A major road project on the brink of charging through Austin will resonate in more ways than one.
Construction is set to begin next year on the $4.5 billion plan to expand I-35 from U.S. 290 East to Ben White Boulevard. TxDOT is planning to install 10 permanent noise barriers.a final bureaucratic hurdle, the city can expect the project to resonate in more ways than one.
The overnight hours could be especially irritating. TxDOT prefers to do construction at night because daytime road closures cause traffic jams. Local noise rules would prohibit that overnight clanging, but the city's sound ordinances don't apply to I-35, because it's owned by the state. But the nearby highway is growing, too. Volunteers are worried about the environmental impacts, including construction dust settling on plants people eat, stormwater runoff and increased traffic noise.
"I'm personally conflicted about it," said Angie Holliday, a longtime volunteer with the Festival Beach Food Forest who works for the related nonprofit"We have concerns about the aesthetics. We'd love to have murals, like local art up there to make it enjoyable to be here," she said. Noise barriers have become a common site along highways, railways and other busy thoroughfares. States are collectively building about 120 miles of noise barriers per year at a cost of more than $300 million, according to the latest data from the Federal Highway Administration.
A few houses down the street, Robin Gann said she's started sleeping in the bedroom farthest away from MoPac because of the noise. "It does reduce pollution say about [500 feet] from the freeway," said Akula Venkatram, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California Riverside."All it does is reduce the high concentration. It doesn't get rid of the air pollution.""The reduction in air pollution might be more than compensated by the increase in emissions," he said.
Here's the full list of noise barriers TxDOT is planning to build. In some cases, the barriers are broken into parts so they're not blocking streets or sidewalks. AMLI Eastside Apartments: A 207-foot long and 20-foot tall noise barrier on the east side of I-35 between Ninth and 10th streets
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