I'm going to begin a personal rant on Austin's traffic and its pigs. If you love Austin's traffic situation and dislike listening to rants, please conveniently save yourself time and delete this message.
Otherwise, off we go.
It seems like a great situation for the city. Hypothetically, we have 5,000 parking spaces total in the viscinity of downtown Austin, UT campus, and the surrounding areas of the highly esteemed University we hear of so much.
We then, hypothetically, have 10,000 vehicles that routinely travel on Austin's piece of sh!t, pot hole-ridden, one-way, 2-laned "roads". In addition to the overcrowded situation of Austin, you then add a motley of vague traffic laws and an overabundance of enforcement officers (don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against too many police officers but wouldn't they have something better to do than write parking tickets all day? Apparently not.). I wonder how much money Austin's transportation / DMV department gets from all these fines.
The fines. At the rate I'm going I'll have enough money paid in fines to buy this IT machine everyone's keeps talking about.
This morning I dropped off a friend at the airport. I took her bags in and said goodbye. I was in the airport for perhaps 5 minutes with my car outside the terminal, hazard lights on and engine running.
Do you know if you idle in your car for more than minute at the terminal they can and will write you a ticket?
Do you know that if you leave your car in front of the terminal unattended, it gets a parking fine issued by an airport security officer at the terminal. That officer then calls the towing service. If you happened to run out to talk to the officer at this point, there's nothing one can do but sit and wait for the towing service to get to the terminal before paying him off. They were "nice" and charged me the night fee of $30 instead of the day fee of $50.
So basically you get a parking fine and you get your car towed. For leaving your car unattended for more than a minute.
Apparently paying off the towing service is entirely at their discretion. The cop said it might be $50 during the day, but he had towed another car approximately 20 minutes earlier and the tower was paid off with $15. However, once the towing service gets to the terminal, the guy looks at my car and said it would cost $30. Geez, thanks. Maybe I should put a couple cracks in my windshield, run on 4 spares, break a headlight or two, and just in general rape my car so I look like I don't have money. Regardless of the fact I work a good 35+ hours a week (my car was more or less a gift, I would never have had enough money to buy it new).
Oh and beware of I-35 & 183. Once I was driving up to Austin and got pulled over for doing 82 in a 60 zone (this was before my Valentine1). At the same time, I then looked ahead and saw two more pigs writing tickets for two different cars. In my mom's green Accord too.
And if you ever park with your left wheel to the curb, that's a $35 fine (early payment discount).
Never park backwards into a parking spot either. Apparently our enforcement officers are hard at work even at 2:56 in the morning. Well, at least they have enough energy to write parking tickets at that time.
Don't ever think you can park somewhere where you're not supposed to on Sunday nights at 11pm. The pigs can and will catch you.
If you ever get a ticket, read the back for what they can fine you for and be careful not to break any of them. Because if you do, they will catch you.
You know, after getting home from the airport this morning, I took the WC shuttle to work. On the way from 26th street to 21st street, I saw five parking tickets on five different cars. My my, our enforcement officers are sure hard at work.
And Austin's roads. How come there are so many one way roads and all of them have potholes / deep ditches? I drive a dropped car (dropped by the previous owner, *shrugs*) but if you look at the quality of the front bumper on a lot of cars it's quite horrendous. Eclipses have a low front end and those are usually scratched. You see the occasional economy car with the front end cracked and hanging on one side, most likely the direct result of the ditches around Austin. If they're fining so many people, why aren't the words any better? Where does all that money go?
All of this just seems like legalized bribery. "Unless you pay this tower whatever he names, your car will be impounded." Oh wait, I'm sorry. Texas has the safety inspection requirement.
Safety inspection requirements has as many flaws in it as the fleas on the garage attendent who performs the "inspection". There are an unbelievable amount of ways to get around this not to mention how useless this process was to begin with.
