Big plans for Texas’ worst highway (including tolls and rail)

Planners and pundits have long decried Interstate 35 as Texas’ worst highway.

Notorious traffic backups and numerous crashes on I-35, especially on the stretch from San Antonio to Austin, have spawned big-ticket projects such as the SH 130 tollway and Lone Star commuter rail. Putting two and two together from such thinking eventually led to the now supposedly defunct Trans Texas Corridor.

But more big plans are in the making.

Four committees, each looking at a segment of I-35, are holding public meetings this month to wrap up draft plans on what to do with the highway, its feeders and parallel roads. Billions of dollars worth of projects are eyed, including this for South and Central Texas:

• Convert one I-35 lane each way into toll/carpool lanes from Buda to Georgetown
• Remove tolls and widen SH 130 to six lanes from Seguin to Georgetown
• Build high-speed passenger rail from San Antonio to Dallas
• Build passenger rail from San Antonio to Laredo
• Widen I-35 from San Antonio to Laredo

The four segment plans will be finalized next month. Then the I-35 Corridor Advisory Committee will consolidate them into the MY 35 plan and deliver it to the Texas Transportation Commission next year. 

The committees for segment 3 and segment 4, which straddle San Antonio, will hold joint public workshops 6-8 p.m.:

• Thursday, Sept. 23, at  the VIA Terry Eskridge Community Room
  1021 San Pedro Ave. in San Antonio
• Tuesday, Sept. 28, at the Live Oak Civic Center’s Rocket Room
  8101 Pat Booker Road in Live Oak
• Wednesday, Sept. 29, at the  Seguin-Guadalupe County Coliseum
  950 S. Austin St. in Seguin

Learn more at www.MY35.org.