In recent months, visitors to downtown Austin's most famous street might have noticed cones, construction barriers, dust and noise as the city works to transform Congress Avenue into a more people-centric corridor.
When all is said and done, Congress is expected to have a fresh look with more space to mingle from Cesar Chavez Street to Seventh Street.
The Congress Avenue Urban Design Initiative, or CAUDI, will add protected bike lanes, trees, planters and wider sidewalks with "programmable storefront activation zones" that provide room for outdoor café seating, merchandise displays and other pedestrian amenities - without removing any driving lanes.
Here's a quick look at the project and what drivers can expect.
City of Austin crews are building the project block by block, working their way northward. Work on each block starts at one corner and progresses in phases until the entire block is done.
Work started on the block between Cesar Chavez Street and Second Street, which is already mostly done, except for a few final touches such as landscaping. As of Wednesday, crews were working on the west side of the 200 block, between Second and Third streets.
Construction on that block is set to end this month. Then crews will move to the west side of the 300 block, according to the city's project website.
CONSTRUCTION TRACKER: See status of major area highway and road projects
Austin broke ground on the project in January and construction is expected to wrap up by summer 2027. Each block is expected to take about three months to complete, with each section taking two or three weeks.
The city said construction could be delayed because of special events or "unforeseen circumstances."
During construction, crews will periodically close lanes and set up short-term detours but officials don't expect to completely close Congress Avenue at any point. If a block needs to be fully closed, officials said, crews will complete work at night on less-busy evenings.
In order to widen the sidewalks and install protected bike lanes while keeping driving lanes intact, the project will sacrifice some on-street parking throughout the corridor.
Thirty-seven angled parking spots along Congress Avenue will be removed. A few accessible parking spaces and two parallel parking pockets will remain. The removed spaces account for a negligible percentage of total downtown parking, the city said. Downtown has 49,000 parking spots that are available to the public for at least part of the day, according to a 2018 city study.
This phase of the project is fully funded and expected to cost about $13 million. The funding comes from the city's 2020 mobility bond, a $460 million package supported at the time by two-thirds of Austin voters.
The 2020 bond also included funding for sidewalks, urban trails, bike lanes, safety improvements and other transportation projects.
The initiative is broken into two phases. Phase one consists of the portion of Congress currently under construction from Cesar Chavez Street to Seventh Street. A future second phase would convert the remainder of the corridor, from Seventh to 11th streets, into a pedestrian plaza, closing the street to vehicle traffic. The city has not yet announced a timeline or funding for that phase.
Other future conceptual plans call for updates to the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge and a redesign of South Congress Avenue between Riverside Drive and Lady Bird Lake.
The former could replace concrete sidewalks with lighter decking and add protected bike lanes, shade structures and better lighting. The latter could also add protected bike lanes and improve the Barton Springs Road intersection.
Neither of those phases is funded yet. The total expected cost for all phases, including the ongoing work and future plans, is about $130 million.
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This article originally published at Austin is redesigning Congress Avenue. Here's what's happening now, and what's to come.