Hello,

I currently live in Manhattan, New York and the longest distance I usually ride to get from A to B is, say, 10 miles. Now this is including traffic and all. I am deciding between moving to San Francisco and Austin. San Francisco is very comparable to Manhattan/NYC save for the hills. My question, how commutable is Austin? I will probably be working around Downtown Austin so I will live nearby. Will I EVER need a car (I can't drive)? Is biking as convenient there compared to SF and NYC? What are experiences for those that commute in Austin?

Austin has a lot of sprawl, commuting satisfaction will vary greatly depending on where you are. But if you work and live in downtown, you should be good. I'm up north and you really have to want to commute to make it work.
As for needing a car, there's a Whole Foods (I always think grocery store locations are a good indicator of commute-ability) down there along with most other things you would want, so maybe you could be car-less?

I can't comment on NYC and SF, but I have lots of friends who work downtown and live not too far and don't own cars and ride everywhere.

Most of Austin proper is bicycle friendly enough. If you live within a few miles of downtown I wouldn't expect any problems -- it's only when you get into the suburbs that you run into issues.

Get a place in South Austin.... and keep it weird y'all. You can bike anywhere from there.

What is so weird about South Austin?

Well, yes and no.

I live in SW Austin -- Oak Hill. My ride to work is 6 miles if I take Mopac. Which is fine, except for 0.6 miles where there is no frontage road and no shoulder on a bridge (that shakes!) where I have to take the lane from 65 mph cars -- not at all bike friendly. Or I can avoid this, but then my trip turns into a 12 mile one if I avoid all the ugly roads.

Any-who, I'm not so sure South Austin is any weirder than the rest of Austin

I just recall a t-shirt campaign down there a few years back. T-shirts emblazoned with "Keep South Austin Weird", or something to that effect.

My favorite club there is the Continental... on S. Congress, in South Austin. I've ridden my/a bike from that area to downtown, numerous times when visiting and found it very bike friendly.

Now that I goooooooogled it, my recollection was a bit off.... it was keep Austin weird. At any rate, S. Austin would be where I'd want to live, if I lived there.

I live in Oak Hill also, in Granada Hills. Small world. What part of Mopac are you riding on? That's plain jane crazy. If I drive to work it's only 7 miles down Hwy 71 but my ride is 21ish miles because I avoid 71 like the plague.

I love S. Austin. It's good times but if you want to be car free you need to live and work in downtown. Very easy to get around. Love it there.

From my experience in austin, cars do look for bikes and there are bike lanes, but to only ride a bike there is crazy with the humidity and the traffic. If you live in a smaller texas town you could totally do it but a busy city, not sure.

When I ride to work I get on Mopac at Convict Hill (carry my bike over the fence) and take Mopac to Barton Skyway where I work. For most of that distance I'm on the frontage road and it's reasonable, but over the greenbelt there's no alternative to taking the lane. Problem is, it's a 65 mph zone, the lane I take is a turn lane (so there's merging traffic), no shoulder, a barrier with a significant drop on the other side, it's a 3 degree downhill (so you're doing about 35 mph, which is good but it increases the pucker factor) and the bridge shakes to really unnerve you

I can take other roads to Lamar and 360, but then I'm taking 360 to Mopac, and that's not much better and still a few miles longer. The safe route is to go over to Manchaca or so and take the small roads to the east of Lamar up to Barton Springs and then take it to Mopac and go south to my work -- but that doubles the length of the commute.

But yeah, if you live near downtown, it's easy to be car free.

Have you thought about taking Barton Creek to Bee Cave and around? That's how I do it to avoid 71 and out to 620 via the road behind the Hill Country Galleria. It's a hilly road but very little traffic and a nice wide road.

I used to live off of S. 1st and had to take the bridge on 360 towards the Mopac interchange. It looses it's shoulder for the bridge and I hated it. Way dangerous. I don't think...nix that...I know I couldn't do your route. Way too scary!

Think multi-mode... I live in North Austin (Duval and Mopac), and the folding bike and the train get me downtown easily. But a full-size bike will fit on the train too- they're usually empty.

