‘Where ambition goes to die’: These tech workers flocked to Austin during the pandemic. Now they’re desperate to get out.::Drawn by the promise of an emerging tech hub, some tech workers who flocked to Austin found a middling tech scene, subpar culture, and scorching heat.
The traffic argument is so infuriating. When will American journalism, and Americans at large, realize the very simple truth: no large city in the US will ever exist without traffic, without a fundamental shift from our car-centric culture and development to transit-oriented?
It is not possible to explain the horribleness that is Austin road planning and the complete and utter lack of available transit. Exhibit 1 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin
Just consider what it must mean for an average Californian to say traffic is bad. These aren’t people coming from rural Montana complaining about city traffic.
Even that headline image is Jesus Christ. Temporally closed ramp onto a packed full outer road from a freeway that’s sitting squarely in the E rating. (Can’t move without major effort)
I feel like for $7.5 billion they could build a city wide monorail system with tons of stops. Charge a few bucks a ride and it pays for itself. Or make it totally free and see what happens when your city suddenly has total freedom of movement. Bet it would have huge economic benefits for everyone. (So of course it’ll never happen.)
I’m not sure. Public transportation infrastructure is insanely expensive. Where I live (France), there was a project to add a new subway line. A single one. Estimated cost was more than 2 G€. And that’s before taking into the numerous issues of another subway line modernization program…
People forget that transportation has an amplification affect across your entire economy. It takes all of the friction caused by traffic and removes a percentage of that. Helping not any one individual but everyone. It’s understandable that it’s harder to wrap our heads around something that isn’t directly profitable when we’re raised that way… but all the evidence and research is clear. Public Infastructure not only is the right way to help people, but is the best long term economic solution to transportation.
Further, who do you think pays for roads? Or their repair? Road infastructure is heavily subsidized and far more expensive than any public transportation project. The big difference? You won’t hear politicians making a stink about it
I don’t disagree with you on the principle. But at this price tag (a significant part of the budget of a major Metropolitan area), you don’t only need to know it’s good : you need to know by how much it is better ; when the payoff is going to begin ;and how to you make sure you don’t create issues which will persist for up to a century. Granted, large road projects aren’t cheap either.
It also tie a significant amount of money each year to pay for continuous operation of these transportation, and for the moment, there is a significant number of transportation jobs which can’t be filled. Roads are costly too, but can withstand these employment issue… for a time.
US cities probably should invest much more in this area, but there are limits to the ability of these project to solve transportation issues.
Does that ‘G’ mean billion?
Gillion. €2 Gillion.
Yep, Giga-Euro.
The issue with Austin is most of the traffic isn’t Austin residents. A shitty Austin house will cost $300,000 more than the exact same house 30 miles away.
Austin is quickly becoming one of the most expensive cities in the county. Which, by the way, is another reason it’s being abandoned. Companies came here on the promise of cheap housing, and house prices in the area tripled in 5 years
So it’s super expensive, hot, has shitty traffic, and it’s a liberal island trapped in a state run by land developers and fascists.
I was hoping to flip Texas blue in 2028 or 32 but I guess not. It’s extra frustrating because you know all this insane shit they pull is specifically designed to discourage liberals from moving in.
Monorail! It put Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook on the map!
charge a few bucks a ride and it pays for itself. Or make it totally free and see what happens when your city suddenly has total freedom of movement.
This NEVER happens. It is always subsidized and traffic is still a mess.
When you are at the point where you are building roads from hell like that maybe it is time to start looking at alternatives. It smells like a sunk cost fallacy in the works.
I see the article addresses something I saw firsthand. I remember they expanded rt 3 (a popular route to access rt 95/128 into Boston) because it was getting jammed during commutes. I said to myself “That will be jammed again in a few years”. Sure enough, everyone moved to places fed by it and started switching to it and it was jammed up again.
