What’s the Worst Intersection in Austin?

The intersection of Barton Springs Road and South Lamar Boulevard is just a mess. Image: Google Maps

For such a simple question, we’ve heard endless possible answers, so we’d like to ask our readers. Click here to fill out our survey, or use the embedded form below:

We’re mostly interested in troublesome intersections in the central city, like downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods, but we’re sure there’s plenty out there either way. A lot of factors are going to motivate people regarding their personal choices about which one is really the worst, but in this case, we’re looking for an intersection that checks all the boxes — poorly-designed and dangerous, especially for pedestrians and cyclists, but probably not even that great for drivers. Extra points for intersections that somehow manage to screw over transit riders, wheelchair users, children, senior citizens, and so forth.

Things can get pretty hairy at West Riverside and South First Street.

We can immediately think of a few candidates, like the seven-lane mess at Barton Springs Road and South Lamar Boulevard, or perhaps the misaligned and pedestrian-unfriendly gateway to the Rainey Street District at Cesar Chavez and Red River Streets. Still, we’re expecting people’s choices to surprise us, and that’s the point. If a few top contenders emerge in this survey, we’ll probably run some sort of tournament bracket until a winner emerges — then, we’re going to figure out what it would take to fix that intersection and aggressively promote those fixes. That’s civic pride!

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