Austin City Council has approved paying for infrastructure that would allow for parks over I-35, a plan made possible by a state project to widen and lower the freeway.

Council members voted Thursday to pay $104 million for support columns that would allow decks to be installed over I-35 from Cesar Chavez to Seventh streets and 11th to 12th streets.

The council also gave the OK to build columns for a pair of smaller, 300-foot-long stitches from 41st Street to the Red Line.

The overall proposal, advanced by Council Member Zo Qadri, is less than half the size of the full 26-acre vision originally presented to the City Council.

"I think this moment is about more than infrastructure or funding. It's about values and visions for Austin and it's about hope," Qadri said from the dais before the vote.

The city's first payment, 15% of the total, is due in 2026. The remaining balance must be paid off in annual installments based on how much work the contractor completes. The second payment would not be due till 2029, Council Member Ryan Alter .

The City Council was over the price tag for the project. Some members fretted about other priorities 鈥� everything from affordable housing to street upgrades and flood resilience.

The city is in an increasingly difficult financial position, facing a multimillion-dollar shortfall next year and a state Legislature eager to crack down on the powers of municipalities to tax and spend.

"I really hope that we can apply the same tenacity to finding the money to fund the needs of our residents who cannot afford to live this close to the city," Council Member Krista Laine said. "We do not see a lot of opportunity in the coming years to find new funding."

Pro-cap council members worried about the cost of closing the door on acres of new public space in the heart of the city. Doing nothing would leave an open highway canyon even wider than the existing roadway that opened in 1962.

"We have to seize this moment," Council Member Chito Vela said. "When I look across the country, I don't see anybody who has regretted capping their highway."

TxDOT's timeline

The City Council was facing a deadline of May 31 to decide where to fund support columns for the decks over I-35.

TxDOT is putting the project to bid 鈥� inviting construction companies to compete for the contract 鈥� and wanted proof the city could foot the bill for the roadway infrastructure.

The state agency pushed back a separate funding deadline for the decks themselves. If the city can show proof of payment by November 2026, it will likely get a better deal because construction companies will compete for the contract. Waiting longer also means inflation could push up the price.

The revised timeline will allow the city to hold a bond election, asking voters how much of a property tax increase they'd be willing to accept to pay for parks over the interstate.

It's still unclear exactly how much the decks and amenities would cost. A from city staff indicated the total cost of highway parks from Cesar Chavez to Seventh Street and 11th to 12th streets, including support columns, was estimated at $570 million. That doesn't doesn't include the two 300-foot-long decks near the Hancock Center.

"Staff will be working to develop capital stacks and further partnerships with community members, philanthropic members, developers and the sort to be able to come back to you with options for how we might go about funding the decks," Kim Olivares, one of the city's top financial officials, said.

Austin could still add decks to the project after November 2026, but they'd cost more. Instead of being competitively bid on by a number of companies, the decks would be tacked on to the existing contract as a "change order."

After 2033, TxDOT will impose a 10-year moratorium on any I-35 construction.

I-35 under construction till 2033

TxDOT is widening the highway through AG真人百家乐 County in three segments. South of Ben White Boulevard, columns are already being installed to add elevated lanes almost to Slaughter Lane. Two high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes will run in each direction.

North of U.S. 290 East, the state began rebuilding the highway in 2023 to add one HOV lane in each direction. Several bridges are being rebuilt.

The expansion of I-35 through Central Austin, one of the largest highway projects in state history, will add two HOV lanes in each direction along an 8-mile stretch from Ben White Boulevard to U.S. 290 East. Bridges over the highway will be widened.

Construction on the project is slated to be completed by 2033.

Flights arriving at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport are delayed an average of 61 minutes because of a staffing shortage in the control tower.

The Federal Aviation Administration's said the delay will last until 9:59 p.m. There were more than 200 delays at the airport as of Wednesday afternoon, . The max delay was 7 hours and 45 minutes.

Tower shifts are supposed to have 14 controllers, but as few as eight were scheduled.

The airport paused incoming flights from Houston and Dallas in March, also due to staffing issues. These delays have become more common as ABIA has struggled with chronic air traffic controller shortages.

Autonomous Teslas will be ferrying Austinites around as soon as this summer, according to the automaker's CEO.

Elon in an interview Tuesday the company's been testing autonomous vehicles in Austin, and that the leading electric carmaker will roll out a small fleet of 10 fully autonomous cabs by the end of June.

