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What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?


crash_davis

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31 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Ended up January with six homicides.

This includes the one where the guy out on zero bail after being arrested a month earlier for carrying a weapon while being a felon (second time) killed his girlfriend... allegedly. As well, one of those homicides stemmed from the game room where Guy A kills security guard and second security guard then kills Guy A. Counts as two homicides even though no charges are brought against the second security guard.

Here's how it stacks up against previous years:

2020: 5
2021: 5
2022: 11
2023: 9
2024: 6

A nice downtick, but 2021 actually ended with the most of any of those years as we came out of COVID. 

 

2023 would have been lower if it wasn't for some crazy dude from SATX choosing Austin for his crime spree

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1 hour ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Ended up January with six homicides.

This includes the one where the guy out on zero bail after being arrested a month earlier for carrying a weapon while being a felon (second time) killed his girlfriend... allegedly. As well, one of those homicides stemmed from the game room where Guy A kills security guard and second security guard then kills Guy A. Counts as two homicides even though no charges are brought against the second security guard.

Here's how it stacks up against previous years:

2020: 5
2021: 5
2022: 11
2023: 9
2024: 6

A nice downtick, but 2021 actually ended with the most of any of those years as we came out of COVID. 

 

February says hold my beer. Shooting at a Super 8 in the middle of the night? Drugs absolutely had nothing to do with it.

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/police-investigating-homicide-in-south-austin-motel/

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Austin police said they are investigating a deadly shooting at a south Austin motel as a homicide early Thursday morning.

Police said one adult is dead at the Super 8 Motel on the southbound Service Road of Interstate 35 just south of U.S. Highway 290.

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4 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

Agreed.  I don't get it.  She's 11.  We've failed as parents.

Buy her some frozen Lenders brand bagels she can make anytime at home. I’m sure they are similar quality/texture.

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Buy her some frozen Lenders brand bagels she can make anytime at home. I’m sure they are similar quality/texture.
Better yet, buy them but don't tell her. Make one, stick it in a Starbucks bag and tell her you stopped and got her one.
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4 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

Agreed.  I don't get it.  She's 11.  We've failed as parents.

Naw, sometimes at 11, they just derive comfort from that one thing. Our kids didn't get to eat out much but they each had that one treat or place that was just theirs. Since I was usually the one carting them around everywhere, sometimes I'd ask my husband to do those kinds of visits so that they could have a little time together.

But there is a definite hierarchy in bagel quality.

 

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7 hours ago, crash_davis said:

February says hold my beer. Shooting at a Super 8 in the middle of the night? Drugs absolutely had nothing to do with it.

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/police-investigating-homicide-in-south-austin-motel/

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Austin police said they are investigating a deadly shooting at a south Austin motel as a homicide early Thursday morning.

Police said one adult is dead at the Super 8 Motel on the southbound Service Road of Interstate 35 just south of U.S. Highway 290.

Somebody's evening didn't go so well

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On 11/8/2023 at 4:37 PM, blacklab said:

Holy shit WFT on barton springs. Haven't been that way in a while, and now the only way to Mopac from the river to 70/290 is one fucking lane in each direction?

Made a round trip and used it twice. Hundreds of cars, traffic backed up eastbound, and I saw one dude on a bike between mopac and lamar. This was around 10-11am. I can't imagine how bad it is during rush hour.

 

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The bicycle lobby is the number one thing about Austin that fucking sucks, and that's saying something.  These unused lanes all over town are so completely stupid, and on the rare occasion you see someone using them, it's a goober in spandex getting exercise, not a commuter.  We shouldn't be subsidizing workouts for middle-aged assholes too embarrassed by their slight frame to step foot in a real gym, especially at the expense of functional roadways.  If I thought for a second that large numbers of people would commute via bike in this town, I'd be all for it, but they won't and they never will.  There are plenty of great cities in climates that make commuting via bicycle a reasonable option.  Austin is not one of them.

I don't know how the morons got control of everything, but it's like living in a bizarro world here sometimes. That news story about Barton Springs is hilarious.   They couldn't even find someone on a bicycle using the new lane for their b-roll, so they had to create a photo op with Meg Merrit, Austin resident and "transportation expert," just to show someone actually using a bicycle on this stupid fucking waste of money.  We're a clown show.

