Where there's usually the crunch of runners, now there's the noise of heavy machinery. The stretch of Town Lake Trail at Lou Neff Point is getting a facelift.
"If you come down around that corner, it tightens up pretty tight," jogger Lee Little explained. "You have concrete, the ground is rocky and it's not level. So, I think, what they're doing is trying to flatten it out, make it easier for runners and bikers and hopefully wider so people can get by."
In fact, that's pretty much the gist of it. The Town Lake Trail Foundation is heading up the project.
"The retaining wall that holds back this wall was starting to crumble, so that had to be repaired for safety reasons," Griffin Davis of the Foundation said. "Another problem was this turn was very, very narrow so you had a lot of collisions between bikers and dog walkers and joggers and people with strollers."
On Tuesday crews began work by ripping out railroad-tie steps that were collapsing. Now, they're widening the trail. While they do so, runners are detouring through Zilker Park on a temporary decomposed granite path.
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Trail work
Park of the Town Lake Hike-and-Bike trail is being reconstructed.
 
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The price tag for the work is $125,000. Though the park land is owned by the city, the Town Lake Trail Foundation stepped in to raise the money.
"Use has gone up probably about four times over the last 10 years. So, you have four times as many runners here, with the budget staying about the same. That's not a good situation," Davis said. "It creates a need for nonprofits like us to step in, help with fundraising, manpower, project leadership, to be able to get things like this done."
The Town Lake Trail Foundation applied for, and won, grant money from Texas Parks and Wildlife in 2004.
The project will be complete in June.
