State Highway 45 Southwest (45SW) Toll was a project nearly 35 years in the making. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority leveraged community support and extensive stakeholder collaboration to envision and finally build this multimodal connection. The project includes a holistic trail experience that will captivate, educate, and improve users’ quality of life for generations to come.
On the border of Hays and Travis county, 45SW connects communities to the south to Austin’s city center. Accompanying the roadway, the 45SW Trail is a continuous 4.5-mile shared use path that provides a multimodal travel option for the community. The 45SW Trail features two trailheads and will connect with the Violet Crown Trail, an eventual 30-mile regional trail system. While 45SW provides much needed congestion relief, it faced significant opposition due to its location within the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone.
Featuring about a dozen illustrative signs to educate users on the region’s history, geography, and inhabitants, the 45SW Trail places special emphasis on the Edwards Aquifer’s vital role in providing clean drinking water. The Mobility Authority will launch a trail app featuring an audio guide in English and Spanish and interactive augmented reality animations.
This session will explain how meaningful stakeholder collaboration and partnerships ultimately created the path forward for 45SW, and how the trail uses innovative storytelling to educate the public on the same issue that almost halted the project – protecting the water entering the aquifer.
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize the tactics used by the agency to diffuse opposition and create advocates.
- Describe how stakeholder involvement/insight elevated the 45SW Trail experience.
- Recognize how technology can be used to further a project’s goals and reach diverse audiences.
Attendees should be able to identify and discuss how they could use the tactics shared in stakeholder collaboration and innovative storytelling on 45SW on future projects to resolve opposition, educate the community, and reach diverse audiences.
