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Comment by theli0nheart | Hacker News Reader

> has the worst traffic I've ever seen

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.

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Austin traffic isn't the worst there is on an absolute scale. But it's frustrating because it's so much worse than it should be for a city of this size.

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.

Will be interesting to see if Austin takes the typical Texas laissez faire attitude toward parking and lets developers build whatever they want and let the negative spillovers of traffic get worse and worse, or if they go the Los Angeles route and require absurd amounts of parking to artificially inflate the price of land as much as possible.

Spoiler alert: they build parking everywhere downtown

They've already gone "the Los Angeles route". Austin requires a parking spot per 275 sq ft of office space[1]. Given that most parking lots or garages take 300-350 sq ft per space, that's a bigger garage than the office. They did eliminate parking requirements in the Central Business District, though[2].

[1] http://www.gatewayplanning.com/uploads/COA_Airport_Blvd/back... [2] https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/02/2019-could-be-...

Yea, in absolute terms, Austin traffic isn't bad. I moved to Austin from Atlanta, and Atlanta has massive commutes and traffic. That said, for a while, my commute in Austin was ~3 miles. It took about 7 minutes on the weekends, and took between 30 and 45 minutes in average 8 AM morning traffic. (Loop 360, for the curious.)

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.

I find myself staying late at work (mostly doing self study or hacker news reading if I'm lazy) because Mopac commute times become totally reasonable somewhere between 6:00 & 7:00 pm. Like for every 90-120 seconds I stay in the office my commute time drops by like 60 seconds.

similar experience to noirbot, outside of rush 'hours' my commute would be 25 minutes, during rush hour it would usually be 75 to 90 minutes.

I've found Austin traffic to be bad, but very predictable. Stay off the roads during morning and afternoon rush and it's fine. Outside of those of those times, you can get just about anywhere in the city in 30-45 minutes.

Austin is very hot in the summer. The average high is nearly 100 degrees in July and August: https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/austin/texas/united-st...

Miami is 90 degrees. And Austin is humid too.

And there's no comparison to NYC, which isn't even usually above 90 degrees.

I live in Austin. And I've lived in Miami. And I've lived in NYC.

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've lived in both places. You're on glue.

Can one be comfortable outsidee when it's 100 degrees? I would think that would make a lot of things unwalkable because you would show up covered in sweat.

I've been outside when it was 120 and as long as I stayed hydrated I wasn't too bad. Sweat tended to evaporate quickly. I've also been outside when it was 90 and humid. That was sweaty hell.

Concur, lived in Texas and NYC both, Austin is hotter for sure, but air conditioning is on blast everywhere and the driving helps. Just walking a couple of blocks on a 90 degree day in NYC is enough to get you soaked.

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.

This is Hacker News. The conversations generally have a tech-oriented context. I've never worked at a tech company in NYC where lots of people don't wear shorts in the summer. Shorts, flip flops, tank tops. It's all fair game. No one cares.

thanks for the mansplain. you got new york figured out, bro.

I totally agree. I lived in New Orleans for 3 years and NYC for 8. NYC summers are horrible and I was 10x more uncomfortable. One: down south has more expectation of everywhere having air conditioning. NYC doesn't. Two: the cement everywhere makes everything so much hotter and uncomfortable when the weather gets over 85 degrees in NYC. Three: when you live in NYC for awhile you get immune to the piss smell. Except when its hot and it has rained. Then the smell is as strong as the first day you moved to NYC.

I loved living in Manhattan. Especially Harlem. But summers there were horrible when it got really hot out.

I have lived in NYC and Austin and I grew up in southern Alabama. Austin is much hotter in the summer. It's nearly as humid as Mobile but tack on 10 degrees.

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?

Lived in Austin 17 years. It's traffic surpassed NYC back in 2014 as 4th worse in the USA; however, it looks like its dropped back down to #8 based on INRIX Global Traffic score card.

http://inrix.com/scorecard/

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.

re: traffic There are multiple larger US cities that have less traffic than Austin. The reason why people cite Austin's traffic as a problrm is because it's horrible relative to the population of the city. Most of Austin is very suburban, with windy/hilly roads that cause horrible congestion.

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.

> 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).

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.

It really depends on where you live. I live in a pretty central part of Austin, and for socks I have the following options:

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.

NYC area traffic is bad but you have walkability, the subway, commuter rail systems, express bus lanes, etc. 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?

> NYC area traffic is bad but you have walkability, the subway, commuter rail systems, express bus lanes, etc.

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.

I was there in May 2016 (and looking forward to heading down again later this year).

Yeah, construction was definitely going on then. It was a great thing when that express lane opened. :)

Please get in touch if you end up coming down! Email is in profile.

As a person who drives down 35 a lot, I've seen plenty of midnight traffic jams.

> Why does the Hill Country not count as amazing geography?

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.

I think it's rare for cities to have notable topography within the city proper. Cities normally develop on the flat areas where its easy to build and move around, not on the hillsides themselves. SF is very much an exception here. Do you have other US cities in mind that have interesting topography within the city limits?

Many of the Pacific Northwest cities have significant sections that are steep and rugged terrain. This is why, for example, Seattle shuts down when the rare snowstorm hits -- the grades of the streets in the middle of the city are so steep that they are impassable if iced over.

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.

There are plenty of places in Austin proper with as gorgeous hill country views. Mt Bonnell Drive overlooking the river is fantastic, as is the hiking along Bull Creek and the Barton Creek greenbelt.

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