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 