Drive north on Loop 360 toward Courtyard Drive on a Friday night this summer and you'll likely hit the same thing residents have been hitting since late July: an orange-signed ramp closure, a detour onto the frontage road, and a few extra minutes added to a drive that used to be automatic. On the weekend of July 31 through August 2, TxDOT closed the northbound Loop 360 exit ramp to RM 2222 and the North Courtyard Drive access to RM 2222 nightly from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. It wasn't the first weekend like that, and it won't be the last.
Ask most people in West Lake Hills how much longer this goes on, and the answer tends to be some version of "not much longer, it's almost done." That answer is only half right, and it's the wrong half.
One Project, Two Very Different Clocks
Loop 360 through West Lake Hills has been under some form of construction for years, which is exactly why the timelines have blurred together. There are actually two separate segments involved, and as of this August they are nowhere near the same point.
| Segment | Status as of August 2026 | Expected Completion |
|---|---|---|
| Westlake Drive & Cedar Street | Signals removed from main lanes, underpasses under construction at both cross streets | Later in 2026 |
| Courtyard Drive & RM 2222 | Broke ground April 29, 2026; excavation and early phase work underway | Late 2029 |
The Westlake Drive and Cedar Street segment, a $72.1 million project, is the one nearing its finish. The Courtyard Drive and RM 2222 segment, priced at roughly $68.4 million, is the one that just started. If your mental model of "the Loop 360 project" is built on watching the Westlake Drive bridge go from signals to underpass, you've been tracking the segment that's wrapping up, not the one that's just getting underway a mile away.
That distinction matters for how residents plan the next several years, not just the next few months.
Why the Harder Half Took So Long to Start
The Courtyard Drive and RM 2222 interchange didn't sit idle for years out of bureaucratic slowness. TxDOT cleared the project environmentally back in spring 2021, but before any road construction could begin, crews had to stabilize the limestone cliffs on the west side of Courtyard Drive, work made necessary by a rockslide that damaged the area adjacent to southbound Loop 360 in May 2024. That stabilization involved excavating an estimated 155,000 cubic yards of rock, scheduled in part around migratory bird patterns, and it wasn't finished until spring 2026, right before construction on the interchange itself could start.
The interchange work is now underway in four phases: setting up the work zone, building waterlines, and excavating the cliffs further; constructing new connector roads, drainage, and the Courtyard Drive bridge; building the diverging diamond interchange at RM 2222 and finishing shared-use paths; and finally, paving and striping to open the permanent traffic pattern. Each phase runs for months, and TxDOT's own timeline puts the whole sequence at three to four years from groundbreaking. That's a 2029 finish, not a fall 2026 finish, and it means the ramp closures and night work West Lake Hills has been living with are closer to the beginning of the story than the end of it.
The Repaving List That's a Completely Different Animal
There's a second construction story running in parallel this summer, and it's easy to fold into the Loop 360 confusion even though it has nothing to do with TxDOT. On June 24, 2026, the West Lake Hills City Council awarded its own 2026 Street Maintenance Project, a crack-sealing and mill-and-overlay contract covering 31 streets across the city. Work started July 6 and has been moving block by block since, including:
- Ledgeway Street
- Yaupon Valley Road
- Sundown Parkway
- Wildcat Hollow
- Oak Ridge Drive
- Bulian Lane
- Las Lomas Drive
This is routine pavement preservation, the kind of maintenance cycle most cities run every few years, and it's scoped in weeks, not decades. If you've seen a crew milling asphalt near Yaupon Valley or Oak Ridge and assumed it's connected to the highway work down at Courtyard Drive, it isn't. One is a state interchange rebuild that will still be active when today's kindergartners are in middle school. The other is a paving contract that will be done long before then.
Knowing which kind of orange cone you're looking at is the actual local knowledge here. One you plan around for years. The other you route around for a few weeks.
Somewhere to Be While the Detour Signs Are Up
If the corridor is going to be a fixture of daily life through 2029, it helps that a few things nearby have gotten better this year.
Taqueria de Diez opened its third location this spring at 3736 Bee Cave Road, and it fills a gap that's been obvious for a while: West Lake Hills hasn't had much in the way of late-night food. The Tijuana-style taco concept, built around a trompo turning al pastor with caramelized pineapple alongside carne asada on tortillas made fresh daily, started in a downtown alley off Trinity Street in 2024 before expanding to South Lamar and now Bee Cave Road. The West Lake Hills location runs Sunday through Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m., which puts a genuine late-night option a few minutes from most of the neighborhood for the first time.
If a state highway interchange and a city repaving contract are both tearing up pavement this summer, at least know which one is temporary.
There's also a reason to make a City Hall stop before the exhibit board comes down. The West Lake Hills Art Committee has been showing "Celebrating America" at City Hall, 4010 Bee Cave Road, since an open house on July 15. It's up through August 21, which leaves about a week from today to see it before it's taken down for the next rotation.
Planning Around It, Not Waiting It Out
The practical takeaway isn't complicated once the two projects are untangled. The Westlake Drive and Cedar Street work is closing out this year, and the driving pattern there should settle down soon. The Courtyard Drive and RM 2222 interchange is a multi-year build that only started this spring, with night closures likely to keep showing up on weekends for years rather than months. The city's own street paving, meanwhile, is a short seasonal project layered on top, not a sign that the bigger highway work is speeding up.
For anyone weighing whether to route around Courtyard Drive on a Friday night, the honest answer is to expect to be routing around it for a while yet. That's not a reason to think less of the neighborhood. It's a reason to build the detour into the routine the way West Lake Hills has built in Eanes ISD pickup lines and Bee Cave Road traffic for years: as a known cost of a place worth living in, not a temporary inconvenience to complain about until it disappears.
Austin Lakeside Properties tracks these kinds of details across the Lake Travis corridor because they shape daily life long before they show up in a listing description. If you're weighing a move within West Lake Hills or just want a read on how a specific street or pocket of the neighborhood is holding up through the construction cycle, Let's Connect.
