Austin, Please Suggest Some Things We Could Put On Top of This Highway

Image: Downtown Austin Alliance

As the Texas Department of Transportation’s Capital Express project widening I-35 though Austin slowly chugs to life, the possibility of a decade of construction crossing the central city has many presumably traumatized locals putting a lot of faith into the plan’s roughly $900 million silver lining — so-called caps and stitches, large and small decks covering the highway and reclaiming up to 30 acres of space for public use.

A map showing the potential caps and stitches over a rebuilt I-35 — with the University of Texas picking up the bill for the big orange one, natch. Image: Downtown Austin Alliance

Securing the financing for these upgrades will take years, if not decades, and we also think there’s a pretty good chance that increasing construction costs over time could ultimately force reductions in the scope and size of the caps currently planned over the highway. Optimistically, we’d like to see some of the caps become sites like the freeway-capping Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, which is a successful and highly programmed public space — food trucks, a restaurant, and so forth.

This concept plan for a cap at 11th and 12th Streets shows the possibilities of small buildings atop the decks. We think the caps will need buildings like this for sound abatement — otherwise you’re just standing on a little park space surrounded by traffic at, oh, maybe 70 decibels? That’s like putting a green rug on top of your washing machine. Image: Downtown Austin Alliance

The caps can also support buildings up to two stories in height, which isn’t quite enough density to pay for itself but could still create essentially new districts of the city from scratch. Our concern is that the public spaces on top of the I-35 caps could end up something like the state’s new Capitol Complex pedestrian mall — which is nice, but not very vibrant at the moment due to a lack of programming or commercial spaces outside of the Bob Bullock and Blanton Museums at the far north end.

Another concept for freeway caps in the downtown area, showing various levels of density — we are obviously fond of the idea of more meaningfully reconnecting downtown to East Austin by extending its built environment. Don’t you love how much these schematics use the word “potential?” Image: Downtown Austin Alliance

To try and stave that future off, the Our Future 35 planning initiative by the Downtown Austin Alliance is seeking community input until August on the goals and vision for the new public spaces over I-35, and we’d like to see our highly-informed readers participate in this process. We’ve already asked you last year what you’d like to see on top of a highway, and there were some great answers, so now it’s time to tell those other guys. Fill out the survey at the link here, hopefully requesting something along the lines of a public beer garden, and then wait patiently for about a decade.