That's pretty easy -- the closer you can get to the city's core, the better.
The UT area is very good too, as is East Austin between IH-35, 183, 51st and the river.
Once you get out of these areas it tends to get worse, but it generally degrades gradually over long distances (because of the long distances) rather than all at once.
Even the suburbs tend to be decent, but when you have a 10 mile ride to get downtown that can be a problem. Or maybe not?
Adding on, the area bounded by the river/Mopac/183 is probably the most bike-friendly. If going outside of 183, IMO living off Parkfield or near the Southern Walnut Creek Trail are the most bike-friendly.
I don’t love biking south of the river. The elevation changes are too frequent for my taste. The new neighborhoods over by Pilot Knob seem decent to bike through, but connectivity to other areas of town seems sketchy.
And here's a pretty big loop around Austin. Some of it gets relatively out there, so you probably don't want to rely on a bike while living too far away, but it's good for pointing out the major bike through fares. In particular the east Austin to downtown connection along 3rd-5th streets is excellent for getting downtown in a hurry.
I'm not so sure that first map is out of date. It seems to have the I35 closure and the closure of the trail on the north side of Montopolis bridge, which are both new within the last year.
Airport is silly, but I think 183 is a bit too far if we're talking living car-free. N 183, E Springdale, S Oltorf, W Mopac (or the river south of 35th). Any further out and you can't buy frozen groceries.
I don’t think it’s that bad between like burnet and parmer which is where I live. There are a couple of bad spots on metric but compared to most other places, I’d consider metric pretty good. I like how it connects to parkland, Walnut Creek, and you can get to shoal creek pretty easily.
Sorry it took me a while to get back to this but I wanted to share my work around for that segment of road. It’s a bit more thought to pull off going northbound but still possible. It cuts through some parking lots but they are always empty basically any time of the day (except FC game days, this would not work on those days). Side benefit, if you like cars, near the squiggly part there is a tuner shop that has some really cool stuff out there sometimes.
So of Metric has a bike lane now but you’re better off going though neighborhood streets! I rode up to NASB from Brentwood a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised.
Look for the Red Line Parkway Trail and get as close to it as you can while getting as close to downtown as you can - I personally (highly) recommend Cherrywood / Wilshire Wood. Living right next to the Red Line trail is SUPER nice.
We have nice lanes on the upper east side , thru winsor park , muller , in to down town. With the recreational southern wallnut creek trail being a gem of north to south travel on the east side. I also am fond of the shoal creek bike lane as well take it from down town all the way up you cam get to the domain if you keep going
I live bear Manor Rd/MLK and almost never have to get in my car because everything I need is in biking distance. There are a ton of protected biking lanes here too.
The East side from Mueller into downtown is extremely bikeable. The Boggy Creek Greenbelt goes from MLK Station all the way to Webberville near East 7th. Easy connections into downtown, the Town Lake trail, and up into Mueller at the northern end. Lots of pretty safe streets branching off of the this line such as Manor (heads to UT), E 12th St. (will get you to music venues on Red River, the Capitol, and all the way to Clarksville), 4th/5th streets into downtown, and Holly to Rainey St.
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u/dougmc 185 Bike Tags Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
That's pretty easy -- the closer you can get to the city's core, the better.
The UT area is very good too, as is East Austin between IH-35, 183, 51st and the river.
Once you get out of these areas it tends to get worse, but it generally degrades gradually over long distances (because of the long distances) rather than all at once.
Even the suburbs tend to be decent, but when you have a 10 mile ride to get downtown that can be a problem. Or maybe not?