Boston Or Austin Taking Your Bike Is Faster

Written by Boston Biker on Feb 27

Once upon a time I lived in Austin, then Boston, if any of you know of a city like Costin, Dustin, Eustin…I am kind of trying to go in order.

But enough of that, seems even in a city more or less designed for cars (as Austin is), biking is still faster.  Mostly because cars are too damn big, and there are too many of them, and everyone wants to get into them all at the same time.

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From the AustinPost:

 

It was a simple enough idea. Last Friday, five Austin Post reporters set off across the center of town around 5 p.m. to see how our city’s transportation options stack up: just a little more than four miles through rush hour hell.

 

We avoided the parking lot that was I-35 and the river of cars known as Mopac. No, we were in the mood for a multi-modal race, and we also wanted to test the powers of the new MetroRapid bus. We chose Guadalupe as our race route because it traverses the living, breathing (if not always moving) heart of the city and can be traversed any way you like, short of water travel. And so: 38th and Guadalupe to South Congress and Monroe.

Five travelers, five modes:

• MetroRapid Bus
• Regular Bus
• Car
• Bike
• On Foot

We assumed our pedestrian would come in last. Austin traffic might be horrendous, but there’s no way a not-particularly-athletic person can walk 4.5 miles faster than a car can drive it, right?

Well, you know what they say about assumptions: don’t make any when it comes to how bad Austin traffic can be. We’ll let the results speak for themselves:

 

Yes, that graph is correct: the driver came in last place and took an hour and a half to get 4.5 miles through town. That’s half the time it takes to get to Dallas on a good day. The regular bus didn’t do much better, clocking in at just under 80 minutes.

– See more here:

Amazing, really.  Even the pedestrian beat the car driver…

Best part is this timelapse of the car drivers experience,

(note how different this is than a car commercial)

Tags: austin, bikes rule!, cars drool
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