8 ms·

I'm largely biased since I grew up within 60 miles of Austin, but I never got the hype. It's hot as hell, has the worst traffic I've ever seen, is geographical

• theli0nheart 8y ago
  > 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.
  • cdoxsey 8y ago
    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-states/ustx2742 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.
    • theli0nheart 8y ago
      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.
      • CamperBob2 8y ago
        I've lived in both places. You're on glue.
      • atomical 8y ago
        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.
        • marcinzm 8y ago
          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.
      • throwaway427 8y ago
        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.
        • prophetjohn 8y ago
          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.
          • throwaway427 8y ago
            thanks for the mansplain. you got new york figured out, bro.
      • loso 8y ago
        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.
  • merolish 8y ago
    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?
    • theli0nheart 8y ago
      > 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.
      • merolish 8y ago
        I was there in May 2016 (and looking forward to heading down again later this year).
        • theli0nheart 8y ago
          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.
  • adrianmonk 8y ago
    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.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
      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.
      • mattdeboard 8y ago
        Spoiler alert: they build parking everywhere downtown
      • timerol 8y ago
        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/background%20information/zoning/park_require.doc http://www.gatewayplanning.com/uploads/COA_Airport_Blvd/back... [2] https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/02/2019-could-be-the-year-to-end-city-parking-minimums/ https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/02/2019-could-be-...
    • 8y ago
  • Arzh 8y ago
    As a person who drives down 35 a lot, I've seen plenty of midnight traffic jams.
  • weej 8y ago
    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/ 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.
  • ianleeclark 8y ago
    > 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.
    • alexhutcheson 8y ago
      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?
      • jandrewrogers 8y ago
        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.
    • hotsauceror 8y ago
      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.
  • robbyt 8y ago
    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.
    • theli0nheart 8y ago
      > 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.
    • ericabiz 8y ago
      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.
• ZeroCool2u 8y ago
  Honestly agree. I've spent some time there, because my SO has family there and they've been trying to convince us to move from NYC. You pretty much listed all the things I can't stand about it. It gets so hot you can't go outside in the summer. You're basically accepting that a non trivial percentage of your life will be consumed by being stuck in traffic. Plus, having lived in Kansas City as well, I think the Texas BBQ is sub par compared to that.
  • subpixel 8y ago
    Also, Austin was immeasurably better 10, or 20, or even 30 years ago (depending on who is explaining this to you).
• atomical 8y ago
  It's just as expensive as Chicago and Seattle but with less amenities. I imagine it's going to become more expensive to live there than other major cities very soon.
  • abawany 8y ago
    I am a bit surprised to read this since I often compare Austin and Seattle. IMO, Seattle's property and rent prices are way higher compared to Austin (I guess at least 50%). Both places have no income tax but Austin has slightly higher property taxes for less amenities, but that does not seem to make up for the purchase price difference. Sure Seattle has much better public transportation but Austin has reasonable options for some specific locations.
    • atomical 8y ago
      To live in a one bedroom apartment near downtown Austin I was looking at around $1,800-$2,000. I thought that was about what I would pay in Seattle. Is there a way to quantify this with a published statistic?
      • abawany 8y ago
        I found this: https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/austin-tx/seattle-wa/50000 https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/austin-tx/seattle-... . The site doesn't seem fly by night but who knows: https://www.bestplaces.net/docs/team.aspx https://www.bestplaces.net/docs/team.aspx . Edit: also found this: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=Austin%2C+TX&city2=Seattle%2C+WA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... .
      • cat199 8y ago
        Sure, if you are comparing new construction luxury apples to new constrution luxury apples. step away from things built post 2008 mortgages and still leveraged to the hilt and the real picture becomes more clear
• abjorn 8y ago
  I don't know, I've lived in Austin my whole life and I've always loved it. But I've also never lived anywhere else for any kind of comparison. But the traffic I've experienced visiting other cities really makes the traffic here seem not so bad, especially now that the Mopac construction has wound down. But yes, it's frickin' hot. But I'm a homebody anyways :)
• throwaway082729 8y ago
  So basically Bay Area except for the hills. It doesn't get hot as hell but these days it's getting cold as hell.
• zanny 8y ago
  Every single area with a population density over 50/sq mi in the US has "the worst traffic" because nowhere is the public transit and alternative travel (buses, bikes, walking, etc) viable to displace cars. So everyone, everywhere, is driving cars and consume so much space to do so (between the roads, parking, gas stations, mechanic shops, dealerships, etc) that you cannot build an effective transit system in any major metro area. No city is interested in investing the amount of, well, political capital to make trains ubiquitous and all of them get to suffer endless congestion for it. 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.
• bsmith 8y ago
  I've lived here for about 5 years. I live downtown and routinely walk (or Bird) to work (I started a startup here and the job market is great). I run on a 10-mile loop that's completely isolated from traffic around the (beautiful) lake that runs downtown between my apartment and my office. I watch the sun set from my balcony over hill country (Google "violet crown sunset") and I frequently hike the Greenbelt trails that are walking distance from my apartment. I can easily walk or bike to over 100 bars where I routinely see jazz, rock, and blues shows in this so-called "Music capital of the world." And the food scene here is incredible. Lots of young, fit people live here and downtown is always safe and abuzz with buskers, tourists, and locals alike all intermingling and having a great time. Yeah, it's pretty lame – don't move here.
  • ikeyany 8y ago
    Have you made strong friendships?