Considering moving to Austin? Please don’t. Please don’t. If the scorpions, fire ants and six-inch roaches aren’t enough to scare you away, consider our traffic jams. They’re an all-day affair that often triples driving times.
I like to tell people that when I came back to Texas in 1978, I could drive Mopac, the north-south thoroughfare on Austin’s west side around 11 p.m. and be the only one on the road. I don’t remember when that ended. Probably some time in the late-80s. It’s long gone now.
About 1980, a native-Texan editor asked me, considering that developers were just beginning to stake out the desirable west side for new housing, what I though Austin traffic would be like in twenty years. New Jersey, I said, having recently left its bumper-to-bumper crawls. He scoffed.
He should have. I was off by a decade. What used to take me ten minutes now takes thirty. Mopac’s bumper-to-bumper crawl is normal. Once it speeds up, only a few idiots weave in and out of the lanes trying to make up lost time. Most drivers are careful and considerate. There’re just too damn many of them.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Many a time at an odd hour having been on Mopac for over thirty minutes and traveled 5 miles I will finally come upon the sad scene. There they are lined up (4, 5, maybe 6 of them) on the inside shoulder nose to tail with heart breaking minor damage to their front and rear bumpers. While I pass by as they diligently exchange info, it’s all my heart can do to not stop and beat them all to death! Instead I must must fall back in reverie of what I could do with a properly applied 20mm.
Oh, now, you mustn’t let it get to you like that. Get an MP3 player and lose yourself in music. At the rate things are going, you might even bring a Kindle or whatever paperwork you’re handling at the moment.
Oh I don’t know, perhaps a comprehensive revision of the OED between LAB and W35th..
Last time I had occasion to drive on the MoPac — this would have been about five years ago — it reminded me a great deal of the New Jersey Turnpike on days of beach traffic.
I assume it’s much worse now.
I suppose it was this bad five years ago, Charles. I guess I’ve gotten used to it. It’s still slightly better than Dallas. Mrs. Charm swears it also beats Houston but she has friends there so is perhaps overly forgiving.
Just wait a few years for petrol prices to go through the roof, and it’s back to horses.
Nah, I know it wouldn’t happen. Besides, Tesla cars are going to rule anyway soon. Same traffic jams, only electric now.
I don’t know about Tesla. Didn’t that Israeli entrepreneur who was going to put recharging stations all over the country go toes up?
with Texas’s summer electric capacity almost maxxed out, I can’t wait for when they plug in 6 to 10 million cars into the grid.
“Just wait a few years for petrol prices to go through the roof” gas prices are going to go up too!
Just wait, they’ll try it, claiming that wind power will solve it all. Until it doesn’t.
“Just wait, they’ll try it, claiming that wind power will solve it all. Until it doesn’t.” Actually they may be on to something if they could somehow harness the Austin City Council’s wind production.