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Residents frustrated by Pearce Lane closure
Neighbors in the Los Cielos neighborhood in Del Valle are upset because of a road closure they believe is for no apparent reason. They said it's causing commercial traffic to speed through their residential streets
DEL VALLE, Texas - Residents in the Los Cielos neighborhood are upset because of a closure on Pearce Lane they believe is for no apparent reason.
They say it's causing commercial traffic to speed through residential streets, and with Formula 1 coming up, it'll be even worse.
What is the Ross Road Construction Project?
The backstory:
The closure is because of the Ross Road Construction Project, which will add lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks, and have drainage improvements.
The project started in the summer of 2025 and is about 50 percent done. It's expected to wrap in early 2028. The funding for it came from the 2020 Mobility Bond.
Neighborhood voices frustration over road closure
What they're saying:
Residents in the Los Cielos neighborhood say the closure is making their neighborhood streets unsafe.
"We've had to deal with lots of traffic. 18-wheelers cutting through the neighborhood. People running stop signs. Basically, people wrecking into cars and not stopping in the neighborhood," resident Louis Mendez said.
"Where I live at, Alamor and Pearce, they just run that stop sign all day. I actually got hit by a car about two weeks ago," resident Johnny Ardoin said. "On the side of my house, I see about three wrecks per week."
Trish Burton, the HOA board president, says it takes her 30–45 minutes to get out of the neighborhood to go to work.
"It affects all of our community, not just a few people that use that entrance and exit, so we're having a lot of broken mirrors, a lot of wrecks, a lot of parking where it's not supposed to be because both sides of the road are posted, no parking either side," she said.
More traffic in the neighborhood also means less business for the Bread Basket Convenience Store, which is right by the closed section of Pearce lane. The manager, Marwan Omar, says drivers carelessly turn around in the gas station, and he's lost 60 percent of business because of the road closure.
"The traffic's way too heavy and it causes a lot of problems, and it's been chaos lately," Omar said. "We're not going to see a lot of traffic this year, and we'll lose a lot of money too. I mean, we're making a lot of cuts business-wise."
City of Austin responds to frustrations
The other side:
Many cars end up parking in the grass. The city says the "no parking" areas are so buses can get through.
The City of Austin says Pearce Lane is blocked off because they're waiting for a developer to work on a water line.
"We have to be done for them to come in and that transition is happening right now. But during the transition, the whole project team and the developer didn't want to pick up the traffic barricades for a couple of weeks and then put them back. We feel like that might have been even more disruptive to the residents. So it looks like nothing's happening, but stuff is happening in the background," Thuan Nguyen, division manager of Capital Delivery Services with the City of Austin, said.
The barricades could still be up for months.
"The developer's schedule timeline is roughly three to four months, so the hope is that we will open this intersection up as soon as they're done with their work," Nguyen said.
The city says the detour signs in the neighborhood are for residents, and commercial traffic should be following the signs and take a detour around the neighborhood that takes them on Elroy.
"Now I notice that some of them probably could be better placed and, so we will revisit that," Nguyen said.
Mendez says he's called 911 and 311 before about people speeding through the residential streets, but nothing changes because the cars go by so fast.
"I think we could visit the project team and see if we can make some of the 311 calls for the residents. We know about them, but I do know that 311 is the best way to get on the official radar of APD and other entities in the City of Austin," Nguyen said.
Dig deeper:
With Formula 1 coming up and kids trick-or-treating on Halloween, residents are worried the traffic will be even worse.
"Just open up Pearce Lane is all you got to do to ease the traffic through our neighborhood, for the kids' safety, for our safety," Mendez said.
"We're not really part of that primary access to COTA. Now we understand people might try to detour through the project area. We are in conversations with that developer to see if we can partially open up this intersection," Nguyen said. "We're having conversations now to maybe they can start further east on Pearce Lane. That way, we allow the intersection to open and just close part of the road for their work. Then, after F1, they can close the intersection, so we are in conversations to help alleviate that."
The city also says when the project is done, it'll be an improvement.
"We understand the frustration right now because the construction is going on, but when we're done, the community will get more reliable water service, better storm drainage system, and just an overall multimodal and safer streets," Nguyen said.
The Source: Information from Thuan Nguyen, division manager of Capital Delivery Services with the City of Austin, interviews with residents in the Los Cielos neighborhood and reporting by FOX 7 Austin's Angela Shen