The Joy of Bicycling in Austin
A one-person sociological study of springtime biking where every ride is his favorite
By Kevin Curtin, Fri., April 21, 2023
Many nights I've made this climb. Eight stories up on two wheels with one destination: the top of an unmanned parking structure reserved for state employees. It's a million-dollar view of Downtown Austin, free to innocent trespassers.
I've come here to clear my head, but first I'll break a sweat because my impulsive ass happens to be riding upon the heaviest bike on planet Earth – a 1960s Royal De Luxe three-speed that's so classically Dutch it looks incomplete without a large blond person riding on the cargo rack. After ascending endlessly counterclockwise on straining calves, I bump down the kickstand and dismount into my observation deck of the city's kinetic core.
From up here, I study a flow of thousands of anonymous nightlifers strolling, stumbling, scooting, driving, and cycling among the ever-growing scape of skyrises. As I marvel at how unabashedly metropolitan this city has become, a notion strikes me: One of the few aspects of living in Austin that's become less of a hassle over the last 15 years is riding a bicycle.
Of all the great trails, routes, and neighborhood cruises, my favorite ride in town is the 30 seconds it takes me to descend this parking garage. I pedal just once then turn the handlebars to the perfect angle as gravity zips me down the ramp in a tight circle like droplets flowing down a corkscrew – faster and faster – until I'm spit out into street traffic where drivers may wonder why I'm smiling ear to ear.
Amongst researchers and city planners the world over, there have been repeated efforts to delineate the typology of cycling. Perhaps the most thorough model was published by industrial designer Dr. Robbie Napper, who categorized bike trips thusly: recreation, commute, work, sport, passenger, and tasks/errands. And, famously, Portland Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller developed a classification for people's willingness to bike in the city: Strong & Fearless, Enthused & Confident, Interested but Concerned, and No Way No How.
If I had to identify my own bicycle genus it would be: Experiential and Just the Right Amount of Paranoid.
I believe that life is an investigation and a bicycle is the perfect tool to aid in that endeavor. Ride through the graveyard, stop and admire that unusual pear tree in the stranger's yard, take the scenic way, pause to listen to the busker's song.
In addition to them being the ultimate stop-to-smell-the-roses vehicles, here are nine other things I like about bikes:
- They save you money on parking.
- Riding them is good for your health.
- They are incredibly efficient in speed and distance compared to the amount of effort it takes to pedal them.
- Passersby can see the full outfit you are wearing.
- Repairing and servicing them is much more approachable than working on automobiles.
- You can start riding one when you're only 3 years old.
- They're not petroleum reliant.
- Wheelies.
- They're an extremely social mode of transportation.
Attending Mass
If you enjoy riding with large groups of folks on bikes, that experience is extremely easy to attain in Austin. Just through events organized by Social Cycling Austin, you could find rides 3-7 days a week – for instance, the Saturday Morning Caffeine Cruise or the Sunday Bike Curious Ride or the Thursday Night Social Ride, which stands as the largest and most enduring group bike ride in town.
To find out more about the strength in numbers of social rides, I pay a visit to the home of Corina Oliva and Derek Hansen, friends of mine for over a decade who I consider to be joyous bike freaks of the highest order. If you don't know them, you might recognize them by their outfits.
"It's a lot of onesies," shrugs Hansen. "I have a rabbit one, we're bees sometimes, and she likes the glam stuff."
"Yeah, I wear wings and tutus and glitter and wigs," Oliva jumps in. "When I charge my lights I also need to charge my shoes because they light up too."
Oliva, a nurse who grew up locally, has been going on social rides since 2011. She and her husband, an electrician, attend the Thursday Night Social Ride almost every week and sometimes lead that and other SCA events. I ask if the draw, for them, involves a sense of community.
"Yeah, that's where we've met most of what we call our 'bike family' – a bunch of our friends who we hang out with and travel and go camping outside of being around bicycles," Oliva says. "So friendship is definitely part of it, but it's also exploring your town – finding spots that you've never seen before or just saying, 'Oh wow, we went all the way from Central Austin to MoPac and 183 on a bicycle?'"
