Construction on downtown Austin bus, bike upgrades to wrap this fall

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A project aimed at enhancing pedestrian, cyclist and bus mobility along a stretch of downtown Austin is set to wrap construction this fall, city transportation officials said at the Austin Urban Transportation Commission meeting Tuesday.

The city of Austin and CapMetro partnered on the upgrades on Trinity Street and San Jacinto Boulevard, with the complete project corridor running from Cesar Chavez Street to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Those improvements kicked off last month and are expected to wrap in November, officials added Tuesday.

That project focuses specifically on:

• Transit priority lanes for bus operations of existing and future CapMetro routes
• Protecting bicycle lanes for cyclists
• Upgraded pedestrian crossings along the corridor
• Continued parking, vehicle access for drivers along the project corridor

It's the latest project in a series of enhancements overseen by the transit enhancement program, a project subsector of the Austin Transportation and Public Works Department. The transit enhancement program specifically develops and delivers on capital projects centered on bolstering transit operations and customer access, with a concentration on improved bus speeds, service reliability and safer access.

"While transit agencies determine what destinations to serve, what schedules to operate and what fares to charge, local municipalities like the city of Austin control the design of the streets where transit operates," said Caitlin D'Alton, a program consultant. "So that means that the city ultimately determines where infrastructure like bus lanes are installed. We determine how signals are designed to support transit."

Other improvements completed via the program include the shared red bus lane installed along West Fifth Street, the rebuilt Guadalupe and Cesar Chavez streets intersection to accommodate turning bus traffic and a dedicated bus lane and bus system operational upgrades at the intersection of Lakeline Boulevard and U.S. Highway 183.

Projects within the program fall into three work categories:

• Operations improvements: Enhancements to bus lanes, signal timing, transit signal prioritization, bus stop upgrades and relocation efforts
• Access improvements: Upgrades to pedestrian crossings, sidewalks, bikeway and trail connections as well as micromobility investments
• Project coordination: Hones in on internal and external projects that could impact future transit service operations in Austin, such as Project Connect, Mobility-35 and the Austin Core Transportation Plan

D'Alton told the commission Tuesday the program has completed roughly 150 transit improvements since it was created in 2018. Those include 75 bus stop upgrades, 47 access improvements and 25 operations enhancements, with more than 50 active enhancements currently in the construction phase.

Alongside active projects, D'Alton noted the program finalized its transit enhancement infrastructure report last fall, which included recommendations for 37 infrastructure projects, at a proposed sticker price of $53 million. Those recommendations followed input from more than 1,400 community members, with those projects centered around investment priorities they flagged.