July 15, 2025 - Governing.com, Jared Brey - 

The growth of cities between San Antonio and Austin, separated by 75 miles, is creating one massive metro region. Passenger rail should be part of the equation.

Within Texas, it’s the metros that have grown, the central cities and their surrounding counties. Close to 84 percent of Texans now live in metro areas. On every map of Texas depicting any kind of economic activity, the four counties in the San Antonio-Austin corridor — Bexar, Hays, Comal and Travis — glow like a string of festoon lights.

South-Central Texas cities are now juggling more opportunities than they ever have before, but it’s not quite right to say they’re charting their own individual destinies. Many of the challenges they face are regional in nature. At the top of everyone’s list is traffic congestion on Interstate 35, which has slowed to a crawl as the region has boomed. Drivers making the trip between Austin and San Antonio inch past towering billboards for Buc-ee’s and Whataburger but are left to guess at what goes on behind the blank facades of newly built data centers, barely stealing a glimpse of the Texas hills beyond.

A trip that took about an hour a generation ago now routinely takes two hours — sometimes much longer. For every percentage point in regional population growth, traffic on I-35 increases 3 to 4 percent, according to the Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council, a regional advocacy group founded in the 1980s.

Read more: https://www.governing.com/magazine/texas-cities-encourage-and-cope-with-massive-growth

Photo credit: TxDOT