On March 17, the Texas Department of Transportation moved traffic to the east side of a portion of South Congress Avenue to allow workers to access the west side of the road and finish an ongoing project, said Michelle Romage-Chambers, TxDOT assistant area engineer, South Travis County/Hays area office.

Traffic control such as signs and striping are being used to alert drivers to the work, she said.

“That traffic will stay in that configuration until we are finished completely paving all of Congress Avenue [in the project area],” she said.

Work on the project is slated to take place during the next few months, TxDOT Public Information Officer Kelli Reyna said.

Traffic is expected to increase by more than 10,000 vehicles per day on South Congress Avenue by 2032, said Michelle Romage-Chambers, TxDOT assistant area engineer, South Travis County/Hays area office. A project to expand the road is slated to be completed in the spring.[/caption]

TxDOT’s plans for the road include widening South Congress from Foremost Drive to Eberhart Lane to include five lanes. The project includes adding upgraded drainage facilities, adding 5-foot bike lanes and building new sidewalks along the west side of Congress and in a few places where there are gaps in sidewalks on the east side of the road, Romage-Chambers said. 

“We’ve got new sidewalks [and] we’ve added capacity to the lanes, so it should help to keep traffic moving throughout the corridor a little bit easier. We have also added bicycle lanes on both sides of the roadway so it will help enhance [cyclists’] safety as well.”

Roadwork started in October 2014, and TxDOT expects to finish by this spring, though work was originally slated to be done by last fall, Reyna said.

In 2015, some business owners in the area said the construction caused a barrier for customers and hindered day-to-day operations but will ultimately improve mobility in the area.

“We did encounter some unexpected utility conflicts,” Romage-Chambers said, noting that caused delays.

Some utility companies were able to relocate those utilities and some were not, so TxDOT changed some aspects of its design.

“The storm sewer was in conflict with a couple of gas lines, and a couple of water and wastewater lines and to get around those issues we raised or lowered the storm floor so that it still carries the water but it is no longer in conflict with the gas lines,” she said.

As of mid-March, part of the project is paved, but it is not complete, Romage-Chambers said. Some sidewalks are almost complete, and signals are being placed at William Cannon Drive and Congress Ave., she said.

The $6.3 million project on South Congress, also known as Loop 275, was part of TxDOT’s fiscal year 2013-16 Transportation Improvement Program,  or TIP, which is a short-term plan outlining how to distribute funding, Reyna said. Once the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and Federal Highway Administration approved the projects, those plans were incorporated into the statewide TIP.

The South Congress project was approved to move forward in April 2012, Reyna said. After the environmental study, the South Congress project was cleared for construction in March 2014 and opened up to contractors for bids in June 2014.