One part of San Antonio’s Loop 1604 gets major overhaul

Loop 1604 on the Northside of San Antonio is going to start looking a whole lot different over the next couple years. With beams flying over the interchange with the loop and I-10 and large stretches of road regularly closed for construction, things are moving along quickly. And one bit of the major San Antonio highway already has some new pavement open to drivers.

After this weekend, drivers on a small but mighty stretch of Loop 1604 between Stone Oak Parkway and Huebner Road will be diverted to the center of the expanding highway. Two new lanes of pavement have been installed, and drivers will have construction crews working on three older lanes of traffic on either side. So, if you’re driving in the area, keep an extra watchful eye out and operate with an abundance of caution with the crews on site in mind.

However, it’ll take some work before traffic can be properly diverted to these two new lanes, so a multi-mile stretch of Loop 1604 from Stone Oak Parkway nearly down to Northwest Military Highway will be closed all weekend long. The shutdown will start at 9 p.m. Friday, February 2, and the highway lanes will be completely closed for business until 5 a.m. Monday, February 5. Those traveling along the highway in this area will be pushed off onto the frontage roads for several miles before being able to hop back on the major loop.

This is all part of a major overhaul of Loop 1604, turning the four-lane highway riddled with traffic woes to a 10-lane highway with HOV lanes in each direction. Further, the Loop 1604 and I-10 interchange will go from a four-leaf-clover design to a series of stacked highways creating direct connections between the two major highways.

Major progress has already been made from Bandera Road to I-10 – the first phase of the project which should be nearing completion later this year – but the state agency is making serious headway on later phases of the overall $1.4 billion expansion project. With the section of 1604 near Stone Oak Parkway seemingly always coming to a standstill, the quick progress being made to increase the number of traveling lanes in the are is surely appreciated.