BIKE: Moving back to Austin area

[Mike Dahmus]

Dennis Abbott wrote:

>Well, I started riding my route on Wednesday.  I'm pretty close over
>in Wells Branch and I just shoot through Grand Ave Parkway(long light
>under i35) and then take the feeder as suggested to the Target parking
>lot.  That parking lot is totally empty in the mornings.  4.5 miles
>one-way and I get there 5 minutes quicker than by car.  Lots of cars
>to deal with but they are all going about 5 miles an hour.  I don't
>see how these people can sit in a car that long.  Return trip is a
>little scarier.  Suprisingly Dell has no bike racks, showers cost you
>$14 a month, and there is no shuttle to campuses outside of the RR
>campus(I need to go to Parmer once a week at least).  If there was a
>cap metro bus stop near any part of that RR campus I would live in
>central Austin in a second.  There is a bus (495?) that hits the
>Parmer campus but then I would still need to get to RR and the Dell
>shuttle does not run to Parmer.  If there are any other Dell employees
>on this list maybe we could get together and push Dell for a little
>more bicycle friendly conditions.  My list would be:
>*shower room in every building seperate from externally managed
>fitness center(or shower only membership)
>*bike racks at each building
>*cap metro bus stop at each campus(most likely impossible)
>*use political clout to get true mass transit connected to the campuses
>*use political clout to make sure that all new construction around the
>campuses accomodates bicycles or at least does not make cycling
>impossible(is there some state law I could gripe to TxDOT about that
>forces bike accomodation?)
>  
>
Are you kidding me?

TXDOT is all-powerful; there is no lever you can use against them at 
all, save CAMPO, and that lever is a weak one indeed.

As for Capital Metro - impossible. Round Rock and Pflugerville don't pay 
Capital Metro taxes; and they're getting more Cap Metro service than 
they deserve already (as Patrick Goetz likes to point out - CM just 
moved a bus stop barely inside the service area; the same Pfolks use the 
bus as ever; but now they don't have to pay the taxes that provide most 
of the revenue for it). I'll be fighting long and hard against any 
efforts to further deliver transit service to suburbs that don't pay at 
the expense of Austin (which does) - commuter rail is bad enough.

- MD