More “separate” then “Break up”.
i-35 decisively divides downtown Austin and UT from East Austin, a traditionally non-white neighborhood.
When I lived there in the 80s, I would hop on my bicycle (Austin mass transits sucks, but it’s always been a great town for cycling) and in minutes be in the quiet, tree-filled neighborhoods of East Austin where there were chickens in some front yards and white-college-boy-me was eyed suspiciously.
Speaking from my experience using public transportation: if you cut it some people will lose their jobs because it’s the only way they have to get to and from work and building more roads isn’t going to change that.
It’s a funny ad but I think the money could have been better spent on giving this guy a lesson.
35 was always the through-traffic. Loop 1 (aka Mo-Pac) was the loop around the city. If you look on a map, you notice it’s not at all loopy. Compare it to, say, Houston, which built an honest-to-God, way-out-in-the-boonies loop at the same time and let the city fill it in over the course of decades. 183 doesn’t actually travel that north-to-south. It’s more NW to SE. It doesn’t hit downtown, and it goes way out to what used to be considered the fringe of town before it crosses the river.
They did build toll-roads that bypass Austin. Trucks don’t use them, because there’s a toll…
My wife and I moved away 14 years ago, and landed in the D.C. suburbs, which have their own specially craptastic commuter hell (IIRC it is, or was, second only to L.A. in traffic crapulence). I’m fortunate that I now have a 4-mile commute that does not involve the Beltway.
We always figured that we would eventually return to Texas, most likely Austin, but (blasphemy alert) more and more (between the situation you’ve described and news such as this) I’m thinking that it’s a nicer place to visit. I also wonder how/from where the area is going to get enough water.
I’ve always thought that someone in the State Highway Dep’t. had it in for Austin. Not that I think freeways are great, but in contrast, the D/FW area had a full set of 'em when my family moved there in '79 (I’m specifically thinking of how US 287 thru SW Arlington was already built to freeway standards years before there was any development along the route – but OTOH, it did take forever to build out TX 360). Both Dallas and Ft. Worth had freeway loops and now, I believe, Dallas has (or is getting) an outer loop, as well.
EDIT: also consider the fact that Austin was, for years, a rare (or perhaps the only) instance of an at-grade railroad crossing across an Interstate freeway, near I-35’s intersection with Airport Blvd. by Hancock Center. That’s clearly a case of “who-the-fuck-cares” on the part of the Highway Dept. and it wasn’t rectified until they built the upper-level “express” lanes.
I always thought the bigger shortcoming* in the Austin area was that there was no fast route to go east-west across town. But I think what you’re describing was the idea behind TX 130.
*That, or the way how so many people drove well under the posted speed limit.
ETA:
It used to run on what is now Airport Blvd. and then Lamar Blvd. to the latter’s present junction with US 183. Airport Blvd. was then signed “Loop 111” even though (like Loop 1) it doesn’t make any sense in the usual context of a ring road. (Most other places I’ve been would have marked the old route with “Business 183” or whatever.) IIRC East 7th was signed as some loop, I guess that used to be US 290 or TX 71? (Though you’re right, Airport doesn’t quite go thru downtown, either.) North Lamar also carried (IIRC) US 81 and 79 until the fork with Guadalupe which carried those routes downtown. Don’t ask me why I know any of this; it’s the kind of thing I’ve studied on road maps since I was 9 or 10.
Although Dallas’s light rail system has a few problems (mostly with the surface level stations downtown, which force the trains to have to deal with car traffic in a few areas), it’s a dream compared to Austin or Houston. Dallas has more miles of light rail than any other city in the US. Paperless ticketing via phone app is available. The trains go where people want to go, and just the presence of a train station can revitalize a neighborhood. And they connect with the free downtown D-Link bus route, and the two free trolley routes (one with historic, restored trolleys, the other using a modern European-style trolley). I can walk 5 minutes from my home, and be on a train to either of 2 airports, the State Fair, movie theaters, or a food truck park.
Nowadays you would be just another hipster on a bike in East Austin.
I-35 was indeed designed as a divider in Austin many decades ago, and did its job. But rents and real estate is getting expensive, and blacks are moving out to outlying areas (not the ones Daugherty represents, btw) and East Austin is being “gentrified”.
Y’all heard of Franklin BBQ them white people like so much they stand in line for hours for it? East Austin. 20 years ago none of them would’ve gotten out of their cars at that intersection.
