Access road in Buda closed for construction

About a half-mile of the frontage road around its intersection with Hillside Terrace Drive is closed for an estimated four weeks.

by JEN BIUNDO

Work is underway on a long-awaited interstate overpass that could help divert heavy commercial traffic off of Buda access roads.

Over the next four weeks, the Texas Department of Transportation will temporarily close a segment of the northbound IH-35 access road in Buda due to construction of a bridge at the southern terminus of Buda’s truck bypass.

The access road will be closed from about a quarter mile south of Hillside Terrace Drive to about a quarter mile north of Hillside Terrace Drive, said TxDOT spokesperson John Hurt.

Traffic will be detoured around the closed section where crews are building an overpass. Traffic headed to Hillside Terrace Drive will be routed through Kelly Smith Lane.

Though it will temporarily tie up the access roads, the new bridge will ultimately improve mobility and alleviate traffic headaches created when the interstate access roads were converted from two-way to one-way this spring, Hurt said.

“It’s going to provide considerably better access from one side of the interstate to the other,” Hurt said.

The overpass will link the Buda truck bypass to northbound IH-35. Buda completed the $2 million bypass in the summer of 2007, diverting trucks off of Main Street and through Buda’s industrial corridor south of the city center.

But at the time, the city was unable to secure funding for the interstate overpass. Currently, a temporary two-lane spur tees into the IH-35 access road just north of the old Cement Plant Road.

With no overpasses between FM 2001 in Buda and Dry Hole Road in Kyle, motorists and heavy commercial trucks that want to head north on IH-35 must now detour south about four miles. The new overpass will provide fast access to the northbound interstate.

With the help of $5.8 million in stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, TxDOT contracted the project to the Austin-based Capital Excavation Co. and began work on the overpass in June. The project is slated for completion next summer.

The overpass will initially be constructed with three lanes, with a planned future expansion to five lanes, Hurt said.