Mayor Kirk Watson and city public-safety and transportation officials on Tuesday announced temporary street changes on Austin’s Sixth Street to widen sidewalks, add rubber curbs and fencing and alter vehicle access on weekend days to improve pedestrian safety and support downtown revitalization.

The announcement came at Parkside, a restaurant on Sixth Street, where Watson said the city will monitor the changes and adjust them as needed. “Sixth Street must be safe,” Watson said, calling the corridor “the living room of the entire community.”

The plan, overseen by the Austin Police Department and the Transportation and Public Works Department, includes rubber curbs and white flex posts between Brazos and Red River streets to separate newly widened sidewalks from vehicle lanes and temporary fencing behind those curbs to discourage pedestrians from stepping into traffic. Anna Martin, assistant director with the Transportation and Public Works Department, described the new hardware in detail: city staff “have installed rubber curves and white flex posts between Brazos and Red River Street to separate the widened sidewalks from the vehicular lanes” and said fencing will be added behind those curves this week.

Police Chief Lisa Davis said the city conducted a soft launch in December on limited days and will operate the modified configuration Thursday through Sunday on weekend nights, then assess results and make adjustments. “We did a soft launch at the beginning of December by opening those parts of Sixth Street on Sundays Thursdays with no incident,” Davis said, and later summarized the current schedule by saying the city is “opening Sixth Street to that vehicular traffic on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, as well as Sunday.” She said the intent is to increase pedestrian safety, reduce officer injuries and make the area more enjoyable for residents and visitors.

Davis and other officials emphasized the changes respond to a concentrated set of public-safety challenges in a small area of downtown. “We’re talking about 0.05% of the land mass in this city,” Davis said, “and it concentrates on 25% of our uses of force here and our officer injuries.” She added that blocking pedestrians into traffic with temporary barricades was not a long-term safe practice and that sturdier infrastructure was needed.

City officials said they will deploy public-safety personnel and additional resources during entertainment hours. An EMS official told the group the emergency medical services presence downtown has been increased, including additional vehicles, motorcycle medics and more mental-health paramedics; the official said the city “have more than doubled the number of mental health paramedics” in the past year and placed additional units downtown to reduce strains on citywide ambulance resources. Fire Marshal Steven Truesdale said the Fire Department will adjust response modes for large events and that code-enforcement inspections and a special-events group conduct night inspections to maintain building and street safety.

Cheryl Scully, chairwoman of the Downtown Austin Alliance public-space experience committee, voiced the business community’s support for the plan. “We are in support of these changes,” Scully said, praising city staff and investors who have renovated properties on Sixth Street and saying the Alliance will partner with the city on the effort.

Officials repeatedly described the effort as iterative: the city has already installed physical elements, will evaluate how the changes affect safety and business activity, and plans further adjustments where needed. Watson said the city will watch for unintended consequences and change tactics as required.

The officials also referenced prior city work on Sixth Street. An attendee asked what made the new push different from past promises after the Safer Sixth Street resolution passed a few years ago; Watson and Davis said the current effort builds on prior planning and adds physical infrastructure and interdepartmental coordination that were not previously in place.

The briefing included no formal vote or ordinance; city staff described a set of operational actions already under way and subject to monitoring and revision.

Ending
City leaders said they expect the temporary measures to remain under review and to inform longer-term decisions about streetscape, safety and downtown activation. The city asked the public to heed new signage and to expect expanded sidewalks, slower vehicular speeds and an elevated safety presence on weekend nights along Sixth Street.