The roughly 10-mile Thursday Night Social Rides, which meet at Festival Beach on the Eastside and draw 100-200 people, stop at lights, yield at intersections, and obey traffic rules. Critical Mass – the monthly social phenomenon dating back to the Nineties in North America – has more of a lawless, make-your-presence-known ethos that makes the event feel as much like a demonstration as it does a parade.
Oliva invites me to Critical Mass, so I go. Though I used to attend it in the Aughts and early 2010s – both locally and in various cities like its point of origin San Francisco, where the ride was huge and riotous with cops threatening arrests and windshield smashing clashes between angry motorists and cyclists – I haven't done it in over a decade, so I feel nervous and out of touch.
But on the last Friday in March, I'm met with a welcoming and not at all intimidating scene at the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge. As the 175 or so congregants pour onto Lamar Boulevard to cross the river, I feel a unique excitement I'd forgotten existed and realize that this is my favorite ride in Austin. I love pedaling amongst a wide slice of weirdos – some with dogs and youngsters in their baskets, some riding wheelies and surfing on their frames, many blasting music on Bluetooth speakers. The route appears to be spontaneous, encircling Downtown, bombing the Seventh Street hill, briefly flirting with overtaking I-35's upper deck (the ballsy few who do are followed by a police truck shouting at them to disperse), and then flowing all over the Eastside.
I like that Critical Mass turns heads. Ninety percent of onlookers have their phone cameras out and smiles on their faces, but there's also the mad honkers: motorists unjustifiably losing their shit because of being delayed 45 seconds while a procession of bikes rolls past.
"That's one reason we wear the costumes – they can help de-escalate things," Hansen tells me at the midride beer break. "How are you gonna try to fight someone dressed like a bee?"
There are currently two Critical Masses in Austin (both on the last Friday of the month, one departing from the pedestrian bridge at 6:30pm and one from 15 Chicon at 8pm), which – if you believe nearly 300 recent Reddit comments – are at odds over traffic etiquette. In a great plot twist, the March ride sees those two Masses intersect. Half expecting a Braveheart-style battle, I'm pleased that instead the two groups just become one giant ... mass.
At least that's how it appears from the view of my handlebars. Two-and-a-half weeks after the ride, the plot twists again when a group called Ride Bikes Austin, who organize the latter Critical Mass, issues a 22-page call to action alleging that the other ride joining theirs was an act of harassment and a threat to public safety.
A Cheat Code Through Downtown
Nathan Wilkes, senior project designer of the city's Active Transportation Street Design Division, tells me it's safe to say there's now more people bicycling in Austin than ever before, though it's a purely anecdotal observation. Reliable ridership figures are hard to come by, partially because e-scooters throw off the counters, but also because, in the past, most bicycle data centered around people commuting to work – which has been made less relevant by a sharp rise in telecommuting.
"The work trip still has its purpose, but it cannot be the centerpiece [of city data on bike usage]," Wilkes says. "Even just getting out and getting fresh air on your bike is just as valid as going to work."
As such, Wilkes can't pinpoint what is Austin's most utilized bike route, but he says the shortlist includes Congress Avenue, the Drag, several parts of the Butler Trail loop near river crossings, and the greenway that crosses Downtown via Third and Fourth streets. That circuit's actually called the Lance Armstrong Bikeway, which is unfortunate because I don't want to mention Lance Armstrong's name in this story for the same reason I don't want to mention accused murderer Kaitlin Armstrong – they are sport cyclists and I'm intending to focus on cycling for pleasure.
But the Lance Armstrong Bikeway actually brings me a lot of pleasure because it's long been my gateway to live music. Typically, I park my van on the Eastside near Plaza Saltillo, jump on the bike and ride that protected bike lane under the overpass and into Downtown before turning right up Red River or staying on to the Warehouse District or going even farther to Seaholm or Lamar. It feels like such a cheat code for getting through Downtown on a raging weekend night that I will confidently challenge any car in a race from the White Horse to the Moody Theater. For that reason it's probably my favorite bike ride in Austin, but I think they should find a different local bicycling icon to rename it after, perhaps that older gentleman who used to ride all over town in a G-string: Thong Guy Bikeway.
