asasin79

iTrader: (10)

wishing we already knew location so that we could look into second home in the area. has anyone heard who the track designer will be? hope it's race track rather than a spectator track.

TxEvo8

iTrader: (5)

^^track is supposed to be within 10 miles of Austin-Bergstrom Airport.

binarysleep

West of 35 is hilly and very expensive land. It's got to be east of 35. Maybe along 290 or 71.

KevinD

iTrader: (56)

With the US GP, my friends who made it said the general admission tickets are by far the best. the cool thing is they are the cheapest as well.

at the australian GP, me and lauren had bleacher seats on turn 1. we had access to all the general admission places, plus the special access places (the bleachers and an area they had a ton of exotics and rare cars on display. also an outside bar where they had girls dancing on stage. difference being was the seats were 500 dollars each for the weekend. vs what was prolly 100 for general admission for the weekend.

i could go either way, but i can only assume we are going to have a ton or people going to this, it can be a cruise, weekend out of it, so getting all seats in the same area could be difficult. plus i doubt everyones going to want to fork over that much for a ticket (bleachers very in price big time depending on where you sit. obviously.)

dyezak

iTrader: (3)

To build an F1 track from the ground up will probably cost around $250mil, that doesn't include land cost. I don't think that land cost will stop them from putting a track in the hill country. And I think the hill country would yield a better track with the elevation changes you can get there. I'd love to see it west of 35, and if it was out there I could see this track becoming the premier track in the US, possibly the new Laguna Seca...

dyezak

iTrader: (3)

Looks like it's on the 130

nudge120

iTrader: (2)

If that is correct I hope its north of the Airport. That would like be a 5 min drive from my mom's house.

EvoXTX

iTrader: (2)

hahaha has the infrastructure to support an event like this? if anyones been to austin they can agree with me when they say thats a big joke...but nevertheless thats ****ing awesome i cant wait

nudge120

iTrader: (2)

Just came across a very random AustinCraigslisting saying.

"F1 track will be built between fm 973, 130 toll road and hwy 71, elroy rd. inside info always leaks out. Let the hotel building begin! year and a half to build? better start on tuesday. "

http://austin.craigslist.org/reo/1765100102.html

That area is open land about 2 miles south east of the Airport. I did a search on this and couldn't find anything to back it up, but I thought I'd throw it out there as food for thought.

binarysleep

What infrastructure problem do you anticipate?

Putting it at 130 and 71 make driving there a breeze for out-of-towners.

Hotels are already developed at the airport, and now with the track in play next to the airport, adding more will be a no brainer. Hyatt has a resort on 71 toward Bastrop already. I would not be surprised if we see a few more pop up in the area.

binarysleep

WEird post: Why did they select those three land marks, then list the exact road? Two of those landmarks are parallel, yet elroy road is not between them. It's just a weird thing to include 973 in the description.

Check out a google map with the satellite overlay. There a a couple neighborhoods very close to elroy rd. I can't imagine them building it that close to entire neighborhoods. Sure they will build near some rural homes, but entire neighborhoods?

My vote is the craigslist ad is a ploy to sell a home/land.

nudge120

iTrader: (2)

^^^ Your probably right, but where ever it is they need to get to work on it already.

dyezak

iTrader: (3)

Seriously? Have you ever been to Austin for a major event of any type? I'll go down the list of failures:

1. Airport is unable to handle increased flight capacity, heck it sometimes fails at handling current loads. For an F1 crowd, the airport is going to fail big time.

2. Although the roads are nice, they are structured in an odd way. Regular rush hour traffic brings the city to a standstill from 4-6pm. This doesn't include increased traffic from events.

3. Hotels are abundant, but are situated in parts of the city away from the F1 track and away from public transportation. This means more people driving to the event from hotels and clogging roads.

4. You ever tried to rent a car in Austin during the anual UT/A&M game? There are no cars. Now expand that out more.

5. Public transportation is almost non existant outside the city center. Exagerating #'s 2, 4 and 3 above.

6. Autsin is full of liberal hippies that LOVE to protest. Can you imagine the protests that "those gas guzzling F1 cars" will draw? Yea, that'll look good for America.

I could keep going on...there's so much wrong with Austin hosting major events. I love that F1 is coming to America and it's great it'll be in TX. I think the land around Austin can make an absolutely stunning track.

KevinD

iTrader: (56)

1) austin airport may be maxed to capacity, but DFW, SA and houston are all realitively close, and people trying to do this on a budget will find the 2-3 hour drive from one of those airports will be less money in the long run. they definately took this into consideration when picking a location.

2)qualifying and the race are on sat/sun. practice is on a friday, but the crowds aren't nearly as big on friday as they will be on sat/sun. so the usual rush hour wont be a factor. aside from that, every major city has traffic problems. i've never driven in a metropolis ever where i though, "wow, these roads are well thought out, and traffic is non existent."

3)yes, no public transportation wont help, but there is 2 years to plan for this. i bet they have a busing and remote parking system in place. hotels will certainly offer shuttles, and the track itself will have parking. i see this as being no different then holding a nascar race at TMS in ft worth. if your not attending the race, you don't want to be within 10 miles of the place because traffic sucks. its to be expected where 75-100k people meet in one place.

4) i can see this being a problem. but like i said, hotels will certainly be offering shuttles. tracks close proximity to the airport means taxis and buses will work fine. i doubt you will have to have a car to attend this event (unless you want to drive to other sites around the city).

6) F1 will be hybrid cars burning bio fuels. the hippys will have to protest themselves if they don't like hybrids. anyway, protesting hippys is something that makes the news, but when your actually there you don't see or hear them because its like 15 people in a crowd of 75-100k people. its just as likely that there will be right wing crazys protesting the 25 million/yr in tax payer money to get the race here.


i definately agree with you that traffic/finding hotels/rental cars will all suck. but its all part of planning when you want to go to a big event like this. plan ahead and nothing other then the traffic will be a problem.

binarysleep

I never had a problem flying out of the AP, but I lived there, so never had to fly during the big events in Austin (SXSW, ACL, etc.).


OH the irony! The only oddly structured roads I could imagine you are describing is also the worst bottleneck... IH35. It's so funny you would complain about it, because it was "designed" by an Aggie

Everyone in Austin knows you never get on IH35 when going downtown.


Ironically enough, those hippies have been protesting for light rail for 10+years... and only just recently got one line. However, I couldn't agree more with the lack of public transportation.

But don't fret... putting the track east of Austin will make hitch-hiking from College Station very easy, and there are plenty of nice new overpasses to camp out under along 130. Just don't start a bonfire under them.