Regional EPA grant will go toward mitigating I-35 construction traffic and pollution

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $47.9 million grant to a coalition of transportation organizations in the Austin region that could go toward mitigating the worst environmental effects of Interstate 35’s inevitable expansion. The city of Austin will lead implementation of this Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG), as both I-35 and Project Connect’s light-rail construction will majorly disrupt the city’s traffic over the next decade or so as people struggle to get around the construction, thus increasing air pollution. In an attempt to dampen that spike, the city has a three-pronged strategy: Improve regional transit service, invest in mobility infrastructure and “inspire behavior change,” as a city press release puts it. 

This grant has been in the works for more than a year – a spokesperson with the Office of Sustainability told the Austin Monitor that this funding is “directly related” to the Austin metropolitan statistical Area’s Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP), an intercounty, interagency collaboration released in 2023 which was the first step to becoming eligible for EPA funding.

“The Office of Sustainability worked closely with the Transportation and Public Works Department and other project partners to ensure that the grant application and the PCAP were as closely aligned as possible,” they said. One of the six priority greenhouse gas reduction efforts identified in the plan was to “implement transportation demand management programs,” which led to the three strategies outlined in this current plan. A second, more comprehensive document with more mitigation measures will be published in 2025. Meanwhile, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization is also currently developing a Regional Mobile Emission Reduction Plan, funded by the Federal Highway Administration.

Improving regional transit service means expanding Capital Area Rural Transportation Service to provide more frequent service on its interurban coach, as well as vanpool to suburban places like San Marcos, Bastrop and Taylor. It also means increasing CapMetro’s frequency of service in north/south routes adjacent to construction, as well as adding smaller-scale shuttles to operate immediately within construction areas. The city will also add “mobility hubs” at key transition points where there’s a dearth of resources, which will include carpooling, biking and other non-single-occupant-vehicle choices. Those hubs will also expand access to bikeshare and more bicycle storage, and they’ll sport air-quality monitors to collect data to help determine where interventions are most needed. The third strategy is the most tricky but intriguing: In order to encourage people to stop driving alone, the city plans to provide financial incentives to low-income transit users and “limited payments” to encourage new users, as well as update their web presence to include live customer services and chat support, plus make new investments in marketing outreach. 

In the city press release, Mayor Kirk Watson said he hopes the grant will “make our transition a little easier and more pleasant for our residents with timely traveler information while also promoting adoption of transit, carpooling, and active transportation, leading to long-lasting impacts on congestion and achieving our mobility and pollution reduction goals.”

Though these measures will help, one of the best ways to mitigate I-35’s pollution is to build caps and stitches over the highway itself. Unfortunately, the Texas Department of Transportation refuses to pay for those – they’ll cost an estimated $800 million – and the city has to find its own funding by the end of this year. Thus, federal funds will be instrumental. U.S. Rep. Lloyed Doggett has already helped secure $105 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program. Those funds will be used to construct a 5.3-acre cap over I-35 between Cesar Chavez and Fourth streets, and City Council will put up a $45 million local match and coordinate with TxDOT on the engineering and design of the cap. Still, more cap funding is needed – and the Austin Transportation and Public Works Department told the Monitor that this EPA grant will not go toward that.

This story has been changed since publication to clarify that the air-quality monitors will collect data, but will not be able to determine how much pollution is caused by construction.

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