It’s time for the Austin community to stand up and demand a better I-35 corridor through our downtown!

TxDOT intends to rebuild this section of the highway, and this is your opportunity to make a difference in this project.

If you have an opinion on the future of I-35, please write a letter to TxDOT. Local groups representing over 23,000 Austinites have already contacted TxDOT about this issue. It is crucial that your comments and concerns are on the record before this project enters the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s NEPA review. Ask that TxDOT include the full Reconnect Austin cut-and-cap proposal as a 4th alternative.

Complete our online form to submit comments to TxDOT, or use the contact info below.

Background

TxDOT has proposed depressed lanes with partial caps and frontage roads where they are today, which is far superior to the elevated lanes they wanted to build only a year ago.  Nevertheless, adding the Reconnect Austin proposal as the 4^th alternative  (with full cap and boulevard on top) would allow it the same level of review, modeling, and engineering the other 3 Alternatives in the Implementation Plan are currently receiving.  The community would benefit greatly from having all 4 alternatives studied so that we could compare apples to apples and have a good community dialogue about pros and cons of each alternative.

Letters of support come from local groups representing over 23,000 Austinites.  Despite direct requests, TxDOT has excluded the Reconnect Austin alternative because they have deemed it “infeasible.”  They are not in their design phase; they are only identifying alternates that inform the later design.  We argue that they made the executive decision to not consider the boulevard on top of the highway (as per Reconnect Austin’s proposal), and that their points about infeasibility come from that underlying configuration choice. Stacked lanes have been constructed in other cities.  Case in point, the upper decks in Austin are a stacked configuration – we know it is possible.