After nearly five years of construction, the first toll lanes on the 183 North project are set to open Friday morning, expanding Austin’s use of highway tolls that get more expensive as traffic gets worse.
Under the system, which is already in place on the MoPac Express Lanes, toll prices change every five minutes, rising during busy times until enough drivers opt out to keep traffic moving at least 45 miles an hour. When traffic eases, prices fall.
By directly linking U.S. 183 North to the MoPac Express Lanes, transportation officials expect more drivers to flow into MoPac’s toll lanes, which could push prices there even higher.
The 183 North Mobility Project adds two toll lanes in each direction along a nine-mile stretch of U.S. 183 between MoPac and State Highway 45 North. A fourth non-tolled lane opened in 2024. The project also includes sidewalks along both sides of the highway and some improved crossings for cyclists.
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority says drivers will gain access to the two northbound lanes Friday morning. A few weeks later, a flyover ramp is set to open connecting the MoPac toll lanes to the northbound 183 toll lanes.
The southbound toll lanes and a flyover tying them into MoPac are expected to be open “in the coming months,” according to mobility authority spokesperson Jori Liu.
The contractor’s schedule shows the project will be mostly complete by the end of March, the CTRMA’s top engineer Mike Sexton told board members in December.
“We’re opening it staggered,” Sexton said. “Gives us an opportunity to see how everything’s going to work and makes it a little bit easier on the public that not everything’s opening at one time and everybody’s trying to figure it out.”
Once complete, the $612 million project will link two existing tollways, 183A and the MoPac Express Lanes, allowing drivers to travel on tolled lanes continuously from Liberty Hill to downtown Austin. The CTRMA, an independent government agency created in 2002, borrows money to build the roads and repays the debt over time with toll revenue.
The 183 North Express Lanes will have limited entrances and exits. This map shows plans for the northbound toll lanes opening in early January.
“Express lanes also offer the traveling public an option to bypass congestion for those times when they simply can’t be late,” Executive Director James Bass said in a news release.
As traffic volumes have increased on MoPac, the variable tolling system has pushed prices to all-time highs. During the busiest times of the week, MoPac tolls have topped a combined $18 to travel both Express Lane segments.
“It’s rare when we get there. We don’t stay there long. The next five minutes, it should hopefully cycle itself out,” the agency’s information technology director Greg Mack explained to the board. “It also takes a lot of steps to get there. … It has to gradually increase to that. So you see the traffic ramping up to hit those price points.”
In October, the CTRMA collected almost $3 million in toll revenue from the MoPac Express Lanes, the highest monthly total on record and a 36% increase over October 2024.
Mobility authority officials have acknowledged that the new direct connection between toll lanes on 183 North and MoPac is likely to drive those rates even higher.
“Once that direct connector opens and it’s right into the Express Lane, I think there’s going to be more demand,” Chief Financial Officer Jose Hernandez told the agency’s board members.
KUT News asked the CTRMA if it had any estimates for how the increase in demand could affect tolls on the MoPac Express Lanes.
In response, the agency did not provide specific projections and said toll prices are designed to maintain traffic flow rather than meet a specific revenue target.
“MoPac Express Lane pricing will continue to try to optimize traffic throughput through price adjustments,” Liu said in an email. “In early stages of operations, the 183 Express lanes will essentially be ‘learning’ and ‘tuning’ themselves (like the MoPac Express Lanes did). As the full express lane system tunes, pricing will adjust based on distribution of demand and known traffic patterns.”
The first stretch of the MoPac Express Lanes opened in 2016, more than a year behind schedule.
The 183 North project has taken longer than originally expected. When the contract to widen the highway was signed in 2021, the timeline called for work to be mostly finished by mid-2025.
Construction stretched beyond that timeline at least in part because changes in pandemic-era travel forced the CTRMA to re-do traffic studies required to obtain loans for the project.
Since then, the expected finish date has been nudged back further. Under the contract, the agency can charge the project’s builder — Great Hills Constructors — up to $125,000 per day if work runs late. But CTRMA says delays are common on large infrastructure projects, and officials were in discussion with the contractor on what, if any, of those fines would be reasonable.
“Those conversations are ongoing,” Liu said.