Daugherty’s politics play well with his constituency, and he does a good job representing them and looking out for their needs. There ain’t nothing wrong with that - that’s the whole point of the job. They have a voice on the commissioners court, so they can’t complain they aren’t being heard. Fortunately the rest of the county commissioners are Dems.
Ah, that brings back a story.
it’s 1985. I spot a tiny ad for an East Austin Restaurant in the Daily Texan. My fellow white collegians ignore this (G & M Cheeseburgers were the haute cuisine of that moment) , but I suggest to my then girl-friend and fellow hole-in-the-wall enthusiast, a certain Ms. Gonzalez, the we check it out. So we head over on a Saturday night to find this cozy, family Mexican restaurant. Niños, Tias, ranchera music, you get the picture. Seeing that my tiny student budget could actually afford this menu, I decide to live large. I order a beer.
They bring me a Dos Equis (I told you, I was living large) and a chilled glass.
A chilled plastic glass.
As we’re enjoying our enchiladas and rellenos, I bemusedly comment to my companion “we’re the only white people in here,”
She immediately shoots back, “What do you mean ‘we’, white man?”
fond memories.
Something tells me that East Austin is long gone…
Long long gone. El Azteca recently closed. It was like the nail in the proverbial coffin.
I dunno, I used to go over to Sam’s…
Wasn’t that the place where everything came with a side of abuse? Big ugly eel in the fishtank? Individual White Album pictures of the Fab 4 but Paul’s was turned upside-down?
I had linked to it up-thread, but you beat me to mentioning it outright. (And the Tamale House up on Airport closed within the past couple of years or so, as well.)
I guess one might say it’s “hipster BBQ” but I have always loved Ruby’s on 29th (and, for that matter, Milto’s next to it, though I don’t think Milto’s fare has held up quite as well). Austin’s still Austin, to me, if Ruby’s is still there.
Luke passed a few years ago, but his wife Pat still works hard making good barbecue. It’s not hipster, because it predates hipsterism by many years. They catered to the blues crowd at first. The early workers there I knew were punks.
And yeah, I’ve been to Sam’s, too, back in the day. But the folks who went to Sam’s aren’t the same as the ones who go to Franklin.
Didn’t know that about Luke… I’ve seen Pat there every so often when I’ve stopped in on my Austin visits (once or twice a year). Maybe “hipster” wasn’t quite right but I’m thinking of their side dishes, compared to those of other BBQ places (e.g. Ruby’s potato salad vs. Bill Miller’s). Yeah, I remember the blues crowd from when Antone’s was still around the corner;
If he’s currently in office and annoying his wife and friends with policy wonkery at home, how will reëlecting him help them? He’s still going to be droning on if he stays in office; maybe if he had to get a different job he’d have something else to talk about.
yep.on the south end of the Drag.
They would take pictures of people they really wanted to abuse and post the pictures with insulting comments. (This was pre-internet; recreational social shaming with pictures wasn’t really a thing back then). I still remember the picture of the young lady who, heaven forfend, ordered a a double cheeseburger with no meat. She was singled out for special abuse.
The burgers were usually undercooked because they were busy and, as best as I could tell, no one working there gave a shit. It was mostly a frat-boy place, so I kept hoping for an e. coli outbreak…
This is way off topic, but…
GM installed a microphone at the register and a speaker pointed at the sidewalk. They’d even insult passersby through the window.
One time they had a carburetor sitting on the counter for no reason. One guy who ordered a burger was asked if he wanted everything on it.
“Yeah”
“Carburetor?”
"Whatever"
He was then served what was probably the only carburetor burger ever served at a restaurant.
The '80’s were good times.
Actual jaw dropping occurred here.
It looks like the specific reason they left it that way was that they expected the rail line to be abandoned. Instead, Southern Pacific purchased it and immediately put it back into use. (Google books)
IIRC, Capital Metro has owned the trackage for a long time, and they lease it to the operator (which is indeed a freight line). But I’d guess that they have to turn it over to freight operation, whether due to the terms of the lease, or ICC requirements, or both. I also seem to remember that, back in the '90s, the tracks were no longer rated for passenger service at all. They must have upgraded them where they needed to, but I suspect I’d guess correctly that they didn’t bother to (or maybe no longer had room) to double-track the line.
I’d totally agree that it wasn’t too bright to place them on the same right-of-way set of tracks. (That happens here in Maryland, where MARC trains run on CSX lines, but the stations are convenient to use, and people have lived live along the line for decades because it was originally the B&O. ETA: In some places they’re adjacent to the Metro lines, or rather, Metro used the existing right-of-way.)
bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!
The US has become a dumping-ground for sub-code products.
