When you should expect construction work to finish on the MoPac bike bridge By Ben Wear - American-Statesman Staff The idea seemed fanciful when city of Austin officials first asked transportation planners for $5 million to build a bicycle bridge alongside South MoPac Boulevard at Barton Creek: Give Southwest Austin cyclists a safer way into the city’s core, and two-wheel commuting will increase. Almost a decade after the idea first surfaced, clearing work commenced last month on what has expanded into a $12 million project with three bridges, about two miles of trail and, in the final stages, an additional traffic lane on southbound MoPac (Loop 1). MoPac’s two high-speed bridges over the creek have long been a daunting obstacle for all but the most intrepid cyclists, with almost no shoulder on the northbound side and a wide but unprotected shoulder on the southbound side. That meant cyclists generally had to find their way east to South Lamar Boulevard to get to town, and that route was pretty harrowing as well. The MoPac bike bridge, city officials argued, would spur greater bike use by eliminating that gap in the system. “We want to reach people in Southwest Austin,” said Chad Crager, the city’s bicycle program manager. The clearing of trees south of Barton Creek, Crager said, had to occur before March 1 to steer clear of the golden-cheeked warbler’s nesting season. But that’s just the start of the work. If all goes as planned, the area near the confluence of MoPac and Loop 360 by the end of 2015 will have a complex web of changes: •A 1,045-foot-long, 14-foot-wide bicycle and pedestrian bridge over Barton Creek and east of northbound MoPac. •A trail with switchbacks south of the creek leading up to a MoPac frontage road and turnaround bridge near the Gaines Ranch development. •A two-way protected bike lane on the turnaround bridge and for hundreds of yards south on an access road from Gaines Ranch, a precursor to what Crager hopes will eventually be a protected trail leading all the way to the Oak Hill Y about three miles west. •Ground-level trails north of the creek leading west to the Barton Creek trail head and leading east and north along MoPac’s northbound access road to near Loop 360. •A 100-foot-long, 14-foot-wide bridge over a sunken road that allows drivers to go from southbound MoPac to eastbound Loop 360. •A second, 260-foot-long, 14-foot-wide bridge over Loop 360 to the highway’s north side. •A trail cut into a steep slope along MoPac’s east side from Loop 360 to an existing 8-foot-wide sidewalk that runs all the way to Zilker Park. •And, finally, re-striping of southbound MoPac to add a third lane to a stretch about 3,000 feet long that currently has only two lanes for through traffic. That last part of the project, which will require repaving and re-striping but no widening of the road, should cost only about $200,000, Texas Department of Transportation officials said in 2012. The Loop 360 bridges and associated trail will occur in a second, $2.5 million phase of the project, to be designed and built by the city. The first $9.6 million phase, focused on the creek and the highway work, is a job by TxDOT. The cost of both phases is being split roughly 50-50 by the city and TxDOT, along with $2 million in federal funds. Both the city and TxDOT portions, Crager hopes, should finish about the same time.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:56:50 +0000
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