A Round Rock woman says years of out-of-control drivers crashing near her home have left her paying to live somewhere else entirely, even as Williamson County presses ahead with a long-planned widening of Red Bud Lane meant to fix the very road she blames for the danger.
Esther Ortiz has lived on Red Bud Lane for 16 years, according to FOX 7 Austin, and she says her home and personal vehicles have previously been struck by out-of-control drivers near a curve in the roadway. The fear of another crash has driven her out of her own house. “I’m paying $2,200 to live somewhere else just to be safe,” Ortiz told the station.
The road at the center of her concern is in line for a major overhaul. The Red Bud Lane Widening Project will transform the existing two-lane roadway into a five-lane corridor, the station reports, with funding traced to a road bond passed by Williamson County voters in 2023. Community Impact separately identified the stretch as having a high crash frequency in Round Rock based on city information, in a report dating to January 2023.
What the Widening Actually Changes
Not every account of the project describes the same road configuration. FOX 7 Austin describes a conversion to a five-lane corridor, while Community Impact, reporting on the North Red Bud Lane segment, describes the project as expanding a two-way roadway into a four-lane divided road running from County Road 117 to U.S. Highway 79.
Beyond added lanes, the North Red Bud Lane plans call for improving the intersection, constructing a storm drain, and adding continuous sidewalks and lighting, according to the same Community Impact report. City officials have framed the work as part of Round Rock's broader Transportation Master Plan.
County Says Curbs and Turn Lanes Will Help, Won't Buy the Property
For Ortiz, the central question isn't lane counts but whether the new design will actually keep cars off her property, or push her out of it. Williamson County officials told FOX 7 Austin that dedicated turn lanes and added concrete curbs will help prevent vehicles from straying off the roadway onto private property. Officials also said there are no plans to purchase Ortiz's property, because construction will remain within the existing county right-of-way.
That assurance echoes a pattern seen elsewhere in the region's road expansion push. Along Interstate 35, some residents in the project's path received letters or phone calls indicating they would have to leave, according to the Austin Monitor. Businesses along that same corridor have also faced the prospect of displacement as expansion work got underway, per a separate FOX 7 Austin report on the I-35 project.
Timeline Questions Remain Unresolved
Exactly when the Red Bud Lane work will wrap up depends on which document you read. Community Impact's 2024 report states construction was scheduled to wrap up in April 2026, while FOX 7 Austin's more recent reporting describes the project as still in an ongoing design phase with a target completion of summer 2026. The dossier does not resolve this discrepancy, and neither source clarifies which timeline reflects current status.
Earlier planning documents had set a different marker altogether: Community Impact reported in January 2023 that right-of-way acquisition and design were expected to conclude by 2024. Whether that earlier target was met isn't addressed in the available reporting. What is clear is that Red Bud Lane's widening was conceived, at least in part, as a response to a stretch of road the city itself flagged for frequent crashes — a designation that, for Ortiz, has become more than a statistic.
