New tollway:
Fluor-Balfour Beatty team is chosen to build 6-lane Bergstrom Expressway for $581 million.
Toll agency accepts U.S. 183 toll road design and construction bid.
The expansion and transformation of U.S. 183 in East Austin into a tollway, first proposed in 2004, took a key step forward Wednesday when the Central Texas Regional Mo- bility Authority board accepted a $581 million bid to design and construct the 8-mile-long project.
The authority plans to build a six-lane tollway on top of the existing four-lane highway from near Springdale Road south to near Texas 71 at Aus- tin-Bergstrom International Airport. The project will include four to six frontage lanes that would have traffic lights at the same intersections that now have traffic signals. Construction of the project, which the authority has dubbed the Bergstrom Expressway, is expected to begin early next year and last until late 2020.
The project would elimi- nate, for those willing to pay, several traffic lights and make it possible for a driver to travel more than 30 miles from Leander to the airport on U.S. 183 and Texas 71 expressway lanes, both tolled and free.
A first phase of the tollway, from Springdale Road to Bolm Road, is projected to open in 2019. The southern section,
including new bridges over the Colorado River, will take about a year longer to complete.
The board unanimously chose a group led by Fluor Corp. and Balfour Beatty Construction over two competitors, including one led by Spanish tollway builder Ferrovial Agroman that had submitted a bid $116 million lower at $485 million. But Ferrovial also estimated the project would take about half a year longer than the four-plus years estimated by the Fluor group. And a mobility authority team that examined the bidders’ experience and suggested approaches to building the road gave Ferrovial a much lower grade.
The project’s cost — taking into account added expenses for engineering oversight, toll financing, right-ofway purchases and bond financing — will be about $750 million, mobility authority officials said. The Texas Department of Transportation several years ago allocated a $146 million grant to the project, and it has since promised a $60 million loan as well. The balance of the needed money would come from a federal transportation loan that the authority hopes to land and from a bond sale to private investors in September.