People moved there because anything inside 128 costs a million dollars. I have friends with pretty good jobs who can’t hope to afford to live closer to Boston. MA has their “MBTA Communities” upzoning push but it doesn’t go far enough, IMO. We need to eliminate single family zoning entirely.
City Beautiful also has a good video on the shitshow that is I-35. TX DOT must have a little shrine to Robert Moses in their lobby.
It’s not all or nothing. Most people are willing to deal with a 30 or 40 minute commute If they’re not already working from home. The reason people point out LA in Austin is because they are significantly worse than other cities like Atlanta Philly and Baltimore.
significantly worse than other cities like Atlanta Philly and Baltimore
Wait. Atlanta resident here. There are cities worse than us?
You have bad traffic but your average commute times are actually kind of nominal. The MARTA could be better You’re like right on that line where you have bad traffic but your public transportation hasn’t been made effective yet.
You should check out San Francisco’s problems. Half their commuters are coming ovary major bridge from Oakland or elsewhere in California and the city itself is a peninsula so everyone’s squeezed coming up from the south. And the bart is hands down awful
I never would’ve accepted a job in Boston or Cambridge if it wasn’t for the T (train). No way in hell was I going to drive into there every day.
To be fair, Austin has to be not far behind LA as some of the worst. Everything in Texas is made for cars only basically.
There’s traffic in NYC and Chicago. As long as there are roads people will drive. There will always be traffic. Public transit only affects how bad the traffic will be and limit growth of the city.
I think there’s something to be said for places like Houston vs Chicago though. In Chicago I can easily find and take public transit to get around. You don’t necessarily need a car.
In Houston however you pretty much need it. It’ll take you at least half an hour to get anywhere, no matter how close it may be geographically
And in NYC a car is a liability.
I support things like light rail but only where it makes sense. I think a lot of comments like yours are from people who live in dense cities and have no idea what life is like in suburban and rural areas that constitute a large part of the US. Also, the last mile issue is very real and needs to be solved.
Also, the last mile issue is very real and needs to be solved.
Bicycle
Folding bikes, sure. Or you get a bikeshare sub. Regular bikes aren’t allowed on trains because they’re too crowded.
- Dense city dweller
Philadelphia allows bikes on their subway, or at least doesn’t enforce not allowing them. But, they probably wouldn’t if bikes were more normalized here.
E-scooters are multimodal friendly and can do a mile without a lot of fuss.
There are differences between cities though. It makes. A difference how they developed, what their geography is, and how concentrated their growth phase was. Austin is a place you can’t take a shit without driving to a bathroom. It’s not laid out for public transportation even if they could fund it. It is massively spread out with pockets of hills and rocks all over. The weather is hostile to walking and biking anyway.
I have many friends in Austin and visit often. People there obsess about traffic, working overtime to tune their day around finding low traffic windows and such. It’s not like that where I live, and I don’t live in some Amsterdam style utopia.
The deal with a lot of places like Austin where you have homes way over there and a shopping plaza waaaayyyy over there is not only do you have to drive usually but even if it is close enough to walk there is no frigging continuous sidewalk. You always end up with long breaks in it between developments, having to walk out in the road where it is overgrown, deep drainage ditches stopping you, etc.
I will never understand why anyone trusted Texas, how blind can you be
“Where ambition goes to die” has been an unofficial motto here in Austin for decades. We’re too busy enjoying our lives to be bothered overworking ourselves. Guys like this dude have been trying hard to ruin the vibe recently, and he’s welcome to return from whence he came so we can keep chilling
Lived there for a decade. Moved to NC this past July. Getting out of the state was the best thing I could have done.
Cool
He is right about it being scorching hot tho. It’s starting to feel like I’m living in Palm Springs.
This…this is new
Maybe, but it’s only ever going to get worse. All of Texas and most of the west as a whole are going to be unlivable soon.
The smart people are leaving now. Anyone who isn’t is going to be fucked when it becomes a genuine refugee crisis.
