Following an 18-month-long planning process, Georgetown City Council signed off in July on the final draft of the city’s Williams Drive Corridor Study, paving the way to bring the first improvements to the heavily traveled roadway.
The comprehensive study explored how to alleviate congestion in the Williams corridor with a broad focus that included recommendations related to multimodal transportation, land use, economic development, housing and the environment. The city of Georgetown and the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization completed the study.
CAMPO Executive Director Ashby Johnson told City Council members before they voted July 11 to approve the study’s recommendations that the amount of planning that has already been completed would make it likely that some improvements to Williams could qualify for CAMPO funding allocations.
Johnson said the agency is looking forward to seeing how City Council addresses recommendations from the final study.
Proposed projects will require approval from City Council before work begins, said Nat Waggoner, a long-range planning manager with the city.
Developers of the study sought to balance improvements to relieve traffic congestion in the Williams corridor with increased bicycle and pedestrian accessibility.
Project recommendations are split into three phases of completion, including a near-term range of zero to four years, a mid-term range of five to 10 years and a long-term range of 11-plus years.
The final plan recommends Georgetown focus within the next four years on improving traffic congestion, circulation and operations within the Williams corridor from Austin Avenue to Jim Hogg Road. The study’s final version also recommends that initial improvements address bicycle and pedestrian upgrades, aesthetic enhancements and improved land-use planning to bolster economic development.
The final plan includes recommendations near the intersection of Williams and I-35 as well as improvements that could be addressed in later years. The plan also includes a recommendation for a bicycle master plan to be completed within the next four years.
Along with the improvements, planners have recommended the study’s elements be included in the city of Georgetown’s pending comprehensive plan update, work on which is expected to begin in 2018.
Georgetown and CAMPO began in 2016 to set the parameters of the corridor study, which included several public meetings.
Andreina Davila-Quintero, a city planning manager, said comments from residents who attended meetings or otherwise provided feedback addressed a range of concerns related to the Williams area, but a common priority was traffic-congestion relief.
Although traffic improvements factor heavily into the corridor study’s near-term recommendations, Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross said other projects, including aesthetic upgrades along the corridor, should not be lost in the shuffle as planning moves forward.
“They may not be equally important, but they’re both important,” Ross said prior to the City Council’s July 11 vote.