Anyway, having experienced both Austin and SF, if I could afford SF, I'd be there now. Austin is brutal in the summertime with temperatures and humidity hovering in the 90's for 5 months straight- it's actually dangerous to strenuously cycle in the summer here (starting to get nice now though with highs merely in the mid-80's). The governor and the legislators are staunchly bible-belt Republican and legendarily corrupt- we have several unused toll roads that were no-bid construction contracts to the gov's buddies and state-guaranteed toll revenue to other pals of his- but nobody ever uses them since they're expensive and don't go anywhere; the traffic is worse than ever. Governor "Goodhair" vetoed the bike safety act SB488 (would have required 3 feet of room to cyclists when passing, among other things, overwhelmingly passed in the legislature); he said "bikes already have enough rights". Generally, it seems that people here think that Austin somehow invented hip and happening, but it's actually about 15 years behind the times compared to the coasts. If I weren't an economic refugee, I'd never have moved here, and as soon as the economy on the west coast recovers, I'm outta here.

I digress- OP *will* need a car in Austin. Being in a red state, the public infrastructure is weak at best, consisting of one train line to the north with limited schedule, and infrequent buses, with most things spread widely apart (cheap land and no land-use laws and no natural geographic boundaries means hundreds of thousands of acres of mini-malls along the arterials and suburbs between). OTH, SF's BART, trolley and bus system means that being car-free is quite possible, even preferable in the city- when I lived there, my car was used maybe three times a year- and you can join one of those car-share services for the 3 times the car is needed.

It's certainly hot, but I never had that big of a problem with it -- I'd just arrive soaking wet, that's all.
Yes, but the city council passed pretty much the same law city wide afterwards.

(I tend to think the law isn't very useful, but it is there.)

It depends. If he lives and works near downtown, I disagree. The bus and train system are weak, but I'm hard pressed to come up with situations where a bike isn't adequate for a single person living and working in the area.

To be honest I'm very disappointed with the responses so far!

It's totally doable to live in Austin without a car.

There's lots of nice neighborhoods in Central Austin with access to supermarkets and your work.

The bus system in Austin is great for a city its size, and it is easy to get to the airport or get around if your bike is broke or the weather is really ****ty.

Also, after biking around San Francisco this summer for a day, I've got to say that the hills there were a lot more intense than in Austin. There are some steep Austin hills, but they are generally pretty short and easily avoided. You usually just have to deal with a slight upgrade or downgrade in topography but nothing brutal.

So yeah, I would recommend finding a place to live in the following zipcodes:

https://www.city-data.com/zipmaps/Austin-Texas.html

78705 (lots of undergrads)
78751
78756
78757 (south of US HWY 183)
78722
78701
78702
78704 (weird South Austin, lots of culture here, in a good way, if you are 420 friendly)
78703

I-35 is the line of racial segregation present in most cities but the east side is being rapidly gentrified with white hipsters. however, there are some good projects being built and a lot of nice authentic hispanic culture.

I commuted (like a few days a month for a year when I had to travel for business) briefly in north Austin and kept finding roads with bike lanes that ended randomly so you had to either merge with traffic going 45mph or turn around. Not fun. And the heat/humidity is downright hostile. Expect to take a bath in your own sweat every time you head out - I think I took at least 3 showers a day when I was down there.

i'll just add that my favorite neighborhoods personally are Hyde Park, Brentwood, and Crestview. Excellent access to downtown by bicycle. Old neighborhoods but the houses are really well taken care of with a lot of love and eccentricities.

I love Austin and would jump at the chance to live there, but having spent all of my 28 years in North Texas, I can vouch for the disgusting heat and humidity. It's October and I'm still sweating hard on the ride home. The temps are nice, but humidty is usually a minimum of 30 something percent, usuallly 70-80% in the mornings. Last couple of weeks it was 50 in the mornings and well into the 80's in the afternoon. My route is 10 miles one way, so I shower regardless, but even a 2 mile ride on an average summer day would leave you drenched.

In terms of biker friendliness and enough of a downtown to get away without a car, I'd say go for it, but it really depends on if you can stand the heat pretty much. Some live with it (me) but others couldn't be paid enough to live in it.

I concur with cycle_maven's sentiment about the state of public transportation here. It BLOWS. Cap Metro just seems like one huge failure... mismanagement, spotty bus service routes, financial troubles, oh yeah, and the train.

I live in North Austin and there are several roads available for me to commute on, and some even have bike lanes! The nice thing about Austin is that most of the roads here are suuuuper wide, at least in the suburbs. Plenty of room for cars and bikes. I don't think it would be impossible to live car free, even here in suburban hell. Everything is reachable by bike, just be prepared to pedal several miles to get what you need... Anyway, since you will work downtown you definitely should live there too (or north-central, or south-central), unless you want a 2 hour commute (either by bike, or crappy public transit).

As far as the weather is concerned... it really can't be any worse than NY in the winter.

