For the first time since the city started building it, the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake is a complete loop. No road crossings, no detour onto a bridge sidewalk, ten miles of pavement that connects to itself. That happened in February 2026, and if you gave up on running or riding the full loop years ago because of the gap near Pleasant Valley Road, it's worth trying again.
Here's the part that doesn't fit neatly into a celebration. The same trail is currently dealing with more active construction than it has in years, and a separate Austin trail a couple of miles away has been missing a chunk since 2018 with no fix in sight. Whether the loop feels finished or torn up right now depends entirely on which quarter mile you're standing on.
The Gap That Took Almost a Decade to Close
On February 7, 2026, the Trail Conservancy and the City of Austin opened the Wishbone Bridge and Unity Underpass, a Y-shaped pedestrian and bicycle crossing at Pleasant Valley Road that finally links the trail's north and south shores without sending anyone onto a road. Design conversations had been running since 2018. Construction started in July 2024, funded mostly through the city's 2020 mobility bond with additional federal money added after costs grew.
Before the bridge existed, finishing the loop meant leaving the trail and crossing Pleasant Valley Road on foot or by bike, a gap that quietly talked a lot of regular users out of ever attempting the full ten miles. The Unity Underpass runs beneath South Pleasant Valley Road and replaces that crossing with a widened, grade-separated path, and it includes a mosaic by Houston artist Reginald Adams built with input from more than 200 local residents. The Trail Conservancy estimates the loop draws more than four million visits a year. This is the first year all of those visits can complete a full circuit without leaving the trail.
What "Whole" Doesn't Mean Right Now
The loop closing is real, and so is the fact that on this particular week in August 2026, several different projects are digging in different spots around the lake at once.
| Where | What's happening | Through |
|---|---|---|
| North shore near the Confluence and Austin Rowing Club | Rerouted for Austin Energy underground electrical work | March 2027 |
| South shore in front of the Hyatt Regency | A $25 million boardwalk approved in 2023, still not under construction | No start date announced |
| Violet Crown Trail near Slaughter Lane | Crews working on underground phone lines, trail stays open | Aug 17, 2026 |
| Shoal Creek Trail, Shoal Creek Blvd. to the Janet Fish Bridge | Resurfacing and accessibility repair | April 27–late June 2026 (city target) |
| Shoal Creek Trail, roughly 26th to 27th Street | Blocked by 2018 landslide debris | No timeline |
The Detour You'll Actually Hit This Week
If your regular route runs along the north shore near the Confluence and the Austin Rowing Club building, expect it to look different through March 2027. Austin Energy is installing underground electrical infrastructure along the shoreline between Brazos Street and Trinity Street, and the work has closed the Confluence lattice bridge, the crossing that connects the Waterloo Greenway's east bank trail to the Waller Creek Boat House. Anyone using that connection is being routed south to the Hartman Bridge instead.
This is a real inconvenience for a specific stretch of regular users, not a threat to the loop as a whole. The trail stays passable through the reroute. It's just narrower and less direct than it was a year ago, and it will stay that way through the winter.
The Fix That's Been Announced Since 2023 and Still Isn't Built
The trail's other pressure point sits on the south shore in front of the Hyatt Regency, where a 2021 safety and mobility study conducted by the Trail Conservancy recommended slow zone strategies for the narrow stretch until a wider path could replace it. TxDOT pledged up to $25 million toward a 760-foot boardwalk there, 14 feet wide with lighting along both sides, as compensation for parkland the state is taking for the I-35 expansion. Mayor Kirk Watson announced the plan in July 2023.
Three years later, nobody has broken ground. Reporting from March 2026 traced the delay to a dispute over who would control the money. Internal records showed the Trail Conservancy and TxDOT had explored routing the funds directly to the nonprofit rather than through the city, a plan TxDOT's own contract lawyers eventually blocked. By March 2026, TxDOT was telling Austin it had to accept a new funding agreement or risk losing the project outright, and no construction date had been set. If you've been waiting for the crowding in front of the Hyatt to ease, the trail's most talked about fix has spent longer in negotiation than the Wishbone Bridge spent in actual construction.
Two Miles Away, a Different Kind of Stuck
While Lady Bird Lake's trail has been closing gaps and fighting over funding, Shoal Creek Trail has been quietly finishing smaller repairs around a much older problem it hasn't touched. The stretch from Shoal Creek Boulevard to the Janet Fish Bridge, through Pease Park, closed starting April 27, 2026, with the city targeting a late-June completion for resurfacing and accessibility work. A separate 0.7-mile extension at the trail's northern tip, from Burnet Road to the US 183 frontage road, is also scheduled to finish sometime in 2026.
None of that touches the trail's actual missing piece. A 2018 landslide sent debris from four Pemberton Heights backyards down onto the creek and the trail below it, blocking roughly the section between 26th and 27th Streets. The city later concluded it couldn't drill stabilization anchors into the slope without access to the private property above it, and those negotiations didn't work out. As of the most recent update from the Pease Park Conservancy, in September 2024, no action had been taken on that stretch. There's no announced plan to reopen it, which means a gap that predates a lot of Austin's newest residents is on track to outlast every widening project happening around it.
What This Actually Means for This Week's Route
The two trails tell opposite stories at the same time, and the version you have in your head probably matches whichever one you haven't checked recently.
- If your last full lap around Lady Bird Lake predates February 2026, the Wishbone Bridge and Unity Underpass are worth an actual visit, not just a mental note.
- If your usual route passes the Confluence or the Austin Rowing Club, plan on the Hartman Bridge detour lasting through the winter.
- If you've been waiting on the boardwalk in front of the Hyatt to widen that stretch, there is still no construction date as of the most recent reporting.
- If you've been hoping Shoal Creek Trail would reconnect through Pease Park, the answer hasn't changed since 2024, and nothing on the current schedule suggests it will soon.
Trail conditions in a city this size shift block by block, and the gap between what's actually underfoot and what people assume is underfoot tends to be widest for the routes people used to run every week and stopped checking on. That gap is exactly the kind of local detail that matters just as much once you're comparing neighborhoods, not just once you've settled into one.
Everett Shell & Associate Realty works across Austin as well as Frisco, Plano, and the rest of North Texas, and Marion Shell focuses specifically on Austin and the surrounding Hill Country communities. If you're weighing a move here and want a straight answer about what a specific block, trail, or commute actually looks like day to day, not just what the listing photos show, Book a Consultation and ask.