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4 hours ago, Mittens said:

 

I freaking HATE that change.  I love how they're doing it to prevent speeding.  "We've forced everyone to follow that one assclown that texts and drives 10 under the limit."  The bike cucks can eat a bag 'o Stoops'.

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Everyone that was involved with the Barton springs to one lane each way decision should be shot to the fucking moon and forced into involuntary slavery for the benefit of creating spiked dildos to fuck their own asses with. Stupid fucking idiots. 

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On 2/1/2024 at 8:41 AM, Samson's Wig said:

Absolutely. No need to involve anyone else.  DM me your address and we can chat about it.

No need to hop over to SSS, I got some footage from the Starbucks and ID'ed his license plate.

That license plate is like a rash all over the computer. The car belongs to a known traffic menace. His name is @Eastwood.  He's got a record a mile long.  And he's a Teacher. The address? 1060 West Addison.

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3 hours ago, sidis said:

Everyone that was involved with the Barton springs to one lane each way decision should be shot to the fucking moon and forced into involuntary slavery for the benefit of creating spiked dildos to fuck their own asses with. Stupid fucking idiots. 

Sure. Other than the fact that it made the street a ton safer, didn’t make traffic any worse, and made the people who use the road happy yall have a great point about removing a lane from Barton Springs.

but I’ll admit it makes the “everything was better in 19XX” crowd mad and the view from Leander is pretty bleak. Yall should call Todd and Donn and cry more.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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8 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Sure. Other than the fact that it made the street a ton safer, didn’t make traffic any worse, and made the people who use the road happy yall have a great point about removing a lane from Barton Springs.

but I’ll admit it makes the “everything was better in 19XX” crowd mad and the view from Leander is pretty bleak. Yall should call Todd and Donn and cry more.

I use the road virtually every day and live less than half a mile from it. Traffic is many orders of magnitude worse, I am a lot less happy using it, everyone I know that uses it with any frequency fucking rage hates it, it backs traffic up all the way from azie morton through the park to the mopac service road routinely, and I suspect you have no actual empirical basis to say it Is any safer yet given we are merely six months into this idiotic experiment.  Or maybe you think a tower.net blog entry saying they saw a twitter post one time is actual data satisfying an event study comparison.  

I don’t know who Todd and Donn are I don’t understand the Leander or 19xx red herrings other than to say they are ineffective and unpersuasive. 

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28 minutes ago, sidis said:

I use the road virtually every day and live less than half a mile from it. Traffic is many orders of magnitude worse, I am a lot less happy using it, everyone I know that uses it with any frequency fucking rage hates it, it backs traffic up all the way from azie morton through the park to the mopac service road routinely, and I suspect you have no actual empirical basis to say it Is any safer yet given we are merely six months into this idiotic experiment.  Or maybe you think a tower.net blog entry saying they saw a twitter post one time is actual data satisfying an event study comparison.  

I don’t know who Todd and Donn are I don’t understand the Leander or 19xx red herrings other than to say they are ineffective and unpersuasive. 

I was drunk when I posted that and regret nothing.

that said, I’d like to see a real traffic study, because everyone I know over there says it’s about the same traffic wise and it seems silly to say congestion is anything like “an order of magnitude worse” since that’s not how traffic impacts from lane reductions on a road like that work.
as for experience, when I use it Im either walking or on a bicycle (not cycling, just cruising around) and from that side it’s 1000x better.

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27 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Why the fuck can’t Austin make a straight fucking line on the road with all these mobility improvements?

Because most of Austin’s post-war grid was designed with the express intention of discouraging travel between neighborhoods and incorporated federal guidelines to ensure STRICT separation between commercial and residential land uses and funnel cars onto a relatively small number of arterial roads and major highways*. 
in other words the grid was designed to be inefficient brittle and it worked! Absent about a half trillion of right-of-way acquisitions and rebuilding on a scale of Haussman’s renovation of Paris, it can’t make straight lines out of loops and spirals.
 

