Austin is a great place to live, but... (Houston, Round Rock: living in, moving to)

[TXEX06]

I live out in the suburbs and rarely drive into the actual city of Austin. Sentences like this seem to be common in all the "I'm moving to Austin" threads. People living in Cedar Park, Leander, Georgetown, etc telling people relocating how great Austin is, but we don't actually live there and rarely do we go into the city.

[cp102]

That is so true. I live in the burbs and could care less about driving into Austin. Yes Austin is beautiful but I hate the traffic. That alone keeps me out of Austin.

[centralaustinite]

I think that is fairly typical. It works in reverse as well, I live central and rarely ever venture into the suburbs. 620 is just a set of numbers to me!

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by centralaustinite

I think that is fairly typical. It works in reverse as well, I live central and rarely ever venture into the suburbs. 620 is just a set of numbers to me!

Well, we'd drive downtown occasionally on weekends to see the sights or for dinner, but it seems most of the main streets are always closed for some kind of "run".

[ToddATX]

I've "lived in Austin" for 3 years, meaning actually that I lived in Round Rock for 2 and Pflugerville for 1 each. I couldn't disagree more. I spend most of my recreational time in Austin, and do all kinds of activities centrally. Traffic? Rush hour can be bad, but at any non-peak rush-hour time it's quite simple and fast to get anywhere in town. Traffic in Austin is not half as bad as people make it out to be. There are rough peak periods of rush hour, but other than that it is not all that bad. I have plenty of friends who live the same as me as well.

[Rynldsbr]

The Austin area is a great place to live. Unfortunately, the haters want to act like anyone who moved here less than 20 years ago is a transplant hellbent on ruining "their" city. As for traffic, another great complaining point but highly exaggerated IMO. For those who have traveled outside the Travis County limits, traffic here is only typical of or slightly worse than most metro areas this size. Average commute times documented on several of my previous posts are barely more than average across the country.

[ToddATX]

Couldn't agree more Rynldsbr. I lived 30 years in Houston, and with most of my immediate family, including my son and grandchild living there, I go back at a minimum of once a month. Traffic there is far worse, and at all times. It doesn't have to be rush hour, traffic sucks there at all times. I live in Pflugerville and work in South Austin, and I have a worse time in Houston traffic on weekends than I do living, working and playing in Austin.

[hoffdano]

Is there a point to this thread? Or just a spot to ***** and moan about something?

[sxrckr]

Originally Posted by ToddATX

Couldn't agree more Rynldsbr. I lived 30 years in Houston, and with most of my immediate family, including my son and grandchild living there, I go back at a minimum of once a month. Traffic there is far worse, and at all times. It doesn't have to be rush hour, traffic sucks there at all times. I live in Pflugerville and work in South Austin, and I have a worse time in Houston traffic on weekends than I do living, working and playing in Austin.

Ha! I find the opposite.

[ToddATX]

Originally Posted by sxrckr

Ha! I find the opposite.

I honestly don't know how you could. I will admit that there are spots and stretches of freeway in Austin where at a given point movement is more bogged down/slow moving and/or stopped than it would be on a Houston freeway. However, given the shorter distances, a commute from Round Rock or Cedar Park to central Austin is just as fast or faster as from, say, Spring or the Woodlands to downtown Houston.

The big difference is in the traffic on the normal roads - far, far less here; as well as the traffic at off-peak times. Traffic here during those 7-9:30, 5-7 time periods can be rough, but at other times you can fly anywhere you want in no time at all. On a weekend afternoon in Houston I can get stuck in massive backups on suburban overland roads, not to mention freeways. Drives that should and used to take 20-25 minutes and instead now take 45+ on a regular basis.

Every time I go back to Houston I literally feel like and make mention of the fact that there is no way you could ever pay me any ammount of money or design any set of circumstances wherein I would move back there. Again, I live in north suburbs here, and work south Austin, and I just don't have anywhere near the problem that I do getting around Houston. Bleh.