After nearly 30 years, the MoPac Expressway intersections at Slaughter Lane and La Crosse Avenue in southwest Austin were in desperate need of an update. They were built in 1992, and since then the city’s population has nearly doubled, as has the traffic that travels MoPac daily. An estimated 21,000 cars traversed MoPac every day in 2010, and that figure is projected to reach 66,700 by 2030.
“The project was needed because there’s not enough capacity, and so there were major backups in peak hours,” explains Bob Austin, vice president with Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam Inc. (LAN), design engineer on the project.