I really can't understand this common trope of "Austin traffic is bad" (much less the worst you've ever seen, wow!). If you've lived anywhere like LA or NYC, that's bad traffic. Traffic during rush hour is expected. I've never seen a midnight traffic jam in Austin in my 6 years of living here. That was a daily occurrence in LA.
> is geographically lame (you don't get to claim the hill country, and no, barton springs doesn't count either)
Why does the Hill Country not count as amazing geography? It's gorgeous, by any definition.
> It's hot as hell
As for the heat, I grew up in Miami. Austin has nothing on Miami summers. Even NYC, for that matter, is less comfortable in the summer than Austin is.
The people in charge of it seem to be kind of checked out and ineffectual. They don't always even try to solve problems, and when they do, they do stuff that doesn't seem to be thought out very well.
A well-known example is I-35. It is a huge pain point and has been for decades. A few years back, they started talking about doing something to solve that, and rather than trying to improve I-35 itself, the idea of building a parallel toll road really far outside of town was pitched as the solution. The toll road (SH 130) was built, but surprise, nobody wants to drive on a road in the middle of nowhere. The toll road was used so little it went through bankruptcy, but more importantly, all this didn't help fix I-35.
Austin traffic is just amazingly severe for short periods - you'll see trips go to 2-4x the time regularly, and a trivial event in downtown is enough to cause a 2-3x increase in traffic. Even on the worst day, you're usually not looking at more than 45 mins in absolute time, but it's nearly mandatory to check Google Maps before you go anywhere, because there's a 40% chance it's going to take 45 mins to get somewhere you can usually get to in 5-10 mins.
[1] http://www.gatewayplanning.com/uploads/COA_Airport_Blvd/back... [2] https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/02/2019-could-be-...
Miami is 90 degrees. And Austin is humid too.
And there's no comparison to NYC, which isn't even usually above 90 degrees.
Degrees don't tell the whole story. Austin is nowhere near as humid as NYC or Miami. No question. Ask anyone who's lived in both places and they'll tell you the same: Austin is more comfortable in the summer.
I loved living in Manhattan. Especially Harlem. But summers there were horrible when it got really hot out.
Average humidity during the summer: Austin: 90% Mobile: 100% Miami: 100% NYC: 54%
It's not even close.
Maybe its because people are outside more in NYC and don't have a car readily available with AC torqued to full blast? Or less buildings have AC / the subway is oppressive?
On top of that you can wear shorts most workplaces in Austin and not have a problem. Shorts in NYC is frowned upon in the cosmopolitan set and professional industries.
Humidity does not equal heat. I grew up in SE Louisiana and agree with you. I'll take a drier heat of 113F in ATX over 95 and 100% humidity any day. It's oppressive.
That said, ATX is the only place I lived where I had to walk my dogs very early or late at night b/c the heat on the roads would melt their paw pads.
A few years ago, I was out from NYC visiting some family. I forgot to pack socks, and I had to drive 45mns to the nearest shopping center to buy some. After driving, parking, busy mall, the entire Saturday afternoon trip took me almost 2.5 hours just to get socks! In any other American city, I'd expect this to take 1 hour max (most parts of NYC would take 20-30mns).
Yes, there are many variables I'm not accounting for in my anecdotal example, time of day, distance from major conduits, etc. But I've talked to other people who live in Austin and this seems like the norm.
Wow, that's totally wild. I've literally never experienced anything like this, or heard of anyone ever experiencing this in Austin.
Thing is, going end to end of Austin "proper" will never take more than an hour and a half on the worst of traffic days. I can't even imagine how far you were going for a trip to be 1.25 hours to the nearest shopping center. Maybe there was a really bad accident? Or major road work? In any case, I don't think this is a common occurrence.
1) Amazon Prime Now with 2-hour delivery
2) I can drive to Walmart (5 minutes) or Target (10 minutes)
3) I own an electric scooter (the same ones Bird uses) so I can scoot over to Walmart (10 minutes on scooter)
In any city, if you live 45 minutes outside of civilization, you're going to run into the situation you described. Lots of people here live in the hill country or out in rural areas because it's quiet and they can get lots of land cheap. To me, that's a benefit of living in this area--that that type of real estate is available--but personally, I prefer to live closer in.
Like anywhere, depends where you live. Downtown Austin is incredibly walkable, and the bus system is great. Scooters have completely taken over here as well.
> In my one visit to Austin it seemed like rush hour consisted of everyone cramming on to a couple highways and sitting. Are there good ways to avoid that?
It depends when you visited, since there was a fair amount of highway construction going on within the last 3-4 years on Mopac. Most of it's done now and I think the traffic has really gotten better since then.
Unlike NYC or LA, if you don't drive between 8-9:30am, you'll avoid pretty much the majority of rush hour.
Please get in touch if you end up coming down! Email is in profile.
The hill country is amazing geography, but Austin (as a city and not as the surrounding area) is on the fringes and doesn't get the hills. I lived there for a year, after having grown up in hill country, and it always felt like the hill country was an hour away.
San Diego is another city with significantly mountainous terrain. I remember in the late 1980s that property developers would use massive quantities of explosives to create flat areas they could build on in north county.
Its a chicken and egg problem, but modern America was built for the car. To retrofit cities away from the car is resisted on both ends, from the monetary expenditure to do so and how deeply ingrained in the design of everywhere the personal car is. But cars are worse the more you push people into the same urban cores but even if you were able to build for density you can't ever allocate the space for all those damn cars to make it actually beneficial but you also can't get funding for good infrastructure because so few can take advantage of it when they are so low density.
But yes, it's frickin' hot. But I'm a homebody anyways :)
Sure Seattle has much better public transportation but Austin has reasonable options for some specific locations.
Edit: also found this: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... .
Austin: https://www.trulia.com/for_rent/Austin,TX/0-2000_price/APART...
Seattle: https://www.trulia.com/for_rent/Seattle,WA/0-2000_price/APAR...
step away from things built post 2008 mortgages and still leveraged to the hilt and the real picture becomes more clear