Traffic - how does everyone deal with it?! (Houston, Dallas: for rent, home)

[oceanpoetry]

The traffic in Austin has gotten so much worse from a year ago, it seems like road congestion has increased exponentially. How does every deal with it? Avoiding the roads completely between 7am-9am and 3pm- 7pm weekdays, which is impractical, but has occurred to me numerous times, like every time I get caught in unbelievable rush hour traffic. Lots of cities have problems with traffic congestion, but Austin has even greater challenges due to lots of newcomers and poor city planning to deal with the increased urban expansion.

[alwaysmiling]

Work from home. Quit your job. Start your own local business.

[car957]

Quit whining. You can move. I-35 goes North and a little farther South. I-10 and I-20 travels much farther East and West.

Or, you could just ask us a question as to what your particular travel in Austin issue is.

[oceanpoetry]

Originally Posted by alwaysmiling

Work from home. Quit your job. Start your own local business.

Yes! Working on that! Have some business ideas, so it is in the works. Fortunately I don't have to drive too far to worksite and I work off-hours (1pm - 10pm) which helps.

[oceanpoetry]

Originally Posted by car957

Quit whining. You can move. I-35 goes North and a little farther South. I-10 and I-20 travels much farther East and West.

Or, you could just ask us a question as to what your particular travel in Austin issue is.

I am not whining, Car957. Posted this because I was seriously wondering what tactics people use to deal with the traffic. It is so congested, many drivers on the road seem to drive with complete disregard for other drivers and basic rules of traffic safety. I think it is a combination of traffic congestion + poorly designed and marked roadways + many, many newcomers in a short amount of time to Austin.

[LiveUrban]

I decided to move closer to work and pay a little more for rent then I would had I lived further out.

I live close enough work, shopping, and entertainment that I can walk, bike, or ride the bus there.

[lndigo]

i just bike. tbh i don't save time usually but stop-and-go traffic stresses me out, so i'd rather take a route that takes more time while simultaneously be continuously driving/biking than putting up with traffic

[therehanz]

Traffic here, while getting worse, is still nothing compared to Houston. My commute there was an hour and twenty minutes one way on a normal day. There were days when it took over two hours. I don't really have any stress driving in Austin traffic. I do wonder about some people's manners though. Cutting to the front of the line at an exit/ramp seems to be a universal problem in all cities.

[mamacatnv]

We live in the North, DS commutes to grad school in the South - he leaves early and studies, he then goes to the Gym and heads home after the masses.

We take advantage of toll roads when we can, unfortunately the areas that have the severest congestion don't have them.

DH and I both commute West to East which is not bad at all. I work 8-5 but rarely leave the office before 5:45 or so, will stop at HEB one or two nights a week to pick up dinner essentials and overall don't have too much traffic to deal with.

I do most of my errands on Sunday mornings when everyone is at church

Pretty much we just plan ahead or around the worst if possible. If not, we just suck it up and deal with it.

[cBach]

You can blame the city council but also the state of Texas for some of your problems.

In the Midwest, when they developed that area they subdivided each plot of land into 1x1 square miles. So every mile there was a road going north to south and every mile there was a road going east to west. It made sense on the flat Great Plains and where farming was the main activity. The upper Midwest had more lakes so that arrangement was not possible, but interconnecting roads was the theme.

Many farmers from Iowa and other Midwestern states settled southwest Louisiana and East Texas, so you have a similar interconnecting road network. Traffic moves fairly nice in cities like Beaumont or Tyler (or even Dallas).

However, this part of the state was settled by German immigrants and they had a little different style of development. They clustered towns around the various rivers and farms spread out from those towns. So, they would have a small village with a grid pattern and then interconnecting roads which connected the farms to the market, or FM roads. These roads still exist and nothing new has really been added.

When the settlements were small this system proved fine, but as the towns grew, the system didn't grow to accommodate it. FM roads weren't built on a grid, they were built to connect farms to towns. So there were vast areas under served by roads. The legacy continues today.

For instance, look at how McNeil Road has two sections, imagine if it were connected, it would shave around 30 minutes off the commute from 183 to 3M area.

History a lot of times is our legacy that we have to live with or change if we are to adapt.