When the 8-mile, $743 million U.S. 183 South project in East Austin, Texas, opens all lanes to traffic by year-end, drivers will not only find reduced congestion through the corridor, but also a more scenic drive.

“People pay to use this facility, so they expect a better experience; it’s a beautiful place to drive,” said Lloyd Chance, Senior Project Manager of Construction for the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority in Austin, Texas.

The project incorporated many aesthetic enhancements and landscape improvements as it converted a four-lane, divided highway built in the mid-1960s into a total of 12 lanes – three toll lanes in each direction and three enhanced, non-tolled, general-purpose lanes in each direction. Drivers can choose whether to bypass traffic congestion by using the toll lanes.

With 23 entrance and exit ramps, the rebuilt corridor serves as a gateway to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and a bypass to Interstate 35. Bicyclists and pedestrians will also enjoy greater mobility with $25 million of new facilities, including 16 miles of bike lanes, 10 miles of shared-use paths, 7 miles of sidewalk, four pedestrian bridges, and connections to the regional trail system.

With funding hard to come by as the project developed, the Mobility Authority partnered with the Texas Department of Transportation to finance the work through a mix of toll revenue bonds, government loans, and government grants.

In May 2015, the Mobility Authority awarded a design-build contract to Colorado River Constructors (CRC), a joint venture led by Flour Enterprises, Inc., of Irving, Texas, and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure, Inc., of Atlanta. The project broke ground in April 2016 and the north end opened to traffic in August 2019. The south end of the project will open by the end of this year.

To enhance the driving experience, project architects developed a comprehensive aesthetics package. The extra touches include delta-shaped portal bents in many of the bridges. The bents resemble the Greek letter delta, but inverted like an upside-down triangle.

“We worked closely with CRC to turn the architects’ concept into a constructible facility,” said Daniel Freeman, Project Manager for General Engineering Consultant Atkins Global in Austin, Texas. “Originally the bents started at ground level. To make them work better, we allowed short columns to come up out of the ground as needed where the bents split.”

In order to construct the unique shapes, “The formwork has access doors in the bottom so crews can vibrate the concrete down at the knuckle,” said Justin Word, Director of Engineering for the Mobility Authority. “Once they’ve done that, they close the doors and continue to pour concrete from the top.”

The aesthetics package also included a unique pedestrian safety barrier, nicknamed the organ pipe rail. “It’s a staggered series of galvanized pipes that are connected together and look like a pipe organ,” Chance explained. “Most people think it’s an aesthetic treatment on top of the rail, but it’s really a non-climbable safety barrier.”

Crews installed the organ pipe barrier at three pedestrian bridges, covering a total of just over one-and-a-half miles.

“Before this project, there was an old chain-link fence in the median that attempted to prevent pedestrians from crossing the facility,” Word said. “However, a chain-link fence requires quite a bit of maintenance. There were a lot of gaps. This is a more permanent fix – you can’t put a gap in the pipe rail.”

To further enhance aesthetics, the project includes planting over 5,000 trees, 30,000 shrubs, and 45,000 groundcover plants, in addition to special measures that protect several large, decades-old oak trees. The Mobility Authority also partnered with the nonprofit organization TreeFolks to plant an additional 10,000 trees in neighborhoods around the corridor.

The greenery contributes to new certification the Mobility Authority decided to pursue for the project. Developed by the nonprofit Greenroads International, the Greenroads Rating System certifies transportation projects based on environmental, social, and economic responsibility.

“We were already doing a bunch of these things as part of a separate initiative we started a few years ago,” Word said. “The Green Mobility Challenge was a call to industry and ourselves to think of new ways to do this work. Ideas from that challenge were already rolled into the 183 South project, then they became part of the scoring criteria under Greenroads, so there was a lot of overlap.”

In addition to a 10-foot-wide shared-use path, on-road bike lanes, sidewalks, and three pedestrian bridges crossing U.S. 183, the project converted the 82-year-old Montopolis Truss Bridge (included in the National Register of Historic Places) from a vehicular river crossing into a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle facility.

Other sustainable measures include using materials within a 50-mile radius, non-potable water, non-road equipment with EPA tier 4 emission standards, and clean diesel technology. The certification also looks at factors such as communications and outreach, fair and skilled labor, and safety enhancements.

“The challenge is documenting what we’ve done so it can be reported to Greenroads to obtain those credits,” Freeman said. “Early in the project, when we switched from the sustainability program in our original contract to trying to obtain Greenroads certification, we compensated our contractor to have a full-time person working to document these efforts.”

In addition to helping the environment, the project team works hard to be considerate to businesses and residents throughout the corridor. Although construction proceeds 24/7, the Mobility Authority incentivized the contractor to complete the most impactful work outside of peak travel hours.

To mitigate impacts of the night work, “We’re very mindful of the noise and light pollution we create,” Chance said. Special measures include quieter broadband back-up alarms on equipment and minimizing light spillover onto adjacent properties.

For the first time, the Mobility Authority formalized their community outreach into an official initiative, called the Good Neighbor Program, that not only mitigates the impact of construction on the community, but also involves partnerships with community organizations and sponsorship of local events and causes.

A second program, Good Neighbor to Business, works to minimize economic impacts. That includes encouraging project staff to patronize establishments along the corridor by entering their receipts into drawings for gift cards that cycle more money back into the businesses. Throughout the 20 months of that initiative, the Good Neighbor to Business Program documented $37,000 in revenue for participant businesses.

After four years of work, the project’s contractor and subcontractors logged over 5 million hours of work. Numerous measures keep workers safe, including a remote-controlled robot for demolition over the Colorado River.

“The equipment is the size of a Bobcat, but it has a demolition hammer on the front of it,” Chance explained. “Instead of the operator being in the equipment, it works by remote control so the operator can stand further away from fall hazards while the equipment performs the work.”

CRC utilized the robot to demolish bridge overhangs during overnight work. “In that area over the river, there’s no readily practical way to capture the falling debris,” said Robert Krupa, Atkins’ Deputy Project Manager. “As the robot mechanically broke the deck overhang, CRC positioned a bucket underneath, supported with a steel cable suspended from a crane.”

As crews finish the project, some work on landscaping and smaller aesthetic items will carry over into next year. In the coming months, though, all lanes throughout the corridor will open to traffic, providing increased safety and mobility for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians.