Soil Shifts Lead to Speed Bumps on 85 mph Highway in Central Texas

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Some speed bumps have surfaced on America’s fastest highway, prompting suggestions that drivers along stretches of Central Texas’ 85 mph toll road might want to ease back to a pokey 75 mph.

About two years after it opened, orange signs have gone up on southern sections of Texas Highway 130 southeast of Austin recommending drivers slow down a bit to accommodate pavement problems caused movement of clay soil beneath the road bed. The bumps create a rumbling washboard effect that lasts several seconds for motorists.

The chief operating officer for the SH 130 Concession Co., Matt Pierce, told the Austin American-Statesman about $2.2 million in repairs are underway and are about 50 percent complete.

“With any construction project, especially one that’s built on the types of soils that exist here, anyone who builds anticipates some (pavement) movement from time to time,” he said. “The contractors did a good job dealing with the extreme drought they were building in.”

The company, a partnership involving Spanish toll road company Cintra and San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., is responsible for the southern 41-mile stretch of the 90-mile-highway between Georgetown, north of Austin, to Seguin, east of San Antonio. It’s operating under a 50-year lease with the Texas Department of Transportation, which built and handles the northern half of the highway.

Pierce said the clay soil is being treated with lime in some spots to limit the shrinking when it’s dry and expansion when it gets wet. Then the road surface gets a new layer of asphalt.

The 49-mile state-constructed road section fully opened in 2008. The southern stretch by the private firm was finished in 2012, accompanied by fanfare about its speed limit.

The toll road traffic failed to meet early expectations and the company has run into financial problems meeting payments on its $1.18 billion construction debt. Pierce said negotiations are continuing to refinance the debt.

He added that toll traffic in 2014 improved by 16 percent to almost 6 million, or about 16,400 per day. Truck transactions were up 34 percent.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” he said.