"I think it's prudent for us to start with a small number," he said. "We'll start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40, and I think ... we'll probably be at a thousand within a few months, then we'll expand to other cities."

Musk said Tesla would use Austin as a proving ground for its unsupervised autonomous taxi service, before it's expanded to cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Tesla's not the first company to feature fully autonomous ride-hailing services in Austin.

After years of testing, Waymo launched an autonomous taxi service on Uber this spring. Waymo's foray into unsupervised robotaxis has seemingly rolled out without incident.

Austin has had a decade-long history with autonomous vehicle operators. In 2015, the city hosted the world's first truly driverless ride in Northeast Austin.

In the years that followed, the city became a test track for Waymo and other operators in the AV space. A 2017 state law banned local regulation of AVs, which proved problematic in the past. GM-owned Cruise's robot cars exhibited on Austin roads, and scores of people complained to 311 that they were almost hit by the vehicles. Cruise shuttered its operations shortly after.

Austin's Transportation and Public Works Department says it's been working with Tesla, providing information about school zones, information on traffic control and protocols on how to interact with first-response vehicles.

"Although cities in Texas cannot regulate AVs, Austin has worked with autonomous vehicle companies as they enter the market to offer staff's knowledge on the local transportation network to help AVs operate more safely," a city spokesperson said.

Musk told CNBC that Tesla expects "hundreds of thousands" of autonomous vehicles to be on the roads by the end of 2026, but said the carmaker will keep a close eye on operations in Austin before that nationwide rollout.

"We're going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment, as we should be. It would be very foolish not to be," he said. "So we'll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully."

The KUT News livestream happened on Monday. or scroll below to watch.

Austin is facing a major decision this week that could shape what downtown looks like for generations. Should the city 鈥� already facing a $33 million shortfall next fiscal year 鈥� pay to cover Interstate 35 with parks, athletic fields, performance spaces and buildings up to two stories tall?

The Texas Department of Transportation has already begun a massive project to expand the highway and lower the main lanes below ground level from Holly Street to Airport Boulevard. Now, the state agency wants a decision by the end of the month on how many highway parks Austin intends to build, and how it will pay for the first phase.

Building all 26 acres of caps over the highway would cost at least $1.4 billion with annual maintenance costs estimated at almost $50 million.

But Austin doesn't have to pony up immediately. The will be how many of the support columns to build. Future-proofing the highway for the full suite of highway decks would cost $244 million. TxDOT says it's prohibited from using highway money on the parks or associated infrastructure.

A 15% downpayment would be required by 2026. The rest would be paid in installments as the contractor completes the work.

The City Council is split. Some fear spending limited city resources to build the most expensive parks in Austin would drain money from competing priorities like affordable housing and preparing for flooding and wildfires.

The issue is complex. It's also super important. So we're taking the time to go deep. Join us for a livestream on Monday at noon. We'll hear directly from council members in support of and opposed to the caps. And we'll take a closer look at the fine details of the options facing the city as the decision deadline ticks closer. If you miss the livestream, you can watch the recording below:

Three years after a that led to no actual construction, Capital Metro is putting plans back on track to build a new commuter rail station near the Domain. But the project's price tag has ballooned, and the transit agency will pay more than triple what it had originally planned.

Broadmoor Station was originally expected to cost $24 million, split evenly between CapMetro and Brandywine Realty Trust, the developer of the massive Uptown ATX mixed-use development where the station will be located.

But after pandemic-related delays and rising construction costs, the total cost has . CapMetro is covering the increase, with its share jumping from $12 million to $37.3 million. Brandywine's contribution remains capped at the original $12 million commitment.

The station will be embedded in the 66-acre Uptown ATX development, within walking distance of restaurants, bars and shopping. The Domain's Rock Rose entertainment district is about a half-mile away. CapMetro expects the Broadmoor Station will be the second busiest stop on the Red Line after Downtown Station, according to pre-COVID forecasts.

CapMetro staff say the revised deal reflects post-COVID realities of a deal negotiated before the pandemic hit.

"As with most construction, costs have escalated significantly post-pandemic," CapMetro's Chief of Staff Cheyenne Conyer explained to the transit agency's board of directors in an email this month. "Additionally, Brandywine approached CapMetro to renegotiate the terms of the original agreement as their post-pandemic financial picture solidified."

The delay was tied in part to the broader slowdown in commercial development during the pandemic, which stalled Uptown ATX and delayed permitting. CapMetro's operations committee approved the revised agreement last week, with a full board vote expected Monday.