Go Into Nature
One of the blessings of living in East Austin is having Lee Gresham as the owner of my neighborhood bike shop. I've been coming to Eastside Pedal Pushers for 15 years, usually dragging an old, broken bicycle accompanied by a sentimental plea on why it's worth fixing. Like most great, small, independent businesses in America, ESPP's best asset is its humans, and Gresham's the kind of person I really look up to: humble expert, keeper of obscure cultural history, intellectually curious.
Lee and I look the same age, but he's 20 years older than me and twice as strapping. I suspect it's because bicycles keep him young. In 1996, he set off from Texas on a solo bicycle tour that stretched all the way to Ontario, Canada, and altered the course of his life. Bikes have been the focus of his existence ever since, both as his foremost means of transportation and his profession. So when I invite him over to my barn for a midnight interview, I'm curious to know where he's struck by joyous moments on two wheels.
"Alleys," he says. "Some of my most fun and joyful experiences are riding through alleys in town: Hyde Park, South Austin, and even East Austin. I don't want it to sound like I'm a weird creeper, but cruising through alleys – if you have a decent headlight – I think that's fuckin' fun as hell!"
There's something about bicycles, says Gresham, that "taps into this feeling of freedom or mischievousness" that's reminiscent of being a kid, and I agree. That also factors into his other joyous bicycle pursuit: off-the-grid trail riding. He got into it many years ago with a local bike club that held a Wednesday night Interpretive Trail Ride where they'd traverse Austin's green spaces on "bandit trails" or "hobo trails" – unmapped paths cut through the woods by mountain bikers, BMX riders, dirt bikers, or transient people. Lately he's been in love with a relatively uncharted trail ride that heads south out of Onion Creek Metropolitan Park and into the passed-over wilds of deep South Austin.
"It's like, 'Where the hell am I? I'm going under I-35 on a bike in the watershed!'" he recounts. "It just feels mischievous, like I'm not supposed to be there."
For Gresham, this kind of riding where you're especially cognizant of nature has become life-affirming and, at times, helpful in staving off depression.
"It's so beautiful to be out there and, if I'm not going too fast where I have to focus on the trail, I can look around and absorb so much consciously and unconsciously, like thinking about all the different plants I'm going past and the ecology of the woods – the tall trees and the understory stuff and the vines and thorny vines and poison ivy and the birds ... I fuckin' love all that stuff!" he says, laughing self-consciously. "Maybe I'm just getting old, getting into birds."
Riding on bandit trails is also how Gresham has come to know the many veins of pathways through the East Austin forests, which are intersected by a main artery: the Southern Walnut Creek Trail.
The SWCT is my favorite bike ride in Austin, so I'm lucky that it lies just beyond my backyard. I can jump on my bike and, within three minutes, be cruising on a 10-foot-wide paved path lined by trees, water, and fields that make you feel like you're cycling in the Netherlands – except instead of an occasional windmill, you'll ride by a towering steel electrical pylon with dozens of buzzards staring down, so it still has a Texas vibe.
The roughly 10-mile path, which opened in 2014 as Austin's first official urban trail, is officially scenic as fuck. You can ride almost all the way to Manor while hardly seeing any cars or indications that you are still in the 11th-most populated city in the United States – though a monster hill north of the Loyola Lane crossing rewards summiters with a sweet view of Austin's skyline.
Yes, a significant population of SWCT riders wear aerodynamic spandex, but it's a generally easy ride also suitable for families or people who took mushrooms and correctly thought it was a fun idea to get on a bicycle and ride into nature.
The popularity of the SWCT, the lead chunk of a planned 19-mile connected trail system extending into Northwest Austin, can be evidenced at its starting point, the once sleepy Govalle Neighborhood Park, which now on weekend mornings looks like the starting line of Le Tour de France.
What Does Your Bike Say About You?
Bikes can make you look cool. I should know because I read far too much into passing strangers by the bicycles they ride: This person's all about their cardio and mile times, or that individual's got a real utilitarian ethic, or they probably have young kids so they're on a weird long bike, or maybe this person recently got a DUI because they're wearing a tie and don't look like someone who bicycles. Undergrads from the university are easy to spot, riding semi-nice, very practical bikes their parents recently purchased for them ... which they'll later ditch or hastily sell on Craigslist, I'm guessing. I was elated when I won an auction at UT Surplus Property for a basically new Fuji Crosstown, clearly left behind by a student – on just an $85 bid. Regrettably, this ergonomic seven-speed, listed on the manufacturer's website as a "comfort bike," makes me look so palpably uncool.
