Another Controversy Brewing re Southwest Bypass?

Georgetown and Williamson County are jointly planning on constructing a bypass around the southwest side of Georgetown.  The County has the lead on this phase and awarded a $1.75M contract last fall to HDR, a Nebraska engineering firm, for planning and design. A conceptual map from last fall follows:

This map indicates the Southwest Bypass would meet the Outer-loop at I-35 to start forming a "beltway" around Georgetown.

The current route shown below comes from the Capital Area Planning Organization (CAMPO) 2040 Transportation Plan and does not show the bypass meeting the Outer-loop at I-35 to form a beltway.

Evidently sufficient design work has been accomplished to show that there will be a sharp turn to the Northeast near I-35 that will necessitate the slowing of southbound bypass traffic from 70 mph to 60 mph. The long-range plan is for this road to be four-lane freeway.

The sharp turn high-lighted in the red rectangular box is known as the Ox-Bow interchange due to its shape. A rational highway design engineer would eliminate the Ox-Bow and design a smooth transition to I-35.  It is unknown precisely why this design is currently the baseline.

Stay tuned to see if wiser heads impose a change in the baseline.

This is reminiscent of the debacle at the intersection of State Highway 195 and Ronald Reagan Blvd.  The transition between the two roads, both Northbound and Southbound are confusing and require one to twist themselves into a pretzel to navigate through the transition.  There are obvious safety issues also.  Already, an ambulance from a nearby town had difficulty negotiating the transition from Ronald Reagan to 195 southbound.

Hopefully good highway engineering design will prevail.