Austin weather is good, actually
And it's good for bikes.
There's not a great deal of news to report, so I'm going to devote today's newsletter to a deeply stupid argument against pedestrian and bike infrastructure that refuses to die: it's too hot in Austin!!
By no means do I intend to diminish the very serious long-term climate concerns facing Central Texas or to deny the suckiness of the increasingly hot summers. Some people really don't like them. It's one of the reasons my wife demanded we move last year.
But weather is also one of the reasons so many people have moved to Austin over the past half-century. On average the year-round weather is pretty damn good.
People don't move to Austin for the four months of the year when the average high is above 90. They come for the eight months (October-May) when the average high is never below 60 and the average low is never below 40.
On a personal level, the "it's too hot" critique never resonated with me because I would much rather bike in 100-degree weather than 30-degree weather, let alone 10-degree weather. Electric bikes make a hilly summer ride in Austin a lot less sweaty, but they don't offer any relief from an icy road or bone-chilling wind.
When people say Austin is too hot for bikes, I always wonder what city they imagine is ideal for them. Minneapolis, where the average low in January is 8 degrees? Seattle, where it rains every other day? Do they imagine that the cycling meccas of northern Europe — Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm — only built bike lanes because the outdoors in those places are perennially pleasant?
And then there's Seville, the city of 700,000 in southern Spain whose average temperatures are strikingly similar to Austin's:
Few used to bike in Seville, but after the city government undertook an ambitious effort to build bike infrastructure, cycling trips increased more than ten fold.
True, Seville is drier and flatter than Austin, but the bottom line is that climate does not have nearly as great of an influence on travel mode as infrastructure. Biking on South Lamar is uncomfortable at any temperature. That people would avoid biking on it is the result of a policy choice.
To say that Austin is too hot for bikes is like saying Austin is too hot for parks. Why do outdoor basketball courts and soccer fields even exist in Austin? Don't people know how hot it gets? And what's up with all those restaurants and bars with outdoor seating? Don't they know how hot it gets?
A couple summers ago I visited Montreal and took a bike tour of the city, which has a fantastic network of protected bike lanes. I asked the tour guide if he biked in the winter. Fuck no, he said. Only the diehards, who account for about 10% of the summer cycling population, ride year-round.
But is that to say that the bike infrastructure in Montreal is a waste of space and money? Of course not. It's a great thing that makes the population happy and healthier.
On some level, I think making this argument about the weather is futile. "It's too hot" is just one of a package of excuses that people make for exiling everything but cars from the public right of way. If you can't prove that 100% of the population will use bikes for 100% of their trips, then 100% of the road and 100% of infrastructure dollars must go to cars.
That's all I got for today. Send me some thoughts on other evergreen topics I should hit while the news is slow.
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