I'm never more aware of this than when I'm pedaling around the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail that goes 10 miles around Lady Bird Lake. To me, the loop has such an idyllic vibe and everybody there is at the top of their game: staying physically fit, picking up the poop of interesting dogs, paddleboarding on Hinge dates, or just being chill retired people on beach cruisers ... who astonishingly look much cooler than I do on my lame navy blue Fuji. I'll always ride that bike on the Lady Bird Lake trail, though, because it's got real versatile tires for the trail's combination of dirt and cement surfaces. Also an extremely efficient east-west cut through town at the river, I often use the Butler Trail as part of my commute and I treasure the scenic decompression I feel riding home – especially when it's nighttime on the boardwalk and the lights from all the buildings are reflecting off the water and it looks like stained glass. This definitely is my favorite bike ride in Austin.
Expanding the Network
A few months ago, city crews bolted down hundreds of floppy white poles along Springdale Road to establish a protected bicycle lane. The following week, I repeatedly hit them with my huge van – either while turning or just riding too far to the right in my lane. As I'm relating this on a video meeting with division leaders for Austin Transportation, Laura Dierenfield asks: "After hitting them, did you habituate to a new turning movement?"
What a fitting question from a self-described street design wonk. And the answer is yes; those flex posts did their job, keeping my vehicle out of the bike lane and influencing me to drive more carefully.
Dierenfield manages Austin's Active Transportation Street Design Division, on which Wilkes serves as senior project designer. Together, they oversee the vision and implementaton of our city's bicycle infrastructure, which is guided by the Austin Bicycle Plan. I ask for a nutshell summary.
"In 2014, the last Bicycle Plan was the big pivot in strategy where we are past painted bike lanes and we're talking about All Ages and Abilities bicycle infrastructure," Wilkes explains. "The centerpiece of it was envisioning a safe network ... The big deal is that streets need to be safe and self-enforcing for safe outcomes and give people mobility choices."
Instead of painted bike lanes, which Wilkes compares to "walking on a street with a painted line and calling it a sidewalk," modern bike lanes are barriered with either the aforementioned flex posts, concrete buttons, or protected curbs. The goal is having an expansive network of streets with protected bike lanes, urban trails, and neighborhood bikeways that all connect so cyclists can get all around town without riding next to high-intensity traffic.
To illustrate how Austin's network of bikeable thoroughfares has expanded thus far, Dierenfield and Wilkes show me zoomed-out road maps of Austin with All Ages and Abilities lanes highlighted, progressing from 2010 to present day. The difference is extraordinary, and it's equally remarkable to see the projected map for 2026 (in the coming post-Project Connect light rail era) where Austin's bicycle network looks like Amsterdam. Ultimately, Austin's bike network promises to be 430 miles, of which about 56% is currently completed.
All of this is part of a seven-layer dip of city programs, state projects, and private enterprise contributing to urban bike transit design. For one, Dierenfield and Wilkes' division is scheduled to present to City Council for ATX Walk Bike Roll, a multi-department project that will update the Bicycle Plan to more effectively integrate protected bike lanes with urban trails and public transit. Wilkes also emphasizes how seemingly disparate things like the Texas Department of Transportation's I-35 expansion, private developers being leveraged to contribute infrastructure, Project Connect, the Corridor Mobility Program, and bond funding from 2016 and 2020 will all play into how Austin's bicycle network will expand.
But Airport Boulevard – the major thoroughfare where cyclists make death-defying choices between dodging drive-through customers on an inset sidewalk, riding on a sketchy slim shoulder, or merging into 40 mph traffic where neither is available – that will still suck to bike on, right?
"Airport is going to be amazing in three years," says Wilkes, pointing to it being part of the billion-dollar corridor program. "It's going to be a massive positive change in places that used to be deeply inaccessible or not safe."
All Ages, All Abilities
Seeing as though it's the prevailing tenet behind the city's vision for designing bicycle routes, I ask Dierenfield who she pictures when we talk about All Ages and Abilities.
