I lived in LA for 10 years. Comparing Austin w/ LA traffic is beyond a stretch. LA's surface streets have worse traffic that Austin rush-hour freeways. And I don't know what happened to you one day 7 years ago, but I just drove through MOPAC rush hour on Monday, and it took us maybe 25 minutes from 2222 to Slaughter, and kept moving the whole time.
Well if your caps lock button is stuck you can still use the shift key to make your letters lower cased. oh sorry to be off topic. Houston's better.
to me, it's almost a toss-up.... i like austin more b/c of the scenery and liberal "do what you want" attitude. but houston is, well, home. born and raised there and although my hometown of spring sucks, houston does not. BTW.... austin traffic doesn't even compare to houston traffic. it's not even close. just hop on the 610/59 or 610/I-10 area. i've been driving (or riding) through that stretch of freeway for the past 20 yrs and it still drives me nuts. hell, i've been on westheimer and post oak and it took me nearly 30 minutes to actually get onto 610!! i could've literally thrown a rock from my car and hit 610. now that's sh*tty traffic.
There's that one stretch on southbound 35, by downtown, where the lane changes screw everything up, but other than that, it's not even that bad during rush hour, esp. compared to Austin and Houston. I would guess that SA isn't as densely populated as Austin.
I just found everyone to drive like a freakin' nut. It wasn't so much congestion as it was fighting for my life.
On a side note, you can watch the Longhorns beat up on the Owls in either city. Niemann and Humber.......
I absolutely hate driving in SA, mrpaige. I almost always get lost (many of the streets still follow goat trails or something), and it always takes about twice as long to get somewhere as it should. I dig the city, but I wouldn't want to live there.
I like the city as well, although it does have it's negatives. I'm amazed at how easy it was to drive through downtown at 5 pm. There was definitely traffic, but I rarely had to slow down to 35 there.
I GOT THE DAMN JOB! I can set my own schedule as long as its consistent. I will drive to Austin at 6:00 work 7-3 and be home by 4-ish. I did this all last week during some training sessions and it makes for a fairly normal day. I'll commute for as long as I can stand it but I heard theres people there that already do this, so what the heck, I'll be one of them too. Austin here I come....for work!
I lived in Austin for six years, was born in Houston, lived there for five years as a kid and six years as an adult, and I prefer Austin. Too bad they never got around to a loop when I was there. It has tiny bottle necks that are really bad but Houston has enormous bottle necks that are really bad until about 2am-5am.
I like Houston. I like Austin. It comes down to preferences. The only certainty is that both beat the hell out of Dallas! Above statement is made somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Dallas is a cool place too, though I don't really like the superiority thing that Dallas believes it has on the rest of Texas. The one thing that they used to be able to hold over Houston's head, downtown, is no longer a big plus in Dallas. I'd say Houston's downtown is now almost as 'happening' as Dallas's. Culture, music...there's no competition. Both Austin and Houston trump Dallas. Dallas also has the worst of both worlds as far as weather goes. They've consistently had hotter summers than Houston for the last few years now, and snow shuts the city down at least one week a winter. BTW, the Mav's suck.
Dallas' downtown has never been that great, in my opinion. And it isn't the snow so much as it's the ice.