Not gonna lie: I loves me heat. NY weather is way to schizo for me, including its peoples.

That said, I'm a little disappointed from the mix responses. I've read nothing but great things beforehand. Glad I asked.

I lived in Austin from 2007-2009, and while I did not bike, I used the public transportation extensively.

My take is that you could go car free in Austin if you lived within a few miles of downtown. While the summers are indeed opressive and often horrible, it seldom gets below freezing and you will be able to commute year around without having to worry about ice and snow (although a heat stroke is a possiblity...).

I used my car only a couple of times a week in Austin, mainly for getting groceries and running other errands. I would strongly recommend a car for the following reason:

Austin is a small city. You'll be confined to the central portions of a metro area with less than 2 million people. Want to go out to Lake Travis? You'll have a fairly long ride on curvy roads with much more traffic than they were designed for. A weekend in San Antonio or Dallas? I suppose you could fly it, but neither of those cities have great public transporation and you'd need rent a car when you got there. Travel to South Padre for a Texas beach vacation? Have fun riding the 300 miles. Austin is a smaller city in a BIG state, unless you are OK with central-ish Austin 100% of the time, get a car.

However, I think Austin has a car sharing program now...I don't know the specifics as it started after I left, but it might make living carless easier there.

I think Austin is fairly doable by bike (especially the central city). The city produces a downloadable bike map, which should give you an idea of how hard it would be to get from place to place. AustinCareShare.org is dead, but Austin Car 2 Go is starting up.

If you commute during the hotter months, and it's more than a couple miles, you'll definitely want to shower. As others have said, many of the high-speed roads have substantial shoulders, and Texas law explicitly allows for bicycle traffic on the shoulders. Motorists tend to be bicycle aware, too.

I love this town. It got even cooler after I stopped driving.
Car2Go is here. There are lots of people here with cars, maybe you can befriend a few of them. There are rent a car places if you want to drive to Dallas or Houston, although I have no idea why you would. There's cabs, pedicabs, horse drawn carriages. Busses, and a baby step of a train.


Yeah, it gets hot here. I guess other people bike in the a/c or something, I just go out and sweat. Whatever. Everyone sweats in the summer here.

Is biking as convenient in Austin compared to SF and NYC?

Is this a JOKE?

Austin is a great town, but compared to San Francisco? Compared to NYC?
Those are great citys.

Austin seems to get overhyped and lumped in with places like NYC and SF rather often. Austin is a great town and I enjoyed my time there...I'd love to head back for some Trudy's, Salt Lick, and a night on 6th street. But it is simply not in the leauge of SF or NYC. It is only about the size of Indianapolis.

Austin is a really cool and progressive mid-sized city in the middle of a red state. It isn't a dynamic, diverse coastal metropolis like NYC or SF.

Check out the Cherrywood neighborhood on the east side (north of manor but south of 38 1/2 st). East side gets a bad rap, but crime is nothing like other big cities I have lived in and even the "bad" areas are quite nice here. If you find a decent house you can have rent for less than half what a place downtown might cost, so its definitely worth a look.

I moved to the neighborhood in August (been living in the city for 5 years now) and I find it to be a pretty ideal area to get to most of central Austin with ease. The bike lanes are fairly wide and respected compared to other parts of town (especially Guadalupe, ugh) but the biggest issue is that there are no bike shops in walking distance for those times I manage to really muck things up and can't get my bike to even ride over. I've heard from people around here that Austin has a ways to go to be comparable to NYC, SF or Portland in bike friendliness, so take that for what you will, though from my point of view with nothing to really compare it to, I have found it both easy and fun to commute via bike here for the three months I have been going car-less.

Glad to hear yet another cyclist might be coming to town; here's a pre-emptive "welcome to Austin bud "

edit: to the above post, and to the thread starter, Austin is definitely NOT New York or San Fransisco, and to expect it to be anything like it would be to shoot yourself in the foot. Its a rapidly growing city, but its never going to have the population or history either of these places do. What you will find is a stable job and housing market, nicer attitudes (subjective obviously), more heat and a lot of live music. On top of that you can live in a house with a yard a mile from the university and a few miles from downtown (15 minute bike ride at most) for less than 500 dollars a month per room. I wanted to move to a "real" city for years but I just can't get it to make financial sense.

edit2: and the last one I swear (should have read the entire thread before responding) but I have used car2go numerous times, and its pretty convenient, especially if you have a smart phone. It can get a little pricey though so I am not sure you can affordably rely on it for things like shopping or anything that will take more than an hour or so.