall, the agency says, and take a year to complete.

As for the station expansion downtown, thats murkier. Capital Metro and the city of Austin, after an attenuated negotiation, signed an agreement in June for that project, which will cause the city to make some street changes near the station at East Fourth and Trinity streets. And the station design is not yet at the 60 percent level, the agency says. So, no forecast yet about when the station will be done, and thus when the fully expanded service would be in place.

More and more ABIA. With passenger traffic at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport breaking records year after year, airport officials have been in expansion mode more or less full-time for years. Just in the past year or so, the East Infill project to add security gates and other improvements, a renovated South Terminal for smaller airlines, a second hotel on the airport grounds, an added parking garage/rental car facility and a new privately operated surface lot near Texas 71 (with a dog kennel, no less) have opened.

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But the $350 million expansion of the main terminals east end and the apron area for airplanes is the centerpiece of all this activity. That addition of nine gates bringing the 18-year-old airport to 33 and the expanded apron should be done by summer 2019, airport officials say.

Meanwhile, yet another parking garage is under construction just north of the original garages west end and should be done by winter 2018. And a retail center, with a convenience store, gasoline pumps and other stores, should open by December.

The added gates would bring the airports capacity to about 15 million passengers arriving or departing a day, and just in time. Passenger traffic through the first five months of the year was up 8.5 percent over the record 12.4 million for 2016. At that pace, the airport would be seeing 15 million boardings and deboardings by 2019.

South I-35. A project to replace the Slaughter Creek overpass on Interstate 35 should be done in a few weeks, TxDOT says. Major expansion projects, including bridge replacements, lane additions and ramp changes, are also underway at two other spots: the William Cannon Drive and Stassney Lane stretch, and near Oltorf Street. The $79 million Cannon/Stassney project is 34 percent complete and the $42.6 million Oltorf job is 14 percent done, TxDOT says.

Neither will be done before the end of 2019 or early 2020, the department says.

And, oh yes, MoPac. You may have noticed final paving occurring in sections between Far West Lane and RM 2222, and that the underpasses south of Enfield Road increasingly look more or less done. The agency still says the rest of northbound toll lane (the northern section came on line last October) should be open for business by mid-September, with the southbound lane following a couple of weeks later. So, real hope.

Someday, these four years of MoPac construction will be a funny story you tell your grand kids. Probably.

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Austin construction update: Planes, trains and automobiles - MyStatesman.com