They give your car a "safety" inspection. If your car doesn't pass the safety inspection, then you:
1) get the vehicle parts fixed
2) find a mom & pop garage that lets you get away with the questionable items
3) if it's an aftermarket item then you switch it back to stock, have it inspected, then switch it back out to the aftermarket item.
Not to mention, regardless if you have a current up to date inspection sticker or not, if a cop sees your car with items that he feels is illegal, he will pull you over. So why do we have safety inspections again? Where does all the money from safety inspections go again?
The highways? Don't get me wrong, I think highways in Texas are great. Especially after driving through Arkansas. If so, why does Austin's roads suck a big fat one?
Whoever came up with the double-decker I-35 idea with 10 ft entrance / exit ramps? Who intersects roads with "highways" (Loop 1 / south Mopac, TX71 / Ben White, 183 / Research Blvd) and puts stop lights everywhere? Why don't they build overpasses and just have the intersecting roads go underneat the highway? Woah! That's a new concept.
And you thought they couldn't screw that up. Instead of having a path to exit off at a particular road (Loop 1 / Mopac & 24th Street / Windsor) where you exit via an offramp, and then reach an intersection by which you make a left or right, At Mopac and Windsor you slow down to 25 mph (I'm surprised they didn't make a 10ft exit ramp for this one) and then pull a tight, small, loop to reach the same exact destination. My horrible attempt at ASCII art (I always pronounced this as ass-key and not a-see):
Normal method:
| | |
| |_|____
| |_____
| | |
| | |
| /
| /
| /
| |
Austin's method:
| | _____
| | / ___ \
| | / / \ \
| |/ / | |
| | | / /
| /____/ /________
| /_______________
| /
| |
Screw the dual-names for each road too. As pointed out before, why is each highway given a second name (roads too). You have:
Loop 1 = Mopac
183 = Research Blvd
TX 71 (when you drive further west it changes names again) = Ben White
24th Street = Windsor
26th Street = Dean Keaton (which I'd like to say is quite difficult trying to find the exit off of I-35S at night if you don't know exactly where it is)
I am totally and utterly disgusted with the traffic / road situation here in Austin.
Otherwise, off we go.
It seems like a great situation for the city. Hypothetically, we have 5,000 parking spaces total in the viscinity of downtown Austin, UT campus, and the surrounding areas of the highly esteemed University we hear of so much.
We then, hypothetically, have 10,000 vehicles that routinely travel on Austin's piece of sh!t, pot hole-ridden, one-way, 2-laned "roads". In addition to the overcrowded situation of Austin, you then add a motley of vague traffic laws and an overabundance of enforcement officers (don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against too many police officers but wouldn't they have something better to do than write parking tickets all day? Apparently not.). I wonder how much money Austin's transportation / DMV department gets from all these fines.
The fines. At the rate I'm going I'll have enough money paid in fines to buy this IT machine everyone's keeps talking about.
This morning I dropped off a friend at the airport. I took her bags in and said goodbye. I was in the airport for perhaps 5 minutes with my car outside the terminal, hazard lights on and engine running.
Do you know if you idle in your car for more than minute at the terminal they can and will write you a ticket?
Do you know that if you leave your car in front of the terminal unattended, it gets a parking fine issued by an airport security officer at the terminal. That officer then calls the towing service. If you happened to run out to talk to the officer at this point, there's nothing one can do but sit and wait for the towing service to get to the terminal before paying him off. They were "nice" and charged me the night fee of $30 instead of the day fee of $50.
So basically you get a parking fine and you get your car towed. For leaving your car unattended for more than a minute.
Apparently paying off the towing service is entirely at their discretion. The cop said it might be $50 during the day, but he had towed another car approximately 20 minutes earlier and the tower was paid off with $15. However, once the towing service gets to the terminal, the guy looks at my car and said it would cost $30. Geez, thanks. Maybe I should put a couple cracks in my windshield, run on 4 spares, break a headlight or two, and just in general rape my car so I look like I don't have money. Regardless of the fact I work a good 35+ hours a week (my car was more or less a gift, I would never have had enough money to buy it new).