Yup. I had a rental condo in Vegas I sold after 20 years because I read the writing on the wall. And Vegas is doing an amazing job of preparing for water issues.
Everyone trying to squeeze more water out of the same rivers and reservoirs.
This is a severe exaggeration. I’d still rather live somewhere where it hits 105 every day for 6 weeks than where it snows for 6 months. Austin’s fall, winter, and spring are great
When I lived in Austin in the 90s, I would leave the windows open about 9 months out of the year. Since the early 2000s, that’s become less and less.
Hopefully this year is an outlier (although I’m not ignoring Climate Change) … even up here near Boston, I’ve had windows closed and AC on most of the summer. We’ve had way above typical heat but also way above typical humidity and rain. Even when the temperature is comfortable, the humidity is not.
So far so good today: last night was perfect for sleeping with windows open and this morning is nice
Depends on the year. 2020 e.g. was pretty mild here, we had beautiful days all summer. In the 90s, there were still very cold days and rainy days and windy days, so I think saying you could have your windows open for 9 months of the year back then is also an exaggeration
Their idea of a “tech worker” is an angel investor
Pay walled article.
Try this: https://archive.ph/Mxx54
Nothing for me. Maybe region-specific?
Im kinda baffled people don’t realize Texas is hot in the summer. Likebwhat did you expect?
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Austin is a nice city. With all due respect, and as someone who grew up in Texas but now lives in NYC, it is exactly this kind of condescension that makes a lot of Texans dislike people from the coasts.
as someone who grew up in Texas but now lives in NYC, it is exactly this kind of condescension that makes a lot of Texans dislike people from the coasts.
That’s fine with me. I’ve lived in Michigan, Tennessee, Kansas, and California. There are lots of good people in each of the first three as well as lots of small minds. The Bay Area feels right to me.
I remember seeing a FB post from someone in Kansas saying that they felt that anyone who couldn’t be happy there didn’t really try. You can’t imagine my rage at that statement: blaming me for my depression when I didn’t fit in during my school years. What a joke. No, I can’t be happy in that environment long-term.
The Bay Area would have offered me so much more opportunity for happiness as a teen, such that it’s practically stupid. I feel schadenfreude at Texas getting reminded that it isn’t hot shit.
I feel terribly for the people who were deceived and have regrets about their situation. Still, they did it to themselves. For all the negatives on the west coast, it’s a paradise to me in terms of opportunities for work and recreation and finding similarly-minded people and making friends.
Fair enough. I think it’s okay if you’ve experienced a place, given it a shot, decided it wasn’t for you, and moved away.
One thing I’ve noticed in NYC however, is how many people have an uninformed and strong default opinion that anywhere besides the west or east coast in unlivable, and that bothers me.
Your comment is reasonable, but a lot of the comments to this post reflect that same caustic attitude and it saddens me.
I moved to Austin in 2000 and I’ve been a tech CEO in Austin since 2006 and VC since 2012. I’ve worked or done business in just about every tech hub in the US, so I have a fairly good perspective on Austin and how it compares to the rest of the nation. All I can say to that guy and many others that decided to come to Austin without any contacts, no idea of what they were doing, where to go, where to live, who to talk to, and with a huge superiority complex is – “Bye Felicia”.
EDIT: To clarify, I’m talking about the hustlers that moved in expecting to be showered with VC money just because they exist, not the workers. Also, one of the main culprits of the Austin overhype was Business Insider.
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Nothing wrong with that at all. That’s not who I’m referring to. A bunch of mid-tier hustlers decided to move to Austin all at once, assuming that they could just show up with a dumb idea with a cringe name and that they would be showered with VC money. If you are young, just graduated college, and are trying to build a solid network that will last you a lifetime, Austin is a great choice. As with anything long lasting, it’s not done overnight. A lot of these guys were looking for get rich quick cons and that doesn’t do well in Austin.
Austin is a wonderful town to eat, drink, fuck, work hard, and make true friends. Not so good for snakes.
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