It costs too much and does too little.
AUSTIN — I think I can make the case that widening I-35 through Central Austin is the biggest boondoggle ever, because I’ve had practice. I wrote about it four and five years ago in The Rag Blog and also more recently. With time, the reasons to rebuild it as a much wider road have only gotten weaker, and the money needed to widen it has become harder and harder to get.
The I-35 widening proposal through Central Austin is now called I-35 Capital Express Central. This project is shown on page 62 in TxDOTs 2021 annual Unified Transportation Program as costing $4.9 billion, but it still lacks the $3.6 billion in Category 12 funding, which is about 73% of the total money needed to widen the road in this 12-mile part of I-35. “To date, funding has not been identified for most of the Mobility35 projects.”
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