If you drive Loop 360 through West Lake Hills and you noticed the Cedar Street and Westlake Drive intersections finally losing their traffic lights this year, you might have assumed the corridor's construction era was winding down. It isn't. A second, much larger project began this spring a few miles south at Courtyard Drive and RM 2222, and it has nothing to do with the work that's finishing. One project is closing out. The other is only getting started, and it will still be active when this fall's kindergartners are in middle school.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because this is the exact stretch of Loop 360 that carries residents toward two of the more calendar-worthy things happening in the neighborhood this October: the weekend reservation window at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve and the 40th Annual AIA Austin Homes Tour.
Two Projects, One Corridor
TxDOT has been rebuilding Loop 360 in segments for a few years now, and 2026 happens to be the year two adjacent segments are at opposite ends of their timelines.
| Segment | Funding | Status | Expected Completion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westlake Drive / Cedar Street | $72.1 million | Nearly done | 2026 |
| Courtyard Drive / RM 2222 | $68.4 million | Began construction this spring | Late 2029 |
The Westlake Drive and Cedar Street work removes the traffic signals from the Loop 360 main lanes at those two intersections and buries the crossings underneath, so through traffic no longer stops. That piece is set to wrap this year.
The Courtyard Drive and RM 2222 work is a different animal entirely. TxDOT will build an underpass at Courtyard Drive, similar in concept to what's finishing up the road, and convert the RM 2222 intersection into a diverging diamond interchange, the kind of design that shifts traffic briefly to the left side of the road to keep left-turning cars from bottlenecking through traffic. It's a four-phase build, and phase one, waterline construction and cliff excavation, is already underway.
Why the Courtyard Drive Side Took So Long to Start
If you've been in West Lake Hills long enough, you might remember hearing about this interchange years ago and wondering why nothing seemed to happen. TxDOT cleared the project environmentally back in spring 2021. The holdup wasn't paperwork. In 2024, a rockslide damaged the limestone cliffs on the west side of Courtyard Drive, adjacent to the southbound Loop 360 lanes, and that damage had to be stabilized before any interchange construction could safely begin. Crews ended up excavating an estimated 155,000 cubic yards of rock along that cliff face, a job that ran into this year before the interchange build itself could start.
So the timeline isn't a state agency dragging its feet. It's a longer chain than it looks: environmental clearance in 2021, an unplanned rockslide in 2024, a stabilization effort that carried into this year, and only this spring the actual road construction, which is expected to run for roughly three more years.
What Changes on the Ground This Fall
For residents whose daily routes touch Courtyard Drive or RM 2222, the practical detail is less about the eventual diverging diamond and more about what's happening this month. TxDOT's own project notices put construction hours at weekdays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., with Saturday work as needed between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. Neighbors near the work zone should expect more noise, vibration, and dust during excavation and any night work, particularly as crews move from phase one into phase two, when new northbound and southbound connector roads, drainage systems, and the Courtyard Drive bridge itself start taking shape.
None of this is a reason to route around the neighborhood altogether. It's a reason to build the detour into the routine the way West Lake Hills residents already build in school pickup lines and Bee Caves Road traffic: as a known cost of an active neighborhood, not a temporary annoyance waiting to disappear by winter.
Two Fall Weekends Sitting Right on Top of This
The timing is worth flagging because two of the more distinctly West Lake Hills things on the fall calendar both involve driving through or near this corridor.
Wild Basin's weekend reservation rule. The 227-acre Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve sits just off Loop 360, about a mile north of Bee Caves Road, and it's the closest thing the neighborhood has to a backyard hiking trailhead. On weekdays, it's free and open with no reservation needed. On weekends and federal holidays, a reservation and a small day-use fee are required, a rule St. Edward's University, which co-manages the preserve with Travis County, put in place to keep the trail system from being overwhelmed. The trail options themselves are short but varied:
- Arroyo Vista, 0.6 miles, the shortest loop, with a stop at the scenic overlook
- Ledge Trail, 0.8 miles, following a natural limestone outcrop
- Creek Loop, 1.5 miles, with creek crossings
- Yaupon Loop, nearly 2 miles, the longest option, crossing Bee Creek along the preserve's southern border
- Woodland Trail, steep and rocky, home to some of the preserve's largest Ashe juniper specimens
If a Saturday hike is on the calendar this fall, reserve ahead rather than showing up and hoping for a parking spot, since the lot closes the gate once it fills.
The AIA Austin Homes Tour, October 24 and 25. This year marks the 40th edition of the self-guided tour, which showcases nine homes designed by local architects, this year including Webber + Studio, Murray Legge Architecture, and DK Studio. General admission runs $50, with VIP tickets at $125. The tour has featured West Lake Hills homes in past years, including a rebuild by Cuppett Kilpatrick after a house fire, so residents who've toured it before know the format rewards planning your route in advance rather than improvising between stops. That's doubly true this fall, given that the Courtyard Drive work sits directly in the path many residents use to move around the western side of the neighborhood.
Plan the Detour, Not the Complaint
None of this changes what makes West Lake Hills worth the daily drive: the tree cover, the proximity to Lake Austin, the fact that a genuine wilderness preserve sits inside city limits. What changes is how residents should think about the timeline. The Cedar Street and Westlake Drive work closing out this year is a real milestone. It is not a signal that the corridor is done being under construction. The Courtyard Drive and RM 2222 project is a separate, multi-year build that just started, and treating the two as one story is the easiest way to plan a fall weekend around outdated assumptions.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a property inside 78746, whether it's how a specific street handles the coming construction years or how a hillside lot compares to one closer to the corridor, Carl Shurr has spent enough time in these micro-markets to walk through it street by street. Book an appointment when you're ready to talk specifics.
