I-35 Through Texas: Live Traffic Cameras for the State's Most Congested Corridor

If there's one road that defines driving in Texas, it's I-35. The interstate enters from Oklahoma north of Denton, runs down the spine of the state through Dallas–Fort Worth, Waco, Austin and San Antonio, and ends at the Mexican border in Laredo. It links the state's biggest population centers, carries an enormous share of NAFTA truck freight to and from the Laredo land port, and — through the middle of Austin — ranks among the most congested stretches of highway in all of Texas. If you're searching for I-35 traffic or I-35 conditions in Austin, the single most useful thing you can do is look at the road before you drive it. Our live Texas camera map puts TxDOT's I-35 cameras, the whole length of the corridor, in one place.

The shape of the corridor

I-35 isn't a simple straight line. In the Metroplex it splits into two branches: I-35E through Dallas and I-35W through Fort Worth, diverging at Hillsboro to the south and rejoining at Denton to the north. From Hillsboro the single I-35 runs south through Waco, then into the Austin metro, on through San Antonio, and finally down to Laredo, the south end of the route and one of the busiest border crossings on the continent. Cameras cover all of it, but the density — and the trouble — concentrate in the metros.

Austin: the bottleneck and the rebuild

The Austin stretch is the one most people mean when they complain about I-35. The corridor carries close to 200,000 vehicle trips a day through the heart of the city, and it has been a chronic chokepoint for decades. It's also perpetually under construction, because TxDOT is in the middle of the multi-year I-35 Capital Express program — a top-to-bottom rebuild of the interstate through Austin.

The project comes in three big pieces. CapEx North runs roughly 11.5 miles from US-290 East up to SH-45 North. CapEx Central is the marquee segment: about eight miles through downtown that lowers the main lanes, removes the upper decks, and adds non-tolled managed lanes — the most disruptive and most-watched construction in the city. CapEx South extends the managed lanes south from Ben White Boulevard (SH-71) toward SH-45 Southeast. Together they mean years of shifting lane closures, detours and changing traffic patterns. That's exactly why the cameras are worth checking before you drive it: the configuration you remember from last month may not be the one you'll meet today.

If you're trying to skip the worst of it, the cameras also cover the alternatives. MoPac (Loop 1) parallels I-35 on the west side of Austin, US-183 offers another north-south option, and the SH-130 toll bypass swings east of the city — the route TxDOT and locals alike wish more through-trucks would take. Cameras on those corridors, plus the approaches through Round Rock and San Marcos, help you judge whether a detour is actually faster.

Dallas–Fort Worth and San Antonio

The Austin segment gets the headlines, but I-35 is busy at both ends of the metro chain. In Dallas–Fort Worth, watch I-35E through Dallas (the Stemmons Freeway corridor) and I-35W through Fort Worth, where the interstate ties into I-30, I-20, I-635 and I-820 — any incident on those junctions backs up I-35 quickly. In San Antonio, I-35 runs through downtown alongside I-10 and I-37 and inside the I-410 and Loop 1604 beltways, with the stretch toward New Braunfels and Austin running squarely through Flash Flood Alley.

The hazards along I-35

The corridor collects nearly every Texas hazard. Through Austin, San Antonio and the hills between them, I-35 sits in Flash Flood Alley, where storms off the Balcones Escarpment can flood low crossings and underpasses in minutes — never drive into standing water, and use the cameras to check the underpasses after heavy rain. In North Texas, the same corridor ices over in winter freezes; the February 2021 event remains the reference point for how fast bridges and overpasses can turn deadly. And everywhere, heavy truck volume — especially on the run to and from Laredo — plus chronic metro congestion make a quick camera check the difference between a smooth trip and an hour parked in the brake lights.

How to use the cameras

Before you commit to I-35, open the live Texas camera map, use the Austin, San Antonio or Dallas–Fort Worth preset to find your segment, and scan two or three cameras along your route. Read the nearest airport's conditions alongside each camera for temperature, wind and visibility context — remembering these are still images for monitoring traffic, not road-weather sensors — and trust the picture itself for what's on the pavement. If you're continuing past the state line, the live New Mexico cameras cover the west on I-10 and I-20, and the live Louisiana cameras cover the east. If your trip runs through Houston rather than down I-35, our dedicated Houston TranStar map goes deeper on that metro. And for every other corridor we cover, start at the road cameras hub. On I-35, five minutes of looking can save you a very long afternoon.