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San Antonio Area
Roads & More
Interstate 35/San
Antonio-Austin Corridor |
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This page last updated
January 16, 2010 |
The San Antonio-Austin Corridor is the busiest inter-metro
Interstate in Texas with traffic
counts exceeding 100,000 in several locations. The corridor serves
a booming region with an aggregate population of 3.7 million stretching
100 miles from South San Antonio to Georgetown north of Austin.
The Corridor consists of Bexar, Guadalupe, Comal, Hays, Travis, and
Williamson counties and the cities of San Antonio, Live Oak, Selma,
Schertz, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, Austin, Round Rock, and
Georgetown. This page addresses the 48 mile core of the corridor:
the section between the San Antonio and Austin urban areas from
FM 482 in Schertz to SH 45 in southern Travis County. To
continue south, see the I-35
North page in the San Antonio Area Freeway section of this site.
Roadway configuration
LANES
- 6 lanes from FM
482 to Solms Rd.
- 8 lanes in New Braunfels
from Solms Rd. to FM 306
- 6 lanes from
FM 306 to SH 45
There is a left-lane truck
restriction in effect for the entire corridor from just inside Loop 1604
in Live Oak to north of Georgetown.
ACCESS ROADS
Nearly continuous access roads
along entire route. Access roads now continue over the Guadalupe
River in New Braunfels and the Blanco River in San Marcos. Short
sections of southbound access road are missing through and north of
Kyle. One-way access roads from San Antonio to Kohlenberg Rd.
north of New Braunfels; from Posey Rd. to Yarrington Rd. in San
Marcos; and from North Loop 4 in Buda into Austin.
NIGHTTIME ILLUMINATION
I-35 is illuminated between Solms
Rd. and FM 306 in New Braunfels and from Center Point Rd.
to the Blanco River in San Marcos. Nighttime illumination is also
provided at interchanges between FM 482 and Solms Rd. and at the interchange of SH 45
just north of Buda.
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
In 2008, TxDOT installed
Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) equipment throughout the corridor consisting of
cameras, speed detectors, and dynamic message signs. This system connects
to the TransGuide ITS system in San Antonio and the CTECC ITS system in Austin,
thus providing real-time corridor traffic information to motorists in both
cities.
Traffic
Interstate 35 is currently
the only freeway tying the San Antonio/Austin region together and, as a
consequence, is overloaded on many sections. Most, if not all, traffic counts
have increased well over 100% since 1990. All counts in the
corridor now exceed 80,000 vehicles per day, with over 100,000 VPD now
reported at the southern and northern ends of the corridor as well as in
New Braunfels and San Marcos.
In addition to local
growth, NAFTA has put an additional strain on the corridor. As a result,
officials lobbied to have it designated as a NAFTA Superhighway to secure
federal funding for various conventional and ITS improvements and the entire
corridor has been upgraded to a six and eight lane facility in the past 20 years.
Speed limits
- 70 mph along entire
corridor
Future plans
There are no future
expansion or upgrade plans for the corridor
for the foreseeable future.
SH 130
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To help alleviate the growing
traffic problems in the I-35 corridor, a parallel tollway, SH 130, is being built. For
more information, see the the SH 130 page. |
Additional information
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Freeway system
