"Because this section of Mesa Drive was last resurfaced about 20 years ago, the City's standards have changed, requiring updates to the street design." That sentence on the City of Austin's Mesa Drive project page explains most of what drivers between Spicewood Springs Road and Far West Boulevard have seen since summer.
Mesa Drive was resurfaced in July and August 2026. When the city repaves a street, it removes the old pavement markings and puts down new ones that meet current safety and engineering standards. The standards had changed a lot in two decades, so the new lane lines came out of the maintenance cycle, and the paving schedule set the timing.
A few blocks away, the bond-funded rebuild of Spicewood Springs Road is running on a much longer schedule. Both projects meet at one intersection, the corner of Mesa and Spicewood Springs by Randalls.
What the repaving required
The city's page splits the Mesa changes into two groups. That split matters, because only one of them was ever really up for debate.
Changes needed to meet current city standards:
- Travel lanes go from 16 feet wide to 11 to 12 feet, as the City Transportation Criteria Manual requires.
- On-street parking moves to the east side of Mesa only and is kept separate from the bike lane, because the same manual gives parking and biking separate spaces.
Changes the city added for long-term safety and mobility:
- Four new pedestrian crossing islands
- Bike lanes with painted buffers on both sides of the street
- Asphalt speed cushions in place of the old rubber ones
- Safety improvements at the Spicewood Springs Road and Mesa Drive intersection
Narrowing 16-foot lanes leaves several feet of pavement on each side. That freed-up width is where the buffered bike lanes and the separated east-side parking now go. With one travel lane each way, the street now has a fixed layout where it once had wide, loosely used lanes.
The numbers behind the new layout
The city's case for the added changes rests on its own measurements. In the city's 2025 speed-management review, this stretch of Mesa ranked 12th out of 878 streets citywide, based on measured speeds, traffic volumes and crash history. Data the city collected in 2026 showed about half of drivers on Mesa going over the speed limit. The city's Vision Zero program counted more than 125 crashes on the segment between 2016 and 2025.
The city also says roughly 250 to 475 pedestrians and 150 to 250 cyclists use this part of Mesa every day. Before this summer, those people shared a street built around two 16-foot lanes, with parking and biking mixed together at the curb.
Residents raised speed themselves. In the first round of public engagement in spring and summer 2026, 64% of survey respondents named at least one concern about the street, and nearly 40% listed excessive speeding as their top one. Between 20% and 25% said they had no concerns.
What the survey changed
The second round of engagement asked people to react to a proposed design, and the response was mostly negative. According to the city, 31% supported the proposal and 65% did not.
The city went ahead with a final design anyway. That fits the split above. Lane widths and parking placement were set by standards that apply whenever a street is restriped, so the feedback mostly shaped the added items. The proposal had included eight new pedestrian crossings. Survey participants supported those crossings two to one, but the city received about 70 comments saying there were too many. The final design has four. The city also cut back on vertical bike-lane protection such as flexible posts. Those will go only at speed cushions and pedestrian crossings.
So the design residents drive this fall is a compromise. The street got narrower lanes and dedicated bike space because the paving cycle required it, and it has fewer islands and posts because people objected.
The city's page lists the project status as active construction. It told residents to expect roadwork on Mesa between Spicewood Springs and Far West, including at the Spicewood Springs intersection, throughout September and October, and it says the schedule is subject to change. By late October, that window has little more than a week left. Some striping, islands or intersection work may still be underway into November. Questions go to the city's mobility bond office at 512-974-2300 or [email protected].
Spicewood Springs runs on bond money and a longer calendar
The other project at the corner works very differently. The Spicewood Springs Road Regional Mobility Project covers Loop 360 to Mesa Drive and costs $31 million, funded by the city's 2016 Mobility Bond. Construction began in December 2023. It widens a two-lane road to four lanes with left-turn bays. It also adds two water detention ponds and shared-use paths for pedestrians and cyclists, and it improves the storm drain system along with water transmission and wastewater lines.
The city's latest update, dated August 11, 2026, says weather delays through the spring and summer pushed substantial completion from late 2026 to summer 2027. Work on shared-use paths along both sides of the road was set to start in September, with rain gardens and travel-lane paving continuing through the fall. Community Impact's Northwest Austin edition reported the same timeline in mid-September, and its October 12 transportation roundup repeated it with no newer project date.
Posted work hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends. Under that schedule, weekend mornings and evenings are when crews may be working, and weekday rush hours fall outside work hours.
| Mesa Drive | Spicewood Springs Road | |
|---|---|---|
| Segment | Spicewood Springs Rd to Far West Blvd | Loop 360 to Mesa Dr |
| What set it in motion | Resurfacing, last done about 20 years earlier | 2016 Mobility Bond |
| Scope | Restriping to current standards plus crossings, bike lanes, speed cushions | Widening to four lanes, paths, detention ponds, utility lines |
| Construction began | Resurfacing in July 2026 | December 2023 |
| Expected finish | Roadwork expected through October 2026 | Substantial completion in summer 2027, per the city's Aug. 11, 2026 update |
| Cost | Not listed on the project page | $31 million |
The smaller, maintenance-driven project went from paving to new lane lines in a single season. The bond project, now in its third year, has about another nine months of work ahead.
The corner where both schedules meet
Both projects end at the Mesa and Spicewood Springs intersection, and several of the area's everyday stops sit right there. The Randalls at 8040 Mesa Drive is at that corner. Another Broken Egg Cafe is next door at 8012 Mesa Drive. Westover Hills Church is a short way up the redesigned stretch at 8332 Mesa Drive. Bull Creek Bluff Neighborhood Park, listed in the Austin Parks and Recreation directory at 6309 Spicewood Springs Road, is near the same end.
At the south end of the Mesa segment, the Far West H-E-B at 7025 Village Center Drive is the main draw near Far West Boulevard. A walk or bike ride from the Randalls corner to the Far West end now has dedicated bike lanes on both sides and four marked crossing islands along the way. Spicewood Springs Road has to wait until its shared-use paths are finished before it has anything similar.
Two more neighborhood dates fall within the same few blocks of local errands:
- Saturday, Oct. 24, 10 a.m. to noon. Northwest Hills United Methodist Church is holding a free community shredding event for documents and hard drives in its parking lot.
- Allday Pizza at 3720 FM 2222, no opening date yet. The restaurant plans to move into the former Reid's Dry Cleaners building near Dry Creek Drive with indoor and outdoor seating, a full bar, and a mix of counter and table service. In April, the Austin American-Statesman reported that the owner said it probably would not open until the following year. As of mid-October, Allday's website lists only its Tarrytown and Hyde Park locations.
For the next several months, the Mesa side of the intersection should be in its final layout while the Spicewood Springs side is still under construction, with paving and rain-garden work this fall and a finish date of summer 2027.
When a street change like this affects how a home feels day to day, Travis Real Estate follows the details closely, from the lane lines on Mesa to the Spicewood Springs timeline. If you'd like to talk through what these projects mean for your Northwest Hills property, Contact Us.
