Google maps says downtown Austin to Giga Texas is 17 miles, 24 minutes. I don't know what traffic is like in Austin but I imagine it's not nearly as bad as the bay area. I think a 25-30 min commute is pretty reasonable and most people would happily take that for much cheaper housing.
The big difference is that in Austin you have the option to commute a bit for much cheaper housing. But in the bay area you could be commuting over an hour each way and the houses will still be over $1 million.
Traffic in Austin is insane. Legit insane. Definitely comparable to the Bay Area if not worse.
And there is absolutely no transit alternative comparable to BART. There is a morning and evening train, but it's really only effective if you live and work exactly on the stops.
I lived in CA my whole life, including the last 10 years in the Bay Area, before moving to Austin a year ago. I can’t for the life of me understand what you’re talking about.
I-35 is bad, that’s about it. The freeways around the rest of Austin are still moving even around rush hour. None of those hold a candle to the Bay Bridge on a Friday afternoon, not even remotely close to as bad.
The reason is that there is no alternative. You'd be a fool to take the Bay Bridge on a Friday afternoon. BART is there, and any sensible person would take it. In Austin, when traffic is fucked, you're just fucked, especially if you have to cross the river.
you moved during COVID times where most people still not on roads. I guess when things become normal, you would see actual issue. Just wait for few more years before you can start complaining the heat, traffic & cost of living. Especially if you want to live in an area with good schools!
that data uses "congestion" which is the ratio of the worst traffic time to the best traffic time. If you look at average commute times austin is way down on the list.
Not because I know anything about Texas or California, or about traffic as a field, but because any data set - especially a list - can be used to present an argument and then be refuted due to "this detail". I see this on HN a lot and I believe that it has made me much less likely to be misled by someone toting data.
Again... LA has a surprisingly extensive subway system. NYC, SF, Miami, DC, and Chicago all have robust public transit. Even San Jose and Seattle have non-negligible transit alternatives.
Austin has essentially nothing, the train they built is legitimately the dumbest, cheapest option that was offered at the time, though they are building dense housing along it now. People often choose which side of the river to live on because of traffic. You're simply not going to convince me that Austin isn't one of the worst cities to commute in, because unless you want to bike in 100ºF heat, you literally have no choice but to engage in it, especially if you have to cross the river.
Have you lived in these places? I mean, come on. Miami does not have robust public transit. You can't possibly call Metrorail robust. Next you'll tell me Atlanta has robust public transit too.
Yes Miami has much worse and much more dangerous traffic than SF. The number of accidents on I-95 is insane. Meanwhile many people in the Bay Area just take BART or walk to work which is essentially impossible in Miami.
North-South traffic in Austin is the big problem. Because Austin stretches from North to South-- from the suburb of Kyle in the South, or the suburb of Georgetown to the North.
East-West commuting is much easier. The wise strategy is to live East/West of town, not North/South.
Seattle's public transportation is poorly connected and confused at best. Mismanaged and terrible at worst. It seems like a ponzi scheme masquerading as a public transportation system, at times. There's a demand for it, which is the sad truth of the situation.
Seattle could be better connected, but it isn’t that bad. If you are going downtown, you can get something, even something lateral Ballard to Bellevue requires just one connection.
As long as Seattle is your source or destination, Seattle's transit is pretty okay.
If you dare go Eastside; or, worse, need to go from like Renton to Totem Lake; or Redmond to somewhere that isn't the the center of Bellevue, you're just never going to get there in a reasonable amount of time.
these are at least all getting addressed with the massive upgrades that are ongoing. Local Eastside transit will be much better once East Link is opened and bus hours wasted on I-90 are redeployed to serve local areas.
Sure, but the east side is fairly anti transit compared to the west side. Look at the drama Bellevue put everyone through for the new link route from Seattle to Redmond via Mercer island.
Also, Renton to Totem Lake should only be one connection given a weird sound transit airport route (590?) from West Seattle to Bellevue that goes through Renton.
They came in at #13 on that list. While traffic's bad in Boston, commuting via public transit is actually a viable alternative. It's very dense and has a solid commuter rail system in addition to an expansive (if aging) subway system. It's also very bike / pedestrian friendly.
That’s true, but Boston has a huge public transit network. My commute, 14 miles from a suburb to downtown, is a 14 minute train ride. Seattle is getting there with the link but it’s still decades away from being even close to what Boston has
As someone that lived in the Bay Area for over 20 years and is now living near Austin, traffic in Austin is nowhere near close to that of the Bay Area. I live 25 miles outside Austin and be downtown in < 40 minutes during rush hour.
As a transplant from Southern CA to TX 4 years ago I can honestly say that traffic in Austin is barely worth mentioning when compared to traffic in Orange County and Los Angeles. In Orange County, I would daily spend hours in a car traveling at average speeds that I could beat on my bicycle. Traffic jams that are 15-20 miles long on 7 lane highways. Even the express lanes would back up to the entrances. People drive over islands and fill up back streets. Anyone who does a daily on the 91 and the 55 from Corona to Irvine can back me up. 8 years ago it was TERRIBLE.
I don't know about the Bay Area, maybe they are better because of reliable transit, but Austin is nowhere near the So. Cal area when it comes to traffic.
Source: while working as a transport planning consultant, I had a private client in Austin. He flew our team around the city in a helicopter, saying "see all this traffic? It's insane!". I'd just flown in from New Delhi. By the standards I was accustomed to, I didn't see any traffic at all.
Certainly Austin does have a need for much better public transit -- and if being upset about traffic is a catalyst for making that investment, then that's great! -- but in that respect it's no different to most other major metropolitan centers in the US.
If you visit Amsterdam or Copenhagen, you know what I mean. The happiness of the people, clear streets and less noice is something you can't explain, but it's better what you can imagine.
Based on my experience dealing with offices of software engineers versus actual corporate HQs for companies that aren't purely software, it really won't matter.
Employees at corporate HQ's tend to want to have houses in the burbs. They tend to be in there 30s and up as well. There is no shortage of suburban real estate in the vicinity of the gigafactory. A minority of employees will live in downtown Austin and hate their life due to the horrific commute out of there.
If you ever do come visit Austin, learn to love I-35.
It's a weird mix of nascar and bumper cars, but also rolling parking lot.
Edit: It's the main way you'll go North/South here. Often times I'll double the commute taking side streets just to avoid 35 - depends on the day/time/personal interest in sport driving.
This is genuinely hilarious. Perhaps this is true at midnight, or during the early days of the pandemic. 17 miles in Austin is well over an hour at peak commuting times.
> And yes, we still hate all the jokers coming in from California who are gladly dropping millions of bucks to buy up houses that just a few years ago were only worth a few hundred thousand.
> Thanks for visiting, but Austin is full. Yankee go home, please.
This NIMBY mentality is why Austin is rapidly catching up to California in housing prices. The advantage is not going to last long at this rate.
(And before you start, I'm like 4th generation native Texan.)
The big difference is that in Austin you have the option to commute a bit for much cheaper housing. But in the bay area you could be commuting over an hour each way and the houses will still be over $1 million.