Austin's walkability rating not the best
 

IF you walk around Austin enough, you'll realize its not very walkable. If you drive around Austin most of the time, you'll never know the difference......

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http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...t-2104186.html

Lol, funny they mentioned Westlake. I'm sure our walk score is a big fat zero. We don't even have a bus line on Bee Caves Rd which always seemed quite odd to me.

The vast majority of Bee Caves Road is outside the Capital Metro Service Area. No tax, no bus.

It's also mostly very low density, so would gain very few riders (and there are other, denser unserved/underserved areas that could use the investment should it become available). Maybe it could support a couple daily express runs to downtown/UT from a park and ride.

Well I wish they had one on Bee Caves. I think I would use it some, especially when it was raining (though it doesn't rain very often now days). I recently got a Vespa to cut down on my carbon footprint, the free parking DT, and because it is FUN! But it would be nice when it is raining to be able to ride my scooter to a bus on Bee Caves. I have a car, but since I got my scooter I never use it now unless it is raining, I need to buy lots of stuff, or out to the farm. They do have a bus that goes to the Mall and down Walsh Tarlton to Bee Caves, but that area gets crazy and scares me sometimes on the scooter. I just wish maybe it went from the Mall to the Westlake Hospital Medical Center and that huge office complex and then down Bee Caves to Walsh Tarlton and on to Congress like it does now. There are tons of people working there and across the street that I think would use it too. But then there is the tax issue and so like you said, if no tax then no bus, which makes sense.

Also in some sad news...

Pickup driver sought in pedestrian's death
By Claudia Grisales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 7:54 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012

:(

^Yea, that story really broke my heart. On the news his parents said that he was one or two paychecks from being able to get a car. As others have pointed out before access roads are nighmares for pedestrians.

you'd think that the people driving in these terrible accidents aren't really bad people and that it was just a very terrible and unfortunate accident. why do people not stop and help the person they've just hit? those victims could have more chances of surviving. i picture them just freaking out when they hit the person, and now they're just making it worse on themselves. i bet they probably can't even eat or sleep well considering that not only they killed someone but did nothing about it. i feel terribly sorry for the victim and his family. i used to walk a lot in austin... and i think about it all the time how fortunate i'd been to never having even being close to an accident.

Being that I live downtown, I walk it a lot. I also cycle the area a lot. Both for transport, trips to banks and to conduct other business and for dedicated exercise. I've had way too many close calls, seen way too many. In order to survive, you must be on your guard at all time, its not relaxing. It shouldn't be that way, but it just shows you the state of affairs in this city.

The bottom line is, the pedestrian is not respected, just in the way. Its sad that this city thinks it is so green, ie. solar panels, plastic bags, aquifers but it could two cents about pedestrians. There is zero education on educating motorist concerning pedestrians. Completing the boardwalk had everyone up in arms. This is the very reason it so hard to get any type of decent mass transport - very few are willing to walk or give up their cars for even a half a day.

I might need to change my log in name to "Austin: Green my ass" .....

An update to the story I posted above where the young man was killed in a hit and run last week. It seems the guy who did it turned himself in.

Austin man charged in hit and run
By Claudia Grisales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 10:02 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012
Published: 9:53 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012

From the article, "he saw nothing in the roadway" and "assumed he did not collide with a person," it said.

The next day, he saw media coverage on the crash and "became concerned that he may have been responsible," the affidavit said."

I'm willing to bet his attorney told him to say that.

I think he only said what he lawyer told him to say. It says he was coming from downtown and my guess from what is said in there is he was drunk. I'd guess he was drunk, knew dang well what he did, and went home to sleep it off and called his lawyer in the morning knowing if they knew he killed someone while drunk he would face even more punishments.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/conte...ured_in_d.html

Hopefully they are OK. Scary that someone would drive into a crowd like that.

Also from that story...

Way to go motorcyclist! Way to catch that cager (people who drive those steel cages on wheels called cars)!

Apparently the cops often have a hard time catching those who do the hit and runs. Glad this motorcyclist followed and caught the drunk driver.

Motorcyclist chases down hit-and-run suspect
By Patrick George and Claudia Grisales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

This guys is my new hero. lol.