 

* Not hyperbole. That’s what they meant to do. Austin is not unique in that respect, just an exceptional example due to our growth trajectory over the last 75 years.

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9 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Sure. Other than the fact that it made the street a ton safer, didn’t make traffic any worse, and made the people who use the road happy yall have a great point about removing a lane from Barton Springs.

but I’ll admit it makes the “everything was better in 19XX” crowd mad and the view from Leander is pretty bleak. Yall should call Todd and Donn and cry more.

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET TO PIZZA NIZZA NOW?!?!

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20 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I was drunk when I posted that and regret nothing.

that said, I’d like to see a real traffic study, because everyone I know over there says it’s about the same traffic wise and it seems silly to say congestion is anything like “an order of magnitude worse” since that’s not how traffic impacts from lane reductions on a road like that work.
as for experience, when I use it Im either walking or on a bicycle (not cycling, just cruising around) and from that side it’s 1000x better.

The congestion I am referring to is the traffic upstream of the bottleneck eastbound. Everyone going into azie Morton getting funneled into one lane…people in the right lane pretending they don’t know it is coming and forcing a merge and fucking everything up like it is an exit lane on mopac. The congestion is through the park back to mopac upstream of azie. And it is fucking awful. I will acknowledge that westbound from lamar is not nearly as bad and I think a reasonable compromise is achievable to have two lanes eastbound and one west and give the ped/bikes a comfortably wide area on the north side of the road (which is where everyone wants to be anyway) that unburdens the light at A.M. eastbound and gives non vehicular mobility increased safety and a better experience. 

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5 minutes ago, sidis said:

The congestion I am referring to is the traffic upstream of the bottleneck eastbound. Everyone going into azie Morton getting funneled into one lane…people in the right lane pretending they don’t know it is coming and forcing a merge and fucking everything up like it is an exit lane on mopac. The congestion is through the park back to mopac upstream of azie. And it is fucking awful. I will acknowledge that westbound from lamar is not nearly as bad and I think a reasonable compromise is achievable to have two lanes eastbound and one west and give the ped/bikes a comfortably wide area on the north side of the road (which is where everyone wants to be anyway) that unburdens the light at A.M. eastbound and gives non vehicular mobility increased safety and a better experience. 

I can see that. Another major improvement they could make to throughput would be to replace all the controlled intersections between MoPac and Lamar with traffic circles and build a roundabout at Lamar and Barton Springs. Basically peak speed comes down, but throughput goes way, way up and congestion gets smoothed out by eliminating backups at timed stops.
And BTW traffic engineers know this, and it’s cheaper than most of the alternatives, but the political blowback would be too intense and nobody wants to take it on. 

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While I would welcome some new roundabout overlords throughout the city including all along Barton springs, it would require a driver reeducation program to teach people what to do. Putting one at Barton and Lamar would resemble the clusterfuck of throngs of tourists trying to navigate the arc de triomphe roundabout. 

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20 minutes ago, sidis said:

While I would welcome some new roundabout overlords throughout the city including all along Barton springs, it would require a driver reeducation program to teach people what to do. Putting one at Barton and Lamar would resemble the clusterfuck of throngs of tourists trying to navigate the arc de triomphe roundabout. 

People think that, but Ironically, it doesn’t turn out to be an obstacle. Take the roundabout at 51st and the SB I35 access road. Because of the location, a huge percentage of the people going through that intersection at any given moment are unfamiliar with it.
Despite this, It’s the *most* successful traffic improvement in Austin in the last 25 years- it eliminated a major cause of congestion and a daily afternoon traffic jam, increased the throughput of the intersection while simultaneously making it safe and easier for pedestrians, and decreased the number of accidents overall and virtually *eliminated* injury accidents at that location. People figure it out and problems are rare.

That intersection was something like a worst case scenario, so putting a roundabout there was like testing a pain medication on a terminal patient. Barton Springs and Lamar would be a better candidate to succeed. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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52 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Because most of Austin’s post-war grid was designed with the express intention of discouraging travel between neighborhoods and incorporated federal guidelines to ensure STRICT separation between commercial and residential land uses and funnel cars onto a relatively small number of arterial roads and major highways*. 
in other words the grid was designed to be inefficient brittle and it worked! Absent about a half trillion of right-of-way acquisitions and rebuilding on a scale of Haussman’s renovation of Paris, it can’t make straight lines out of loops and spirals.
 

