Austin's long-awaited "wishbone" pedestrian bridge opens Saturday at the eastern end of Lady Bird Lake, completing the biggest gap in the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail.
For the first time since Longhorn Shores was developed in the mid-1970s, people will be able to move along this edge of the lake without being routed next to fast-moving cars and trucks.
The $25 million bridge was mostly funded by voter-approved debt authorized in the 2020 bond election. But the project wound up costing more than expected, so U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, secured more than $4 million in federal funding, allowing construction to kick off in July 2024.
Casar will speak at a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled for Saturday at 10 a.m. He'll be joined by Mayor Kirk Watson, among other elected officials. The city says the grand opening will include food trucks and live music.
People on the Butler Trail have had to detour to the Pleasant Valley Road bridge to cross the water. The city started widening the bridge's notoriously slim sidewalks in 2021. But now trail users will have a dedicated car-free crossing that treats the eastern end of the lake as an integral part of Austin's most popular trail.
"It looks simple but it was quite complicated," said Laurie Thering, the city's project manager on the bridge. "It was just fun to do something for the community."
At the heart of the new bridge is a 65-foot-wide central plaza, designed to be both a gathering place and a scenic overlook. The plaza will have shade created by trumpet creeper, a native vine that will grow through trellises wrapped around poles into overhead frames that will support the plant. It could take up to two years for the vine to fully cover the trellises.
The plaza has art benches made from Austin-area trees that would otherwise have been chipped or burned. Fourteen benches have been installed and more are planned.
The company that did the work behind this is no stranger to building pedestrian infrastructure along Lady Bird Lake. Dripping Springs-based Jay-Reese Contractors built the Butler Trail Boardwalk, the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, the 2nd Street Bridge over Shoal Creek and the Confluence at the end of the Waterloo Greenway, set to open June 6.
"It's kind of a blessing [to work on the bridge]," said Bryce Burgess, a superintendent with the contractor. "I have the coolest office in town. ... Definitely something I will use once the fences come down."
The city will own the wishbone bridge, but it will be maintained by the Trail Conservancy, a privately funded nonprofit that has a long-term agreement to operate and maintain the Butler Trail.
A new tunnel under Pleasant Valley Road
South of the bridge, a new 160-foot-long tunnel was constructed under Pleasant Valley Road to replace a dimly lit, 6-foot-wide passageway made from a box culvert. The old tunnel would often flood when it rained.
The new 30-foot-wide arched underpass includes better drainage, recessed lighting and a mosaic tile mural along the tunnel walls. The artwork is titled "Absolute Equality: Unity Tunnel."
On Tuesday morning, a team of people were carefully lifting completed tile mosaics from a truck into the tunnel to be installed.
"It's been two years in the making, and in the next four days, we're going to bring it together," said Reginald Adams, the Houston artist selected to design and install the artwork.
Adams held several public workshops inviting people to create tiles by making impressions of their handprints. More than 200 of those tiles will adorn the outer end of each side of the tunnel.
"That will be the welcome into the tunnel," he said. "As people come in and out of the tunnel, they'll be able to see their contribution to this public art installation."
The unlikely origins of the wishbone design
The three-legged pedestrian bridge is unusual for its shape. Most bridges are designed to connect one place to another. Transportation engineers generally avoid three-way crossings because they're more complex and costly to build.
But the bridge is also unusual for how it came to be. The design was not among the initial options considered by city engineers and consultants. Thirteen people wrote in the suggestion at a public meeting in November 2018, according to a preliminary engineering report.
City staff took the suggestion seriously enough to study it. Planners added the wishbone concept to their slate of possible alternatives. The competing options proposed more conventional designs, including expanding the existing Pleasant Valley Road bridge to allow for wider sidewalks on both sides.
When engineers evaluated the options, the wishbone bridge offered clear advantages. The three-pronged design provided the most convenient connections to Holly Shores, Longhorn Shores and the unnamed peninsula. The bridge reduced steep climbs and allowed for wider paths. And it had less impact on water levels in a location designed by FEMA as a special flood hazard area.
The wishbone bridge concept also proved to be the most popular choice among Austinites. In a series of public meetings, the design received more support than any competing alternative.
"It's not a common kind of construction, but its problem is also not common," said Al Godfrey, an architect who helped design the boardwalk along the Butler Trail that opened in 2014. "So the fact that it would take this form makes perfect sense."
Godfrey believes the structure will fundamentally change how people experience the eastern end of the Butler Trail.
"This bridge will be transformative. It will be a spectacular enhancement to the trail," Godfrey said. "Many will regard the bridge as having completed the trail, and in a sense, it's true."
