Merge Left, Then Right, Then Reconsider

The sign at the Airport Boulevard ramp said EXIT CLOSED USE NEXT EXIT, so I used the next exit, which had its own sign that said EXIT CLOSED USE NEXT EXIT. They were in the same font. They had clearly been ordered together.

That was Monday, and it's how I decided this blog needed a dedicated beat for the orange-barrel frontier. TxDOT's Capital Express Central project is rebuilding I-35 through the middle of town. The work includes taking down the upper decks, sinking the main lanes and adding caps and crossings. That's billions of dollars and years of construction, with completion pencilled in for the early 2030s. By then I will either be retired or living on the southbound frontage road permanently, under a tarp with a mailing address.

This is the first Lane Closure Report. I kept a diary for one work week. My commute goes from Windsor Park to an office off Oltorf. On a 2004 map that's eighteen minutes. On the map in my glovebox, which I trust more than any app, it's about a radio song and a half.

Monday, 7:41 a.m.

I left with what I considered a reasonable cushion. I am a Texan, so a reasonable cushion is about four minutes.

The Airport ramp, as noted, was closed. So was the next one. A third ramp was technically open, but it put me on a lane bounded entirely by concrete barriers, like a bowling alley built for a Corolla. The lane markings had been repainted so many times that the asphalt looked like a teenager's notebook. There were old white lines, new yellow lines, ghost lines that had been ground off but not all the way, and one short dashed segment headed nowhere at a confident angle.

I followed the yellow. Everyone followed the yellow. We moved as a herd, slowly, the way cattle must have moved through this same corridor a hundred and fifty years ago, also without being told why.

Made it in 41 minutes. A coworker in accounts payable asked how the drive was. I said "fine," because that is the word a person says when they have stopped feeling things.

Tuesday, 7:30 a.m.

I left eleven minutes earlier out of spite.

Today I skipped the highway and tried the frontage road. Every Austinite has a frontage road strategy and every one of them is wrong in a slightly different way. Mine is to stay on the frontage the whole length and treat the main lanes as a rumor.

The frontage road is now an evolving work of performance art. At one point near 51st it was three lanes. Fifty yards later it was two. Then it was three again, except the new third lane was on the opposite side and had been there all along, apparently, waiting for me to earn it.

A digital message board up ahead said EXPECT DELAYS.

I would like to know who that sign thinks it's talking to. Nobody on this road has expected anything else since the first Bush administration. Telling an I-35 driver to expect delays is like telling a cedar fever sufferer to expect pollen. It's not information, it's weather.

Made it in 44 minutes. Spite does not reduce travel time. I've been told this by many people and will not be learning it.

Wednesday, 7:22 a.m.

I left nineteen minutes early. The sun was out, the grackles were awake and upset about something, and I could still feel hope.

Downtown, the old upper deck is coming apart in that slow, unglamorous way large concrete things die. Nothing exploded. There was no ribbon to cut. Just a gray hulk with its rebar showing, like a rib cage at a natural history museum, getting smaller one shift at a time. I spent a good share of my twenties on that upper deck. Southbound at night you could see the Capitol on one side and the old Frost tower building scaffolding in the sky on the other. You felt like you were driving through the top of something.

Now the top of something is in a dump truck.

I'm told the new design will be better, with lowered lanes, caps you can walk across and a city stitched back together over the highway that split it. I believe that's the intention and I hope it works. Plenty of East Austin families have had to live with the original split for seventy years. I'm only being asked to live with the zipper for one decade.

Made it in 39 minutes, a personal record for the week. I celebrated by missing the Oltorf exit, because the Oltorf exit was on the left today.

Thursday, 7:35 a.m.

A brief guide to the Texas U-turn, since I did six of them this morning:

1. You drive down the frontage road past where you meant to go.
2. You get into the far-left lane, which may or may not exist.
3. You swing under the highway and come back up the frontage road on the other side.
4. You discover that side has also been closed.
5. You sit with that.

The Texas U-turn used to be our one piece of genuine traffic genius, a little loop of civic grace. Now half the underpasses are blocked by barriers, so the U-turn has become more of a philosophical position than a maneuver. You can believe in it. You can't always execute it.

Near Riverside a man in a hard hat was waving traffic through with a sign that said SLOW on one side and STOP on the other. He was the most reliable piece of infrastructure I saw all week, and he had a cooler and a folding chair. Every time the barrier configuration in this corridor changes, which seems to happen nightly, somewhere in this town a guy like him gets handed a fresh paddle and a fresh place to stand. Those are the people actually holding the project together. TxDOT has the renderings. The flaggers have the road.

Made it in 52 minutes. I had a breakfast taco on my lap the whole time and it got cold. The guide does not have a step for that.

Friday, 7:15 a.m.

I left twenty-six minutes early, which in Austin terms means I left the night before.

I pulled up the official project page at a red light. I will not say which red light, out of respect for the officers of the law. The page has the usual vocabulary. There are improvements, mobility, enhanced connectivity, and a map with colored segments, each color meaning a phase, each phase lasting roughly the length of a dog's life. It was a good page. It had the calm of a document written by people who do not take the Stassney exit at 7:50 on a weekday.

The renderings are what get me. In every one, the future I-35 sits under a sky the color of a pool float. The cap park is full of people in linen. Somebody is walking a golden retriever across a lawn that sits directly above eight lanes of eighteen-wheelers. There is a cyclist. There are no barrels. You never see a single orange barrel in a highway rendering, which tells you everything about the relationship between renderings and the present tense.

I counted barrels on the drive home. I stopped at 300, somewhere around Woodland, when I realized I'd been doing it out loud.

Made it in 47 minutes.

Weekly totals

Five mornings, 223 minutes total, against an imaginary baseline of 90. That leaves 133 minutes donated to the future of Central Texas mobility. That's two hours and thirteen minutes I will never get back, and I was given no receipt and no tote bag. Nobody even asked for my email to keep me updated on enhanced connectivity.

This is going to be a long series. The highway is due to be finished in the early 2030s. Last night, out of curiosity, I tried to figure out how old my car will be by then.

The car thinks it's going to make it. The car hasn't been told.