Western Lance Armstrong Bikeway Open

If you want real speed, in other words, without gravel, why not use 5th/6th? (I used to ride those roads all the time; just take a lane and stop at the red lights).

That's fine, but I've seen a cyclist stuck there for 10 minutes before (don't know how much longer it was; I was gone after 10). And the exact times high school starts in the morning and lets out in the afternoon match up really well with a lot of bicycle commutes.

I started using the LAB, and I've gotten to liking it much more than the hike and bike trail, both from the perspective of not dodging joggers and riding on concrete instead of gravel. As long as you aren't riding at the exact time school lets in or out (which I almost never am), it is pretty easy to get past the Austin High driveways.

kelsoATX, if you're fast enough to not like all the stops, you're fast enough to do just fine on W 5th (I used to use it all the time). Advantage: You can always get the right-of-way (no 2-way stops).

What people don't get about bike routes is evident here: you could conceivably be stuck for half an hour at one of the driveways leading into Austin High - you have a stop sign, they don't.

I've been using the L.A. bikeway for a couple of months on my morning commute. I still find it to be easier to carefully dodge folks on the H&B trail than to go through the Austin High/Stephen F. Austin Dr. mess at the end of the bikeway. Between the parents, the high school kids, joggers and parallel parking it's a pretty treacherous stretch of road. The Lance A. bikeway also ends right where the school buses pull into Austin High. The fastest option to get over to the Mopac Pedestrian bridge/Deep Eddy trail after the L.A. bikeway ends is to ride across the campus, but the school admins blow their whistles and yell at you… It's not a good idea..

There’s a decent hill right there going up to the tracks on the ‘new trail we want’ segment on the diagram above, but it would still be more efficient to take that path. Prior to those fugly condos being built next to the Mean Eyed Cat that was the way I used to go, but you had to cross the tracks. It worked pretty well.

It's a nice bikeway but as far as commuting goes it's kind of a bikeway to nowhere, having to stop on both sides of Lamar sucks too. I have to admit that I really like those countdown timers at the crossings, those things should be everywhere!

Maybe it only stops to serve as a metaphor for the barriers you face in everyday life: Traffic jams, Republicans, long waits at Magnolia Cafe at 2:30 a.m., signs that say "bike lane ends"...or, an Austin specialty: Signs that say "Freeway ends."

Maybe it only stops to serve as a metaphor for the barriers you face in everyday life: Traffic jams, Republicans, long waits at Magnolia Cafe at 2:30 a.m., signs that say "bike lane ends"...or, an Austin specialty: Signs that say "Freeway ends."

I put my old digital camera in my laptop bag a month ago intending to make a photo-journal of the Lance Armstrong Stopway and still haven't done it.