Construction is now set to begin this winter with Broadmoor Station opening by late 2027. It will replace the nearby Kramer Station, which will be decommissioned once Broadmoor is up and running. Broadmoor and the $60 million McKalla Station at Q2 Stadium just south of Kramer are part of the Project Connect transit expansion funded by a property tax increase approved by voters in 2020.

Brandywine will manage construction and be paid a 5% fee, capped at $2.25 million. It will provide more than 200 shared parking spaces for Red Line riders for at least three years. As part of the renegotiated deal, the park-and-ride could be extended by two years if the spaces are still available.

Five nearby landowners donated property for the project valued at about $20 million.

CapMetro board member Eric Stratton acknowledged some concerns about cost but defended the project.

"The two biggest things I hear from folks in Williamson County, my neck of the woods, 'If that train could just get us two places: the airport and the Domain,'" Stratton said at a meeting last week. "I can't get you to the airport, folks, but I can sure work to get you to the Domain on this train."

Traffic volumes on Austin's highways climbed after state employees were ordered back to the office full-time March 31, according to new data obtained by KUT News. But average travel speeds during morning and afternoon rush hours were little changed on Interstate 35, MoPac and U.S. Highway 183.

City streets showed even less fluctuation in travel times, aside from some construction zones.

Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise. Government employees make up less than 2% of the 1.5 million workers in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The mixed results also reflect a complicated reality: traffic congestion is shaped by overlapping forces 鈥� everything from crashes to signal timing 鈥� not just the number of vehicles on the road.

"When you start talking about traffic, there are lots of things in play besides what you're thinking about," said David Schrank, senior research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. "We can look in generalities at what's happening, but it's very difficult to pinpoint."

KUT News requested Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) data comparing the first week of the state's return-to-office mandate with the first week of March to avoid muddying the numbers with the spring break slowdown.

The week of March 31, highway traffic volumes increased most on I-35 at Onion Creek Parkway. About 5% more cars and trucks traveled on weekdays in both directions, suggesting more people commuting from suburbs south of Austin.

But during the morning commute, defined as 6 to 10 a.m., average weekday travel speeds on I-35 at Onion Creek actually increased from 18 to 28 miles per hour. The afternoon commute saw a more predictable drop in southbound travel speeds from 28 to 25 miles per hour.

One factor could be that workers now have more flexibility to decide when they hit the road.

"They might take a call at the house before they leave," Schrank said. "And then, 'OK. I'm going to drive in now. Traffic sort of died down.'"

City traffic data 鈥� supplied by the traffic analytics company INRIX 鈥� shows little change on local streets.

That's not to say certain pockets could be worse.

"I think the data doesn't necessarily indicate where hotspots may be," said Brian Craig with the city of Austin's Transportation and Public Works Department. "So that is something that we are actively looking for."

The city monitors intersections with cameras and adjusts traffic signal timing as needed, especially in areas where return-to-office orders might put more cars and trucks on the road.

One focus has been the TxDOT campus on Stassney Lane, where state employees returned to a site where they struggled to find parking.

"We've made [traffic signal] timing adjustments," Craig said. "We know if we had not, it certainly would have become a very hot spot as far as congestion goes."

Cesar Chavez Street to the west of I-35 was another trouble area. Construction at the Austin Convention Center slowed travel times by as much as 37%, but only during permitted working hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

One of Austin's most reliably jammed roads didn't change much. I-35 at Lady Bird Lake averaged about 10 miles per hour during the afternoon commute before the state's return-to-office mandate.

The week after? Still 10 miles an hour.

Facing a deepening budget deficit as the state Legislature tightens the reins on city spending, Austin's City Council was warned Tuesday that an ambitious plan to build parks and public spaces over I-35 will require tough choices to avoid straining the city's finances for decades.

A stark from the Washington, D.C., engineering consultant Hayat Brown said the proposed decks over the highway known as "caps" 鈥� to be installed after the state lowers the main lanes 鈥� would not pay for themselves through direct revenue or direct economic activity.

The forecast didn't account for all the economic domino effects of covering a highway canyon in downtown Austin with amenities like parks, splash pads, athletic fields, performance spaces and buildings up to 2 stories tall. And it didn't factor in any quality-of-life improvements that could come from bridging the highway that's divided Austin since 1962.

But the gloomy presentation set the stage for the city's top budget officials to caution council that borrowing heavily for the caps could push Austin's debt per capita to unprecedented levels, risking a credit downgrade that would raise borrowing costs across the board and squeeze funding for other critical needs.

