More than a decade after the initial planning for Toll 183A began, several local officials view the toll road as a vision brought to life.

“I think it has turned out to be everything we hoped it would be,” said Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, which implemented the toll road.

The regional vision for Toll 183A dates back to the early 1980s, Heiligenstein said. An alternative route was needed in order to prepare for “growth and congestion [around Austin] that we knew was going to be horrendous.” Officials considered SH 130 and US 183 as potential roads to remodel.

“There were a lot of serious accidents down [US] 183 at the time. … So we started reserving the land [to widen the road],” Heiligenstein said.

However, funding for such a massive project proved difficult. County authorities urged the Texas Department of Transportation Commission to create regional mobility authorities across the state, eventually establishing the Mobility Authority in 2002. As authorized by the Texas Legislature, a regional mobility authority would have more options for securing financing and designing and constructing transportation projects.

After the Mobility Authority formed, Travis and Williamson counties submitted projects for development, including the Toll 183A roadway. The design, development and financing for the project took about three years, and Mobility Authority started construction on the roadway in 2005. Financing, in particular, was a challenge, Heiligenstein said, and the authority had to “jump through hoops” even on the day that the financing bids were approved.

Williamson County gave $18 million to the project, and both the county and Cedar Park contributed to the roadway project by donating rights of way, Heiligenstein said.

“Then they contributed their support. It takes those local champions to make this happen,” he said.

Phase 1 of the project, which lasted about two years, cost $243 million and developed 11.6 miles worth of toll road from RM 620 to New Hope Drive, and non-tolled frontage roads from RM 1431 north to the South Fork San Gabriel River. Phase 2 shifted the non-tolled frontage roads to tolled main lanes and cost another $106 million.

Local impacts
Heiligenstein said the toll road opened up new capacity for growth, especially in Cedar Park, where he believed “their economic development was going to get strangled by the old [US] 183.”

“Part of the big vision was that Cedar Park would really see [the area around Toll 183A] as its new downtown and that they wanted very desperately for this to occur because they could see tremendous and significant new development along that corridor,” he said.

Phil Brewer, Cedar Park economic development director, said officials recognized in the early 2000s the impact the roadway could have on the city.

“Our leadership knew that realistically the toll road was going to create a lot of traffic and create this whole new corridor for development, including the [FM] 1431 intersection,” Brewer said. “You now had four hard corners that were empty pieces of land that you could develop into high-quality developments.”

Since the road’s completion, Brewer said the private economic improvement and capital investment in Cedar Park has totaled more than $500 million along the Toll 183A corridor.

“That’s not taking into account what kind of sales tax is being generated off those projects,” he said.

Although Heiligenstein and Brewer both said the developments now in place along the corridor are the manifestation of the vision created in 2005 and earlier, there have been some unexpected additions along the way.

“We had already done the Town Center [plan]—there was a whole walkable mixed-use plan for the Town Center—that developed and changed a little bit from the original proposal,” Brewer said.

While projects such as a hospital and retail were included, Brewer said the idea of the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park was likely not in the original vision along the toll road.

In Leander, Toll 183A has helped make the city more desirable to build housing and commercial projects, Economic Development Director Mark Willis said.

An increased demand for housing in the Cedar Park and Leander area has provided an opportunity for affordable housing in the Austin region, Heiligenstein said.

Tommy Tucker, vice president of Austin-based Crescent Communities, is one of the developers of the Bryson subdivision along the toll road in Leander.

“Originally with the tollway, our biggest concern was would people be willing to pay the toll and live off the roadway as opposed to other roads, such as Ronald Reagan or Bagdad [Road],” Tucker said. “One of the things we found out early on is they did not object at all.”

In fact, Tucker has heard feedback from homebuyers who appreciate being able to get to places quicker on the toll road.

“A primary indication of the interest level is the number of builders calling me that want to be in Bryson. Because I get more and more calls about it, I know that’s the future path of growth for that area,” he said.

Leander’s population has also increased in part because of the road, Willis said. The growth led to companies seeking land in the area to build.

“I would say that [Toll] 183A had a lot to do with St. David’s selection of location, and it helped with [Austin Community College],” he said.

The success of the toll road was quantifiable in terms of traffic figures. Heiligenstein said whenever a road is built, a traffic-modeling consultant creates projections for a ramp-up period, a gradual increase over four years to reach the anticipated traffic along the roadway. With Toll 183A, he said there was no ramp up to meeting the goal.

“It was almost immediate. You didn’t have this slow, gradual curve—it was a sharp increase,” he said. “We expected 35,000 transactions a day upon opening. We were at 60,000 in a short period of time. It was unbelievable how the citizens of Williamson County embraced this roadway.”

That success helped lead to the development of the toll road along Hwy. 290 in East Austin—known as the Manor Expressway—and other projects as the financial market recognized the authority’s ability to effectively address growth in the Greater Austin area.

Future growth
For Cedar Park, officials expect continued growth along the corridor, including discussion of further development around the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park.

“We’re going to see some additional buildings in this next year, maybe by the end of this year in [the] Scottsdale [development],” Brewer said. “There are three or more spec buildings planned. That’s exciting for us because we’re always in need of that kind of space for our clients.”

In Leander, Willis said he expects to see retail development begin to follow the housing projects that have developed along the toll road.

“We have car dealerships looking at [Toll] 183A. Pedernales Electric Cooperative has already committed to 26 acres out there, and it would surprise me if in the next year we don’t get a couple of big-box buildings out there,” he said.

Willis said another option is to work with specialty practices to fit in with  the pending developments of the ACC campus and St. David’s hospital and freestanding emergency room. Both  entities currently have developments under construction on the west side of Toll 183A.

“The ACC development will have some mixed-use items in that same area,” he said. “There’s opportunity for lots of restaurants, a lot of entertainment venues over there. You can trace [the growth] all back between [Toll] 183A and Capital Metro for adding the population density.”

The Mobility Authority is now planning to extend Toll 183A farther north to Liberty Hill. Phase 3, which is in the development stage, is projected to cost $100 million and would cross over Hwy. 29.