360 Traffic going South in the morning (Austin, Brushy Creek: mover, home, live)

[CPattillo]

Hi, I live close to where 360 and 183 intersect and I am looking at working on the west side of Bee Caves this summer. I am wandering how bad traffic is going South in the morning, I need to be there by 9. Also going back North in the afternoon around 5.

[atxcio]

It's bad. Without traffic, from 183/360 to Bee Caves RD/360 is about 12 minutes. During rush hour (around 7:30-9a and 4:30-6:30a) count on double that (24 mins) at least. Maybe triple. When there is an accident... it gets absolutely brutal. Depending on how far off 360 you live (and how far off 360 your job is), you might make better time on a bike.

But there is no more beautiful road in Texas to be stuck in traffic on, so you've got that going for you.

[Moonlady]

I do the opposite commute and it's not horrible, but the other side of the road always looks much worse. Atxcio is correct. Most N-S roads bunch up at the river, but 360's goes further beyond that because people use 360 - N Mopac to get into downtown, or they are bypassing downtown altogether. I would say the northbound going home in the evening is the absolute worst. Times I have gone to meet the kids at County Line for dinner at 360/2222, the normal commute time of 5 minutes from 360/Bee Caves to there is more like 15.

[ScoPro]

My son works just south of the Pennybacker Bridge - says it's a parking lot northbound in the afternoon rush hour. He drives up to 183 before heading to Brushy Creek.

However, he is at work by 7am and misses the worst of the morning rush.

[Cardiff Giant]

Yeah, I did the opposite way for a few years too and it always looked worse going the other way.

[orbius]

8am is the pits. 8:30am is a little better. Though it varies day by day some days are mysteriously fairly clear and some days the traffic is bumper to bumper all the way to the 2222 exit.

[AustinSpartan]

All traffic lights on 360 are horribly timed.

Scratch that... all traffic lights in Austin are horribly timed.

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by AustinSpartan

All traffic lights on 360 are horribly timed.

Scratch that... all traffic lights in Austin are horribly timed.

You're not kidding!

Since we have such whiz-bang electronics so cheap these days, why in heck hasn't the city come up with a relatively simple plan to use video/computer sensors to control the flow of traffic at major intersections? You can't tell me a few simple video cameras and a basic computeer wwould aadd that much cost to the infrastructure at say, Burnet & Koenig or Congress & Riverside.

And here Austin brags about being such a bigtime high-tec mover & shaker with Dell, IBM, AMD, Samsung, etc. and an army of software egggheads.

I think it's moronic & terribly unfriendly to the environment to have a couple dozen or even scores of cars, trucks, & SUVs idling excessively at a big intersection like Avery Ranch & Parmer, while ONE car might go through from the other direction.

Think about what THAT does to the air quality.

[austinnerd]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

You're not kidding!

Since we have such whiz-bang electronics so cheap these days, why in heck hasn't the city come up with a relatively simple plan to use video/computer sensors to control the flow of traffic at major intersections? You can't tell me a few simple video cameras and a basic computeer wwould aadd that much cost to the infrastructure at say, Burnet & Koenig or Congress & Riverside.

And here Austin brags about being such a bigtime high-tec mover & shaker with Dell, IBM, AMD, Samsung, etc. and an army of software egggheads.

I think it's moronic & terribly unfriendly to the environment to have a couple dozen or even scores of cars, trucks, & SUVs idling excessively at a big intersection like Avery Ranch & Parmer, while ONE car might go through from the other direction.

Think about what THAT does to the air quality.

Well for one, putting such whizzbang electronics on a single intersection is rarely useful. Two, you're forgetting that we're talking about a bureaucracy, NOTHING is as cheap as "just" getting "a few simple video cameras and a basic computer". Beyond the bureaucracy, the technical issues with integrating it into whatever other system is present makes something like this rarely as simple as it seems to/should be (read "more $$$"). Obviously something like this is feasible, emergency vehicles have had the ability to short circuit traffic light patterns for a while now, I'm just saying that one should not be naive about the reality of making something like this actually happen.

[austinnerd]

Traffic on 360 during rush hour sucks. One of the bigger issues is that there are very few points in which you can reliably find an alternative route if things get really ugly (e.g. an accident). If you are west Bee Cave, you may be better off 183N to 620W in the morning and the opposite in the afternoon (I don't know about the 620 part, I don't go that way, but certainly catching 183 with the opposite commute would be very worthwhile).