After 5 years of construction, there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. For those of you that have to brave the I-35 / Ben White interchange, it’s been a long time coming. If the rumors are correct, it was a lot longer than it should’ve been.
We live very close to the intersection and have been intimately familiar with its metamorphosis from a somewhat rural highway to one of the concrete monstrosities that are all too familiar in Texas. We’ve dealt with the extra traffic on northbound Burleson and the loss of quick crossovers into our neighborhood, forcing a wait at the Burleson stoplight. It’ll all have been worth it in a few months (I hope). I’m certainly not going to miss the lights heading east or westbound on Ben White.
There’s still a little pain to endure before it’s completed this summer. We’ll be avoiding the intersection like the plague for the next month or so. The Statesman has a story today on some of the last growing pains and KXAN has a little history and future from earlier this month. I suspect that all of the rain we’ve had lately has pushed the estimates from that story back another month. I’m now wishing I had taken more pictures over the last 5 years, because the area looks dramatically different.
A bittersweet step away from the Austin that I fell in love with 16 years ago.
One Response to “Light at the end of Ben White”
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The worst thing about the article in the local daily was that it gave away the St. Elmo work-around. Now, what was a relatively peaceful and relatively unused byway has been pointed out to readers of the AA-S. And all the road-building seems to redound purely to the benefit of those who live, shall we say, Way Out. Once Austin’s been entirely paved over and there’s nothing left downtown but hotels and the convention center, somebody will be happy, but not I.