New Braunfels, Texas has grown from a small Hill Country town of 36,000 into a city of over 100,000 in just two decades, but much of its street infrastructure never caught up. The city is now using a $1.4 million federal grant to start closing that gap, funding sidewalks, protected crossings, and accessible paths at five locations across the city.
The improvements include 10-foot shared-use paths for cyclists and pedestrians, protected street crossings, new sidewalk segments, and the removal of barriers that currently leave some city infrastructure out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Decades after the ADA's passage, many cities still have curb ramps and crossings that don't meet federal accessibility standards, and New Braunfels is among them.
The stakes are real. Texas consistently leads the nation in pedestrian fatalities, recording more than 800 deaths in 2022 alone according to state transportation data, and the San Antonio metro area, where New Braunfels sits roughly 30 miles to the northeast, ranks among the most dangerous regions in the country for people on foot or on bikes. Streets designed for a smaller, car-dependent city aren't built to handle the pedestrian volumes that come with rapid growth, or with the millions of tourists who visit the Guadalupe River and Schlitterbahn waterpark each year.
The funding flows through the federal Surface Transportation Block Grant program, which was significantly expanded under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to give cities more flexibility to invest in active transportation alongside traditional road projects. Similar grants have helped cities like Loudoun County, Virginia build walking and biking connections to transit, and the program reflects a broader shift in federal transportation policy toward funding streets that work for more than just cars.
The city has identified pedestrian and bicycle connectivity as a critical gap in its long-range planning documents, and this project represents a tangible step toward addressing it. Specific locations for the five project sites have not been publicly detailed yet, leaving open questions about which neighborhoods and corridors will benefit first.
