The City of Austin launched a new website on Thursday that is intended to bring both a fresh, modern look and better functionality to city business.

The city announced the change in a Wednesday press release. According to the statement, the new website is part of the city’s new digital experience platform, providing significant improvements to its digital services.

Starting Thursday morning, visitors found a “fully responsive” website that should work smoothly across desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile devices.

City Manager T.C. Broadnax celebrated the news. “The launch of the new and improved AustinTexas.Gov has been a long time coming, and I am proud to say that the City of Austin website is now the most efficient place to connect Austinites with the information and resources they need,” he said.

“We have worked hard to make everything on the site easier to find and navigate—whether that’s adopting your next pet, viewing your recycling schedule, or paying your utility bill,” he added.

The new site features updated search capabilities by adding filtering options and better indexing and functions that will return more accurate results.

Community feedback gathered in the initial planning phases of the design helped guide the new site features and improved user experience. In the coming weeks, the city will welcome additional feedback by prompting site visitors to complete a short survey.

The feedback will help inform ongoing improvements and enhancements to the website, which will allow it to continue to evolve to meet the needs of residents.

Austin is fortunate to have very low levels of lead in drinking water compared to other parts of the country. Our source waters of Lake Austin and Lake Travis contain no lead, and there is no lead in Austin’s treated drinking water.

Austin Water’s lime softening treatment process, in use since the 1920s, produces non-corrosive, scale-forming water that creates a protective coating on the inside of pipes. This prevents materials such as lead and copper from leaching into the water. More than 30 years before federal bans took effect, Austin also enacted local rules prohibiting lead in plumbing. When lead is occasionally detected at the tap, it is almost always due to contamination from private plumbing or fixtures.

In October 2024, Austin Water completed field investigations of all water service lines in the system. There are no lead service lines in Austin Water’s distribution system.
 

(TNS) — Self-driving truck firm Einride will soon begin using a Central Texas highway as a test bed for its purpose-built, cabless autonomous freight vehicles.

Einride is partnering with SH 130 Concession Co. to position the Texas 130 toll road, which connects Austin and San Antonio, as a corridor for autonomous freight operations.

Founded in 2016, Einride has more than 25 enterprise customers across North America, Europe and the Middle East. Based in Sweden with U.S. headquarters in Austin, it boasts a proprietary AI platform with a zero-traffic incident safety record.

“This partnership with SH 130 Concession Co. marks an important step forward in proving the scalability and economic benefits of electric and autonomous freight,” said Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli. “By establishing this test bed, Einride is further cementing Austin, Texas, as a hub for our American autonomous freight operations, collaborating with infrastructure operators and regulators to scale safe, performance-based deployments.”

In an announcement Tuesday, Einride said it will test autonomous highway operations on Segments 5 and 6 of Texas 130, which start at the Texas 45 SE split south of Austin near Mustang Ridge and extend through Seguin to I-10. The Texas Department of Transportation operates the northern segments of Texas 130.

Its tests arrive in a complex regulatory environment, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Congress considering how to address the rapidly increasing number of autonomous vehicles on city streets and highways.

But Einride and SH 130 Concession Co. say their partnership provides a strategic route for fleets to move freight reliably through the region.

Einride, which had a fleet of about 200 autonomous and electric trucks as of late 2025, says it operates one of the world’s largest electric heavy-duty fleets. Its autonomous trucks are in daily operation with customers in both the U.S and in Europe. Some of its work has included PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay food distribution near Memphis and transport of finished goods between GE Appliances’ manufacturing facility and warehouse in Selmer, Tenn.

Einride’s new partnership with the private company that operates and maintains the southern section of the state-owned highway could be a higher-stakes test of its autonomous tech.

SH 130 Concession recorded more than 12.6 million transactions on the roadway in 2023 and boasts itself as a safe and fast alternative to the congested Interstate 35 route through the region. The segment of the toll road Einride will use to test its vehicles has the nation’s highest speed limit at 85 mph.

To charge its vehicles, Einride and SH 130 Concession say they are drafting a blueprint for a next-generation rest stop. The stop will manage the autonomous trucks with high-capacity EV charging and specialized docking requirements.

The partners are also exploring the feasibility of integrating Einride’s optimization software, known as Saga AI, with SH 130 Concession’s digital ecosystem to handle data sharing and traffic management.

SH 130 Concession Co. CEO Ananth Prasad said the partnership supports the company’s push for new transportation technology in Texas.

“We’re actively working with freight customers, industry partners and TxDOT to implement new technology solutions,” he said in a statement. “And by aligning digital infrastructure, connectivity readiness, and future charging capacity, SH 130 Concession Company is advancing its ambition to establish the roadway as a nationally recognized route for autonomous freight movement.”

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