The action taken
Mobility Authority board members approved a list of priority projects June 25 included in the agency’s next fiscal budget, as well as a slew of additional roadway improvements included in the agency's five year capital improvement plan.
Outlined in the general fund allocations, the Mobility Authority included design and engineering funding for:
- MoPac South express lanes at $3,686,000
- Ronald Reagan managed lanes at $1,000,000
- 183A added capacity at $1,268,000
- 290E extension at $7,500,000
Some context
The Mobility Authority revived the decade-old project intended to bring a solution to increasing traffic on south MoPac, bringing the project forward to the public in 2024.
After receiving the initial green light in 2013 to evaluate an 8-mile stretch of MoPac South from Cesar Chavez Street to Slaughter Lane, transportation officials again presented several proposed solutions for public review last Fall after a lawsuit stalled progress on the project from 2016 to 2021.
The agency dialed in on plans for up to two new toll lanes in either direction with an elevated overpass, referred to as Alternative 2C. Project construction is estimated to cost around $1 billion with work slated to begin in 2027.
"The express lanes perform the best," Charlotte Gilpin, a Mobility Authority consultant working on the project, told Travis County Commissioners during an update on the project last year.
Things to consider
The toll agency has faced criticism in the past for its claims about the amount of time commuters save by the construction of an express lane.
Regional traffic studies indicate that there is only a roughly five-minute difference in travel time should nothing be done to the current structure of the highway, called the no-build option.
Authority Executive Director James Bass told county officials that in 2022 commuters traveling northbound from Slaughter Lane to Cesar Chavez Street took an estimated 14 minutes. The 2045 traffic model forecast the trip now taking 20 minutes—an additional six minutes.
In 2022, southbound travel along the same 8-mile stretch took roughly 17 minutes during peak hours, and in 2045 traffic is projected to take 22 minutes—an additional five minutes.
However, Bass said with the build-out of express lanes, northbound general traffic lanes would only increase by one minute, and those using the express lane could make the 8-mile stretch in eight minutes.
Southbound traffic will remain the same 17 minutes in the general-use lanes, Bass said, with those using the express lane making the commute in eight minutes.
The projections are based on traffic models calculated the region’s transportation authority, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Authority.
However, local groups—including the cities of Austin, Westlake and Rollingwood and environmental advocacy organization Save our Springs Alliance—have voiced concerns that the agency had not fully updated traffic projections since originally developed in 2015.
Save our Springs has ongoing litigation regarding the release of reports on the Mopac South project summarizing or analyzing modeling results that predict travel times and travel-time changes under different alternative build options, including both tolled and free lanes, per court documents.
Quote of note
“MoPac South is not a completed design yet, but a lot of that work—if it were to move forward—would likely be in the median. It's going to be less disruptive than construction on I-35,” Bass said.