 

* Not hyperbole. That’s what they meant to do. Austin is not unique in that respect, just an exceptional example due to our growth trajectory over the last 75 years.

 

IMG_4529.gif

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13 hours ago, Serak The Preparer said:

No need to hop over to SSS, I got some footage from the Starbucks and ID'ed his license plate.

That license plate is like a rash all over the computer. The car belongs to a known traffic menace. His name is @Eastwood.  He's got a record a mile long.  And he's a Teacher. The address? 1060 West Addison.

As a former Chicago resident, I recognize that address well.  If that's where he can be found, he's okay in my book.

The Blues Brothers Happy Birthday Brother GIF

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Drove by the hotel on Mopac near Wells Branch that the city bought years ago to house the homeless. Completely boarded up. Total waste of money. Meanwhile, seeing more tents creep closer to the neighborhood. Gee, why is Austin losing so many families in AISD?

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The lane narrowing on 31st and shoal creek right by the school is the stupidest fucking thing in the history of the world. Between the new super wide bike lanes and walk lane and the cars parked on the road it’s basically one lane that cars going opposite directions are left to fight over. Turned a peaceful little street into thunder dome every weekday morning. I would be livid if I lived on that street.

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4 minutes ago, Gale Snoats said:

The lane narrowing on 31st and shoal creek right by the school is the stupidest fucking thing in the history of the world. Between the new super wide bike lanes and walk lane and the cars parked on the road it’s basically one lane that cars going opposite directions are left to fight over. Turned a peaceful little street into thunder dome every weekday morning. I would be livid if I lived on that street.

The ideologues are happy, and that's what matters most.  

How ugly these unused bike lanes make neighborhoods is an overlooked aspect of this foolish practice.  In addition to being much more difficult for vehicles Shoal Creek and similar streets are now an awful eyesore, all at the expense of those who actually live there and for the benefit of almost no one.   The folks who own houses on that street are lucky to live in such an insane housing market, as that crap would make your home almost worthless in most places.  Even here, it's going to put you at a relative disadvantage when selling.   

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People think that, but Ironically, it doesn’t turn out to be an obstacle. Take the roundabout at 51st and the SB I35 access road. Because of the location, a huge percentage of the people going through that intersection at any given moment are unfamiliar with it.
Despite this, It’s the *most* successful traffic improvement in Austin in the last 25 years- it eliminated a major cause of congestion and a daily afternoon traffic jam, increased the throughput of the intersection while simultaneously making it safe and easier for pedestrians, and decreased the number of accidents overall and virtually *eliminated* injury accidents at that location. People figure it out and problems are rare.
That intersection was something like a worst case scenario, so putting a roundabout there was like testing a pain medication on a terminal patient. Barton Springs and Lamar would be a better candidate to succeed. 
The roundabout at 35/51st is the biggest clusteruck to get through because it is/was a 3-way stop. That means that westbound traffic never has to stop and yield unless some moron going eastbound is doing a u-turn. Southbound frontage road traffic backs up a lot during certain times of the day because the westbound traffic never seems to stop. Roundabouts should only be used at 4-way stops.
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15 hours ago, Serak The Preparer said:

No need to hop over to SSS, I got some footage from the Starbucks and ID'ed his license plate.

That license plate is like a rash all over the computer. The car belongs to a known traffic menace. His name is @Eastwood.  He's got a record a mile long.  And he's a Teacher. The address? 1060 West Addison.

Close. But I'm not Catholic.

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The roundabout at 35/51st is the biggest clusteruck to get through because it is/was a 3-way stop. That means that westbound traffic never has to stop and yield unless some moron going eastbound is doing a u-turn. Southbound frontage road traffic backs up a lot during certain times of the day because the westbound traffic never seems to stop. Roundabouts should only be used at 4-way stops.

Sounds like it works great for the stepford citizens to get over to real austin so no wonder that dude likes it.

I don’t know because I don’t go over there ever, although I do like the carousel lounge.
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