Drive Mesa Drive this month from Randalls at Mesa Village down to the Far West H-E-B on Village Center Drive and the street looks different. Each travel lane used to be 16 feet wide and is now 11 to 12 feet. Bike lanes with painted buffers run along both sides, and on-street parking is on the east side only.
According to the City of Austin's Mesa Drive project page, the parts of the new street you notice most were required by city code once the pavement was redone. Two rounds of community feedback in 2026 decided a shorter list of details, and those details are the ones you meet on foot.
Mesa Drive between Spicewood Springs Road and Far West Boulevard was resurfaced in July and August 2026. The city's page explains that resurfacing strips off the old pavement markings and puts down new ones that meet current safety and engineering standards. This stretch was last resurfaced about 20 years ago, and the standards have changed since then.
So the timing of the redesign came from the asphalt, and the city sorts the resulting changes into two groups.
Required to meet the City Transportation Criteria Manual:
Added for long-term safety and mobility, and shaped by feedback:
The first group explains why the drive feels tighter and why parking has moved. Since those changes are tied to the criteria manual, survey responses had little room to change them. The second group is where the community conversation had an effect.
The city ran two phases of engagement in spring and summer 2026. In Phase 1, 64% of survey respondents had at least one concern about the street and 20 to 25% had none. Excessive speeding was the top concern for nearly 40% of respondents.
Phase 2 asked people to react to an actual proposed design, and support was low. By the city's own count, 31% supported the proposal and 65% did not.
The city didn't pull the project after that result. It made two specific changes:
Both changes affect how the street looks at eye level. Half the planned crossing islands are gone, and the bike lanes aren't lined with posts end to end. Lane width and parking placement didn't change, because they were never part of the negotiable list.
The city's published summary doesn't say how many Phase 2 opponents objected to parking or to lane width in particular, as opposed to the crossings or posts. Anyone who wants to read the full feedback can find the Phase 1 and Phase 2 summaries linked from the project page.
Alongside the resurfacing schedule, the city's page lays out safety and usage data for this segment.
| Measure | Figure | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Citywide speed management ranking | 12th of 878 streets evaluated | 2025 review |
| Drivers above the speed limit | About 50% | Data collected in 2026 |
| Crashes on this segment | More than 125 | 2016 through 2025 |
| Daily pedestrians | Approximately 250 to 475 | City estimate |
| Daily cyclists | Approximately 150 to 250 | City estimate |
The ranking is based on measured speeds, traffic volumes and crash history, so it isn't a single bad year. The speeding figure also matches what residents raised in Phase 1, where speeding came up more than any other concern. The city's design responds to that point of agreement, even though the specific proposal shown in Phase 2 didn't win majority support.
The foot and bike counts help explain the crossing debate. A few hundred people walk this stretch on a typical day, so every crossing island matters to some of them, and the 70 comments asking for fewer islands reflect a real tradeoff. Four islands is where the city came down.
Mesa Drive meets Spicewood Springs Road at Mesa Village. Randalls is at 8040 Mesa Drive, Another Broken Egg Cafe is next door at 8012 Mesa Drive, and Twin Liquors is at 8030 Mesa Drive. The Mesa Drive redesign includes safety work at this intersection, and the city's page says roadwork there and along Mesa will continue throughout September and October, with temporary traffic impacts.
This corner is also the eastern end of a separate and much bigger project. The Spicewood Springs Road regional mobility project covers Spicewood Springs from Loop 360 to Mesa Drive, with $31 million from the 2016 Mobility Bond. Construction started in December 2023.
Its schedule has moved. In an August 11, 2026 update, the city said weather delays in spring and early summer had pushed substantial completion to summer 2027. Community Impact reported on September 15 that the earlier target had been late 2026. Starting in September, crews were scheduled to build shared-use paths on both sides of Spicewood Springs Road, with rain-garden work and travel-lane paving continuing through fall 2026.
On Spicewood Springs, the city lists work hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends. That means a Saturday morning trip to the Mesa Village grocery may run into active crews, while a weekday trip before 9 a.m. should fall outside the posted window. Community Impact's September update gave no specific lane-closure dates near Mesa, so the posted hours are the most reliable guide for now.
A third city project sits on the same corridor. Bull Creek Bluff Neighborhood Park at 6309 Spicewood Springs Road is planned to get a small ADA-accessible parking area, a pavilion, a rain garden, bike racks and a new entrance aligned with Yaupon Drive. The city's timeline listed permitting for summer 2026, construction in summer 2027 and opening in winter 2027.
If those dates hold, park construction would start around the same time the Spicewood Springs road work is scheduled to finish. Taken together, the three projects make up one sequence along this corridor. Mesa's restriping wraps up this fall, the Spicewood Springs paths and paving follow into 2027, and the park's new entrance and pavilion come after that.
As of mid-October, the city still lists Mesa Drive as under active construction and hasn't posted a completion notice for the striping. The city's posted work window covers the full segment, including the Spicewood Springs intersection, down to Far West Boulevard, where the Far West H-E-B at 7025 Village Center Drive sits at the other end. Questions about the schedule go to the city's mobility bond team at 512-974-2300 or [email protected].
This year's process cut the crossings from eight to four and limited the flexible posts, while lane width and parking placement followed the City Transportation Criteria Manual.
Road projects like Mesa Drive and Spicewood Springs change the daily routes around a home, and those changes are part of how Anna Lee follows Northwest Hills street by street. If you'd like to talk through how corridor work like this fits your own plans, schedule a private consultation.
3825 Lake Austin Blvd Ste 501 Austin TX 78703
3825 Lake Austin Blvd Ste 501 Austin TX 78703