The City Council must decide by the end of the month whether it will fund any of the "roadway elements" that would allow caps to be constructed in the future. Those elements include thickened walls along parts of the highway to support the weight of the caps and a space beneath the main lanes to catch hazardous materials in the event of a spill.

Roadway elements for the full 26.6 acres would cost $284 million. All the city has for the caps now is a loan from a state-run bank for $41 million. A $105 million federal grant is in limbo.

The next caps bill for Austin, due before 2032, would be for an estimated $613 million to pay for the decks and core infrastructure over the highway.

Tacking on the landscaping, amenities and buildings for all 26.6 acres would bring the total to an estimated $1.4 billion. That number doesn't include annual maintenance costs approaching $50 million. If costs go up, the city foots the bill.

Given that outlook, city staff working on the caps project made a new suggestion to the council Tuesday. Instead of building 26.6 acres of caps downtown and near the Hancock Center as originally planned, Austin could construct fewer than 8 acres, covering just Cesar Chavez to Fourth Street and 11th to 12th Street. This sharply pared-down plan would reduce the total price tag to $360 million.

The political math is tight. Six votes are needed on the City Council 鈥� made up of 10 members and the mayor 鈥� to advance or kill the project. The council is split between those who view caps as a once-in-a-lifetime moral imperative to reshape Austin for generations and those worried about how the city's growing debt load will weigh on demands for important needs.

"Working people in Austin are struggling. People don't have enough food in parts of town. They don't have affordable housing or reliable transportation. And I think as a council, we need to consider the whole city's needs, not just downtown," Council Member Mike Siegel said. "If we want to address inequity in parks and pools and libraries and senior centers around the city, we need to prioritize those projects."

For other council members and Austin residents, though, the caps present a rare chance to reconnect neighborhoods long divided by the freeway and invest in the city's future.

"For me, this is about healing a scar that I've lived through, that ripped through our city almost 100 years ago by way of the 1928 Master Plan," Council Member Jos茅 Vel谩squez said, referring to the city plan that created a racial segregation line along East Avenue, which later became I-35. "This is about making right a division that should never have existed."

The council's final vote on which roadway elements to fund 鈥� determining where caps could ultimately be installed 鈥� is set for May 22.

Update: The FAA has now given final approval for SpaceX to increase its launch cadence to 25 times a year.

SpaceX just got a lot closer to launching more rockets from its base in South Texas.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday said there would be to the environment if SpaceX increases launches at its Starbase facility from five to 25 times a year 鈥� as long as the company takes additional steps to . The information was issued in what鈥檚 called a 鈥�,鈥� an in-depth look into the request鈥檚 potential effects.

Starbase is located on the southern tip of Texas outside Brownsville. , the rocket eventually meant to take humans to Mars, launches from there.

The approval is a big win for Elon Musk鈥檚 rocket company, and brings him much closer to gaining final approval to increase the launch cadence.

It comes just days after SpaceX employees who live around the South Texas launch site voted to make the area its own city. SpaceX now wants the state of Texas to give it more control over closing the nearby public beach for launches, a power that currently resides with county officials. A bill that would accomplish this has momentum in the state Legislature.

The changes are opposed by some local activists who say the company鈥檚 presence has and blocked access to the public beach.

"Lawmakers must demand that the FAA restart this review of SpaceX's permit process for the sake of our community and the island communities littered with flammable rocket debris," Bekah Hinojosa with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network told The Texas Newsroom.

The FAA did acknowledge that increasing the launch cadence could hurt the local ecosystem, mentioning potential harm to sea turtles and marine mammals. The assessment said SpaceX should work with federal agencies to lessen harmful effects.

The next launch from Starbase has not been scheduled. The last Starship launch in March failed after the rocket did not reach its target altitude and exploded. SpaceX is investigating the incident.

Steve Kulm, a public affairs specialist with the FAA, said the agency will make a final decision on SpaceX鈥檚 request after the company completes other licensing requirements.

You don't need a premium credit card anymore to grab some fresh air past security at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. An outdoor patio at the reopened to the public Tuesday after being restricted to Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders for the past two years.

The 3,994-square-foot terrace opened in 2019 as the terminal's only outdoor space for travelers beyond TSA screening. But the patio flew under the radar, tucked away at the top of large spiral staircase near Gate 1. (There's an elevator, too, but it's easy to miss.)