I personally would have tried to help those who were hit, but I doubt I could have detained or done anything to the guy who hit them. I am glad he caught him.

I sure hope the young lady who got hit is going to be OK. She is a senior Academic All-Big 12 soccer player at UT, and on the UT web page they say she is still in a coma.

Here she is..

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/...n/7401088.jpeg

It's sad that the Chief of Police cracked down on jay-walking a while back, but does nothing about motorist that park on cross walks and cross over them when pedestrians have the right of way. Sure, crack down on jay-walkers, but reciprocate on the motorists. I find myself jay-walking in places because its safer, not because I'm too lazy to walk down to the cross walk.

The hit and runs mentioned in this thread are just plain sad. These happened to involve alcohol, but there are plenty of near misses just because too many motorist have no respect for pedestrians.

Personally, I think that cities should begin having midblock crosswalks that are light signaled (yellow flashing for caution and every regular light cycle - in conjunction with the lights at the ends of the blocks, obviously - a red stop light) instead of allowing corner-to-corner crossing. It would be much safer, both by the fact that the pedestrian has to only look two ways instead of four and the fact that lights are installed. Ofcourse this wouldn't work everywhere, but on certain truly pedestrian oriented streets it would be better than the current setup. 6th from Lynn to 35, The Drag, 2nd, Congress, 4th, Red River, 5th from Lynn to Congress, and a single instance on Lamar between 5th and 6th, Dean Keaton, SoCo, Barton Springs, etc.

this is a great idea. I think they do this in London, if I recall correctly. It works great. There I'm not sure if they are timed, but you can pretty much walk out in front of cars and they will stop for you. If they even think you may be "fixin" to walk, they will stop. (and get annoyed if you don't walk) Maybe BevoLJ can chime in on that.

London has more pedestrian deaths than anywhere I have ever lived or been to. It is a disaster, and big problem there. Problem there from my experience isn't so much the drivers like in Austin, but that there is there are just so many pedestrians doing dumb stuff, the pedestrians are the biggest problem there. People not wanting to wait for for the walk signals or wait for cars or just not paying attention or talking to their mates or on their phone and walking into the street or whatever. West Campus in Austin kind of reminds me of London because so many people walking tend to do crazy stuff like that. Problem in Austin is, the Austin drivers are all loons and talking on their phones not paying attention too. lol So in Austin you have the pedestrians doing dumb stuff, plus the drivers doing dumb stuff = YIKES!!!!!!

For the timed thing you asked, not all are. At least I don't think they are. They have the little buttons. They just take a long time for the walking guy to come on, and when they do change they are super fast so you have to be quick about it.

Their ones where the pedestrians have the right away are a lot like ours. They have the think lines like the Abbey Road album, but with the dotted lines on the outside where we have solid lines on the outside. Those the walkers have the right of way, and cars can't stop in them or they get tickets. For mid street one think of like the ones on Red River near the Erwin Center or many of the ones near schools in the school zones, and they are like that but with dotted lines. They also have good no parking areas near many of the cross walks so you can see which we don't. Like even near the Erwin Center cars can park right up next to the cross walks, but luckily there is plenty of visibility in that area. If there wasn't like if that was DT where it is busier or elsewhere it would be bad.

One thing about London I still have yet to figure out is the squiggly lines. Someone told me they are no parking areas, which is why they are near cross walks and intersections, but they have them in areas like the middle of intersections that I would assume there would be no need to tell anyone not to park right in the middle of a busy intersection. So I don't know. I don't have a car in London and don't drive so never cared much why they have them. lol.

Indeed. No place is this more true than in central Austin. I always say to fellow cyclists: you think we're not respected? Try walking for a change. Start in West Campus in the middle of the day. If you survive, come back to discuss...

Some sort of public information campaign would be a good start to rectifying this problem.

I think this would be a cost effective way of handing the issues. It would have to be maintained and never let up. It should start with Drivers Education School.

Traffic control device to be installed at crosswalk where teens were killed
 

Interesting how witnesses say the kids "didn't look left" . If witnesses were watching that close, why didn't they warn the kids a car was coming?

What about the driver? Was the driver looking down the road for children in a school zone? Apparently not. Very sad.....


http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...k-2155513.html