Oh and beware of I-35 & 183. Once I was driving up to Austin and got pulled over for doing 82 in a 60 zone (this was before my Valentine1). At the same time, I then looked ahead and saw two more pigs writing tickets for two different cars. In my mom's green Accord too.
And if you ever park with your left wheel to the curb, that's a $35 fine (early payment discount).
Never park backwards into a parking spot either. Apparently our enforcement officers are hard at work even at 2:56 in the morning. Well, at least they have enough energy to write parking tickets at that time.
Don't ever think you can park somewhere where you're not supposed to on Sunday nights at 11pm. The pigs can and will catch you.
If you ever get a ticket, read the back for what they can fine you for and be careful not to break any of them. Because if you do, they will catch you.
You know, after getting home from the airport this morning, I took the WC shuttle to work. On the way from 26th street to 21st street, I saw five parking tickets on five different cars. My my, our enforcement officers are sure hard at work.
And Austin's roads. How come there are so many one way roads and all of them have potholes / deep ditches? I drive a dropped car (dropped by the previous owner, *shrugs*) but if you look at the quality of the front bumper on a lot of cars it's quite horrendous. Eclipses have a low front end and those are usually scratched. You see the occasional economy car with the front end cracked and hanging on one side, most likely the direct result of the ditches around Austin. If they're fining so many people, why aren't the words any better? Where does all that money go?
All of this just seems like legalized bribery. "Unless you pay this tower whatever he names, your car will be impounded." Oh wait, I'm sorry. Texas has the safety inspection requirement.
Safety inspection requirements has as many flaws in it as the fleas on the garage attendent who performs the "inspection". There are an unbelievable amount of ways to get around this not to mention how useless this process was to begin with.
They give your car a "safety" inspection. If your car doesn't pass the safety inspection, then you:
1) get the vehicle parts fixed
2) find a mom & pop garage that lets you get away with the questionable items
3) if it's an aftermarket item then you switch it back to stock, have it inspected, then switch it back out to the aftermarket item.
Not to mention, regardless if you have a current up to date inspection sticker or not, if a cop sees your car with items that he feels is illegal, he will pull you over. So why do we have safety inspections again? Where does all the money from safety inspections go again?
The highways? Don't get me wrong, I think highways in Texas are great. Especially after driving through Arkansas. If so, why does Austin's roads suck a big fat one?
Whoever came up with the double-decker I-35 idea with 10 ft entrance / exit ramps? Who intersects roads with "highways" (Loop 1 / south Mopac, TX71 / Ben White, 183 / Research Blvd) and puts stop lights everywhere? Why don't they build overpasses and just have the intersecting roads go underneat the highway? Woah! That's a new concept.
And you thought they couldn't screw that up. Instead of having a path to exit off at a particular road (Loop 1 / Mopac & 24th Street / Windsor) where you exit via an offramp, and then reach an intersection by which you make a left or right, At Mopac and Windsor you slow down to 25 mph (I'm surprised they didn't make a 10ft exit ramp for this one) and then pull a tight, small, loop to reach the same exact destination. My horrible attempt at ASCII art (I always pronounced this as ass-key and not a-see):
Normal method:
| | |
| |_|____
| |_____
| | |
| | |
| /
| /
| /
| |
Austin's method:
| | _____
| | / ___ \
| | / / \ \
| |/ / | |
| | | / /
| /____/ /________
| /_______________
| /
| |
Screw the dual-names for each road too. As pointed out before, why is each highway given a second name (roads too). You have:
Loop 1 = Mopac
183 = Research Blvd
TX 71 (when you drive further west it changes names again) = Ben White
24th Street = Windsor
26th Street = Dean Keaton (which I'd like to say is quite difficult trying to find the exit off of I-35S at night if you don't know exactly where it is)
I am totally and utterly disgusted with the traffic / road situation here in Austin.
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