Shoal Creek, flowing roughly 11 miles from its headwaters north of Highway 183 to Lady Bird Lake, is one of the two major creeks running through downtown Austin. That fact alone makes it relevant to any conversation about the peaceful coexistence of the natural and built environments in the urban core, but it doesn’t seem…
cycling
Lockless and Flockless: The State of Austin’s Dockless Vehicle Pilot Program
If you hadn’t heard, Austin has a newfangled pilot program for dockless bikes and scooters. This is awesome because scooters are awesome and bikes are awesome, and if you disagree, I’ll leave you in my scooter dust, at no more than 15 miles per hour. via GIPHY So, now that we’re a month into the city’s new dockless regulations, let’s…
Work Begins on Lady Bird Lake Trail Bridge Under Congress Avenue
The Trail Foundation, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to the upkeep of the city’s Hike and Bike Trail, celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony last night commemorating the start of construction on a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge for the stretch of the trail underneath the north end of the Congress Avenue Bridge. According to the foundation, the bridge is planned…
Getting to Know East Austin’s Chestnut Plaza
It’s kind of cliche at this point to mention how much a particular area of East Austin has changed. Still, if the breakneck pace of development on this side of town continues, it’s in our best interest to make this growth as smart as possible. That’s the intended goal of the Transit Oriented-Development (TOD) known as Chestnut Plaza emerging around…
Can Austin’s Bike-Sharing Go Dockless Without the Entire City Losing Its Mind?
Earlier this month, a former mayor of San Luis Obispo, California, wrote a letter to the editor of that town’s newspaper in which he felt it perfectly acceptable and cool to describe a proposed bikeway as a “gigantic urban rape.” “Yes, rape!” Ken Schwartz wrote before graciously elaborating, “No other word would be proper. The rape will not…
What’s Next for Shoal Creek? 12 Improvements to Expect
If you’ve followed the ongoing saga of downtown for a few decades, you might be suffering from Shoal Creek Fatigue. Since the Civilian Conservation Corps developed formal trails along the waterway in the 1930s, we’ve seen plans for improvements to all or part of the Shoal Creek corridor in 1976, 1998, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2016,…