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San
Antonio Area Roads & More
Interstate
35/San Antonio-Austin Corridor |
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| This page
last updated January
25, 2013 |
The San
Antonio-Austin Corridor is the busiest inter-metro Interstate in Texas
with traffic counts exceeding 100,000 south of New Braunfels and north
of San Marcos. 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 and 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 Kyle Pkwy. into Austin.
NIGHTTIME ILLUMINATION
I-35 has
continuous
illumination 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 70,000 vehicles per day, with
over 100,000 VPD now reported from New Braunfels south and from San
Marcos north.
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, was built. For more information, see the the SH 130 page. |
Additional information
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Freeway system
