After decades of planning, work began Nov. 8 on SH 45 SW, a $109 million, 3.6-mile toll road that will connect Loop 1 with FM 1626 in Hays County.

The start of the road marks the culmination of years of work by two local transportation groups—the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and the Texas Department of Transportation—as well as work by area elected officials and residents who have tried to pave the way for plans to move forward amid challenges by an environmentalist group and other residents who opposed its construction.

State Rep. Paul Workman, R-Austin, who was re-elected Nov. 8 as Texas House District 47 representative, campaigned on getting SH 45 SW built in 2010 when he first ran for office.

Residents attend a celebration Oct. 30 for SH 45 SW.[/caption]

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said.

Workman said failure of opposition  to the road is a testament to its need.

“There are folks out there who don’t want for us to do things about roads,” Workman said. “I guess they still feel like if we don’t do things, people won’t come—but that hasn’t worked for 25, 30 years. This is a project that has been in the works for that long, and it’s needed very badly. And so it’s happening.”  

The Keep MoPac Local Coalition, the group that opposed the SH 45 SW project for years and filed a lawsuit against the Mobility Authority and TxDOT to prevent the project from happening, wants a comprehensive study to be done on the combined effects of building SH 45 SW and two other road projects—the MoPac Intersections project and adding MoPac express lanes, said Bill Bunch, executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance, or S.O.S., and member of Keep MoPac Local.

From left: Elected officials Will Conley, Mark Jones and Gerald Daugherty stand with Ray Wilkerson, chairman of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority board of directors, and state Rep. Paul Workman, R-Austin, at an SH 45 SW event Oct. 30.[/caption]

Keep MoPac Local filed a lawsuit in February to prevent construction of the road. At a Nov. 4 hearing before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, plaintiffs argued work should not move forward on area transportation projects, including SH 45 SW. Three court judges heard arguments on an emergency motion for preliminary injunction from the coalition. The judges decided to deny the motion, which allowed TxDOT and the Mobility Authority to break ground Nov. 8 on the project. Construction is expected to take about three years, according to the Mobility Authority.

Keep MoPac Local is preparing to take the transportation authorities to court again sometime in January for a trial on the merits of the plaintiffs’ case, Bunch said.

“We’re very concerned about the environmental damage that will happen over the next few months, but the larger environmental damage from paving [SH] 45 [SW], building MoPac Intersections and building MoPac express lanes, that’s down the road still. The case will go forward,” he said.

Residents attend a celebration Oct. 30 for SH 45 SW.[/caption]

In October a federal judge had already determined SH 45 SW could move forward as a standalone project, according to Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, who was in favor of building the road.  

“You can’t ever second-guess judges,” said Daugherty, who was re-elected to his seat on the court Nov. 8. “I just think that we have a project here that meets all the standards that this road needs to meet, and it needs to move forward.”

Need for a road

Gerre Boardman has lived in the same house in the Wyldwood Road area north of Shady Hollow for the past 30 years. Brodie Lane was a two-lane road that rarely—if ever—saw congestion, she said. She said she has been waiting for SH 45 SW all that time, and residents on her street now cannot get out onto Brodie during the day.

“I expect we’ll still have traffic but it’s got to be somewhat better because many people are trying to get onto MoPac and so they’re using Brodie to get to MoPac,” Boardman said.

Her neighbor Anna Bryan, who has lived in the area since 1991, said she has to drive around the block to a traffic light to exit her neighborhood.

“It’s just gotten worse,” she said.

The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is forecasting changes
in traffic and affordability after SH 45 SW’s construction.[/caption]

Addressing Affordability  

Quality of life and mobility will “take a big turn” with this project, according to Ray Wilkerson, chairman of the Mobility Authority’s board of directors.

“I firmly believe this project is exactly what we need to be doing, there’s no question about that. It’s time to open up mobility and affordability and to stop and work on the congestion in this area,” he said.

Shady Hollow resident Pamela Baggett said the city approved permits over the years for thousands of new homes to be built south of Shady Hollow, resulting in more traffic congestion and lack of affordability.

“By making close-in housing theoretically easier to access [for commutes], that’s driven up prices. … There’s no doubt that people have moved further and further away from the center of Austin to find less expensive housing,” she said.

Home sales in Buda and Kyle have grown significantly in the past decade, said Southwest Austin resident Aaron Farmer, 2016 president of the Austin Board of Realtors and real estate broker for Texas Discount Realty, which services Austin, Buda and Kyle.

“It’s definitely more affordable to get housing in the Buda and Kyle area [than Austin],” he said, noting even so it is not as affordable as it once was. “It’s hard to find anything in Buda anymore that’s under $200,000.”

The housing market overall in the Austin metro area appears to be stabilizing somewhat. The problem comes down to lack of inventory, Farmer said.

“We just need more houses everywhere, and that’s what solves the affordability crisis,” he said.

He said he thinks SH 45 SW will not only help to alleviate traffic along Brodie, FM 1626 and Manchaca Road, but  it will also clear a path from Southwest to Southeast Austin.

Community input meetings were conducted throughout the years to try to justify building the road, Boardman said, but the project hit snags.

“The whole history of this has been people wanting this, and it just stopped and stopped and stopped,” she said.

History

Plans for SH 45 SW date back to 1985, when the Texas Transportation Commission envisioned SH 45 SW as a portion of the SH 45 Outer Parkway project, responding to a request from Travis and Williamson county officials. Voters in 1997 approved $3.5 million to buy land for the road. The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization removed SH 45 SW from its Long Range Transportation Plan in 2008 when the EIS expired.

In February 2016, Keep MoPac Local filed its lawsuit.

Bunch said transportation groups should be fixing traffic congestion bottlenecks—such as those at the bridges over Town Lake and the Barton Creek Greenbelt—before building SH 45 SW.

“The community never gets to see the whole picture until it’s too late. I think everybody agrees traffic on MoPac is already a nightmare. Building SH 45 SW first will make it much worse of a nightmare,” Bunch said.

Travis and Hays counties have both pledged funding for the project. Hays County Commissioner Mark Jones said constituents are waiting for the road.

“There are thousands of Hays County residents that work for AISD, [the] city of Austin and Travis County, all of which commute into Austin every day and keep the city going,” he said in a statement. 

Travis County commissioners reinstated support for the project in 2013.

 “It has needed to happen for a long time and I’m thrilled that we’ve gotten it to this stage—I’m just sorry that it has taken this long,” Daugherty said.

The road will incorporate several design features that make it environmentally sensitive, Daugherty said.

“We have been pushed back on developing a comprehensive road network, and this is just an example of what needs to be done in order to relieve some [traffic] pressure points in places where they need relief. It’s not to say that Brodie is still not going to have traffic—because it will—but most of the traffic will come from within the neighborhood.”  

Mike Heiligenstein, Mobility Authority executive director, said taking measures to protect the environment was key in SH 45 SW’s development.

Water-quality protection measures; bicycle and pedestrian facilities; and a GreenRoads certification for using holistic use of environmental, social and economic best practices to achieve sustainable “green” transportation infrastructure are elements of the project’s design.

“This project was developed with a delicate balance in mind,” he said.