Fix this damn traffic.

Is anyone else besides me fed up with this ridiculous Austin traffic? Why can't we get across town without sitting and staring at an unending stream of brake lights? I-35 is a joke. MoPac is a parking lot, Lamar is jammed up at 5th and 6th Street constantly. The 130 toll road is an alternative, BUT - it's a TOLL road, and it's several miles out of the way, with more traffic lights to sit through just to get to it.

We pay millions and millions of dollars in taxes, where is it being wasted? Why isn't it being used to BUILD MORE ROADS?

Mopac was designed and built to be a cross-town EXPRESSWAY, these days it's more like a long, skinny parking lot. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for all the entrance and exit ramps, allowing more and more cars onto a road that's already packed beyond capacity. Pay attention next time you're on it, notice where the traffic jams occur - at the entrance ramps. The cars trying to get on Mopac force their way into the right lane, the cars already IN the right lane either have to slam on the brakes or move over into the center lane, which causes the cars already in the center lane to have to hit the brakes or move into the left lane, which causes, you guessed it, the cars in the left lane to have to hit the brakes. Wonderful - just because a few drivers want to barge onto a road that's already full of traffic, it screws up the ENTIRE ROAD, all 3 lanes of it.

Southbound Mopac just south of the river is a perfect example of this - the entrance ramp right before Barton Skyway dumps traffic from Bee Caves Rd into the right lane of Mopac with no room for traffic to merge. WHY? There's a perfectly good entrance ramp just on the other side of Barton Skyway with a nice, long lane to get up to speed and hundreds and hundreds of feet for them to merge. The short, steep entrance ramp just north of Barton Skyway need to be CLOSED. Shut down. TxDot needs to get a couple of Jersey Barriers, place them across the entrance ramp, dig up the pavement, throw some dirt and grass where it used to be, and call it good. The traffic on the frontage road can go through the light at Barton Skyway and use the entrance ramp just on the other side.

I-35 - it's such a joke, I don't know where to start. There's so much traffic on it, from long-haul trucks coming and going to Mexico and the rest of the U.S., commuters using it to get across town, people using it to get to and from downtown streets - it's hopeless. TxDot needs to decide what it's going to used for - local access to and from downtown, or Interstate traffic - one or the other. It CAN'T handle both. What they really should to is require all traffic that is going THROUGH Austin to bypass it and use the Texas 130 instead, and let only traffic that's going downtown to use that section of I-35.

183, on the east side of town, would be a viable alternative, but the lack of just a few overpasses make it a frustrating failure. It's a nice, wide, fast freeway all the way across the north end of town, but once you get south of Springdale Rd, it turns back into a pumpkin, with stoplights at Loyola, 51st, TechniCenter, etc. It tries to become a freeway again down by the Airport Blvd intersection, but it's like TxDot got a great idea, got about halfway done, and just......quit. There are bridge columns standing up in the air, but no bridge. The southbound lanes have to squeeze down to ONE LANE to squeak underneath Montopolis, and then there's more red lights at Vargas and Thompson, then at last traffic makes it to the antiquated interchange at Ben White.

Speaking of Ben White, why the HELL isn't there an ovepass at Riverside yet? Just like 183 up north, Ben White is a nice, wide, fast freeway all the way across south Austin, but at Riverside, it just.....quits. Traffic backs up for MILES just because of the the light at Riverside. Over on the west side, Ben White/290/71 is a nice, wide, fast freeway, until you almost make it into Oak Hill, and then it just.....stops. In a monumental example of traffic planning screwups, it goes from 3 lanes, to 2 lanes, and then...BAM. A nice little traffic light at McCarty Ln, which isn't even a cross street. The backed up traffic through the Y in Oak Hill extends for miles east and west, EVERY DAMN DAY.

Who designs this crap? Do the people who make descisions about what roads to improve even DRIVE in Austin? Are they BLIND? All you have to do is open your eyes and SEE where the problems are, how to fix the trouble spots is relatively easy...WHY AREN'T THEY DOING ANYTHING?