22: US 183 Northbound

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183 northbound just past Duval

The biggest problem in the suburban areas of Austin for bicycling is TXDOT. Seriously. This road cuts like a dagger through NW Austin, dividing the employment centers (mostly to the E) and the residential areas (mostly to the W), and thanks to TXDOT's idiotic addiction to Frontage Roads Uber Alles!, you must travel a mile or two out of your way in order to cross the freeway unless you happen to be at one of the exits. (Yes, freeways in other states sever some connections, but also often provide many more bridges over or under the freeway without exits so that the local arterial grid remains relatively intact).

In this case, this is particularly onerous because the major transit stop is almost straight across the freeway from Riata, which is halfway in between the two roads on which you can cross 183. So, in order to get over here from the place where the major bus would drop you off, you have to go 3/4 of a mile north or south, then cross, then another 3/4 of a mile back to where you started; when a more rational design in a non-Texas state would allow for a bridge over the freeway at Riata Trace Parkway which could cut this distance by a factor of ten. A mile and a half is far too long to expect a potential transit passenger to walk to their destination, and so, we have no transit business at Riata despite two fairly dense concentrations of thousands of potential customers.

And TXDOT will turn around and point to this project next time we ask them for some help with transit-friendly design and claim that nobody would use transit anyways since nobody's using it at Riata even though it's only 1000 feet from a park-and-ride.