The space is reopening daily from 8 a.m to 8 p.m. with lounge chairs, benches and tables left behind by Chase. Travelers can watch planes take off from one of the airport's two runways. Speakers pipe in airport announcements. The patio has its own public restrooms. Smoking and vaping is banned.

The terrace has been one of ABIA's best kept secrets. Few passengers knew it existed. For a while, it was more popular among employees on break.

That changed in 2023. Airport officials struck a two-year, $3.8 million deal with JPMorgan Chase to convert the patio into the Chase Sapphire Terrace, a private lounge for the bank's high-end travel cardholders. The airport pitched it as a "pilot project" to test demand for premium passenger spaces while bringing in new revenue to help pay off mounting construction debt.

The privatization of such a rare public space in the city-owned airport didn't sit well with everyone.

"The parks department could use extra revenue," Airport Advisory Commissioner Wendy Todd said at the time. "But they're not having a credit card lounge for two years that will prevent public use of the public space."

Airport executives say the experiment demonstrated strong interest in premium amenities.

"We found out there was [demand]," said John Gallo, ABIA's deputy chief officer for commercial development. "Austin has a young, tech-centered employment base. A lot of people with disposable income ... want to use their points at the airport because they're traveling a lot."

Gallo said the Chase Sapphire Terrace averaged between 200 and 300 visitors a day, significantly more than the handful of travelers who used the space when it was public but often overlooked.

The airport plans to promote the outdoor patio more actively this time, including with social media. Clear Channel, which manages advertising in the terminal, is shopping for a sponsor to brand the space and promote it.

Eventually, more outdoor options are coming. As part of a three-gate expansion on the west end of the terminal, ABIA is building a second terrace with views of downtown Austin. About 860 square feet will be public and almost 1,300 square feet will be reserved for a new American Airlines Admirals Club. The patio is expected to open around 2027.

Within the next month, city officials will start looking for a company to open ABIA's first permanent credit card lounge. The 20,000-square-foot lounge space is currently under construction as part of another expansion project.

In the meantime, the east terrace is open to all travelers, no membership required.

"I like outdoor spaces," said Ebonee Debrah, a San Antonio resident who arrived at ABIA four hours before departure to make sure she wouldn't miss her flight to London. "If you've been in the building for a long period of time, it just makes you feel better to be outside in the sun."

The Houston-to-Dallas bullet train project suffered a significant blow Monday as the federal government announced the abrupt termination of a planning grant for Amtrak 鈥� just seven months after it was awarded.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company of the United States, agreed to terminate the to help move the project forward.

In a news release, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy called the high-speed rail project a "waste of taxpayer funds and a distraction from Amtrak's core mission of improving its existing subpar services." The total cost of constructing the railway is expected to exceed $40 billion, according to the transportation department.

"The Texas Central Railway project was proposed as a private venture," Duffy said. "If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the pre-construction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out. My department will continue to look for every opportunity to save federal dollars and prioritize efficiencies."

Earlier this year, Amtrak released a notice for the proposed railway, which would use Japanese technology to transport passengers between Houston and Dallas in a matter of about 90 minutes.

The plan was hatched more than a decade ago by Texas Central, a private Dallas-based company that laid groundwork for the initiative but struggled to raise the needed funds. It also encountered pushback from rural landowners along the proposed 240-mile route.

Former President Joe Biden and former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the high-speed railway last year, as the plan has long called for utilizing Japan's Shinkansen technology.

The statement by Duffy, an appointee of President Donald Trump, represents a shift in priorities for the new administration in the U.S. The transportation department's news release noted that Amtrak received grants and "massive loans" under the previous administration in an attempt to spur construction.

"This arrangement is the antithesis to generating private investment in infrastructure because the American taxpayer ends up holding all the risk," the department wrote. "Walking away from the Texas Central Railway project at this time will allow Amtrak to focus on necessary improvements to deliver more reliability to its current riders."

The Federal Railroad Administration remains interested in rail projects, including high-speed rail initiatives, according to the transportation department. The approximately $60 million remaining from the now-terminated grant will be reallocated to other projects "that support safe, efficient, and reliable rail transportation," the department said.

"Connecting Dallas and Houston remains one of the more exciting opportunities for new passenger rail in the United States," said Kyle Fields, the chief counsel for the FRA. "Today's announcement reflects a recognition by Amtrak and FRA that federalizing the Texas Central Railway proposal is not the best use of taxpayer funding."

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