"For me, it's 9-, 10-, 11-year-old kids who are ready to be independent and need the social and physical scaffolding of a community in order to be able to grow and develop as a human," she replies.
There's an abundance of bicycle programs for children in Austin, but the one I'm most excited to take my son to is the Yellow Bike Project's Earn-a-Bike program, where young people can pick out a bike and learn how to work on it by doing this full overhaul checklist – then they get it for free.
The All Ages and Abilities framework, of course, also applies to older people and folks with physical challenges. Dierenfield clues me in about the Golden Rollers, which, yes, as you guessed, is a 50-and-up bicycle and tricycle club. The program, founded in 2015, provides free weekly classes and urban trail rides for seniors on a fleet of comfy, low-impact bikes and trikes.
In early April, I volunteer at the Lend Your Legs ride at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which – go figure – has what must be the largest collection of tandem bikes in the state. My bicycle-built-for-two buddy is a young man who has vision and hearing impairments. The only part of riding a tandem that's challenging is starting from a stop, because if you're not in relative unison it can get wobbly, but I'm lucky the student I'm pedaling with is so brave and trusting and chill. The ride, which takes place over the course of six consecutive Mondays in both the spring and fall, is a long neighborhood cruise though the lovely residential streets around Allendale and the group is equally lovely – just a bunch of super nice people helping facilitate a cool experience for the students. No doubt, my favorite ride I've been on in Austin.
The Lend Your Legs rides are open to the public, whether or not you are captaining a School for the Blind student. You can bring your own bike or you and a friend can use one of their extra tandems and be part of the group.
One of my earliest memories is riding double, sitting in the baby carrier on the back of my mom's road bike, my head bobbling around on the rocky dirt road in front of my house. On a recent road trip home, I unearthed that early Eighties Araya – a glowing station-wagon-brown 10-speed with exquisite geometry – and strapped it atop the van, driving it 1,500 miles home to Austin where I promptly brought it to Lee Gresham at Eastside Pedal Pushers for a tuneup. Now I ride it all the time. The little piece of metal framing that connected my baby carrier to the seat post is still intact and, soon, our 5-month-old baby Casper will be seated on it.
His older brother Quinn rides on the back of the preposterously heavy Dutch bike, but soon he'll be ready for training wheels and, before I know it, my children will be big enough to go explore the Southern Walnut Creek Trail without me. It's funny; when I think about raising kids in Austin, I think of bicycles – and I have hope for the future.
Legitimized
Back in the barn, I'm doing some math in my head and I inform Lee Gresham that Eastside Pedal Pushers has now been open for 20 years.
"Yes! I'm aware," he laughs.
So, how has Austin changed as a bicycle city since he opened the shop in 2003?
"It's for the better – there's more visibility from drivers and biking's seen as a more acceptable and cool mode of transportation," he says. "And there's just shit-tons more commuter cyclists and recreational cyclists. That's amazing to me. When I first started Pedal Pushers, I knew a lot of the people who came in for repairs. Now I don't know who these people are!"
Gresham says his little shop has benefited from being nearby the Southern Walnut Creek Trail (ESPP relocated from Fifth and Onion to Springdale and Bolm in 2019) and likely from people moving into newly built apartments in the area, but the biggest impact on his business was bicycles becoming hugely popular during the pandemic. Typically, repairs outpace sales at Pedal Pushers, but throughout 2020 and 2021 he sold all the bikes in his shop and couldn't get his hands on more. Though that bike boom has now tapered off, he continues to see Austin grow as a culturally bike-friendly community.
"In addition to all the physical infrastructure that's around, it just seems like bicycling is more legitimized," he says. "As far as I know, Austin's the most bikeable big city in Texas, and that's because it's historically liberal. That makes a difference. Because the population is more left-wing, pot-smoking, and has been somewhat educated with the university here, people do acknowledge cyclists as more or less legitimate users of the street."
The cultural influence that Gresham cites when talking about Austin's relationship with bicycles makes sense to me, even though I've never really viewed bikes as being inherently political. Except that riding a bicycle does, in some ways, make you part of the proverbial solution – and that's a good feeling to have.
"I think about why this has been the focus of my life since that bike tour," he reflects. "It's my anti-war, anti-petroleum economy, anti-capitalist something-to-believe-in."
