[Research Triangle Park (RTP) & the Triangle Biotech Cluster]

Austin's R&D sector is actually more spread out than RTP's. They have a series of office parks whereas ours tends to be centered around RTP/Morrisville although many more operations seem to be popping up around Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill and elsewhere in the Triangle. Traffic is much worse. The movie "Office Space" was based on Austin.

The opening scene in Office Space where they are all crawling to work on the interstate cracks me up.

"Damn it feels good to be a gangsta"

[Triangle in the national media]

The fact that Raleigh is on this list and Boston is not shows that the list is a complete joke.

Raleigh is not friendly to walking outside of the downtown core and a few other areas. Here are the cities between 250,000 and 600,000 ranked by the percentage of pedestrian commuters. Raleigh is, unsurprisingly, next to last.

Carfree Census Database Search Results

Actually, it's 24th out of 50. It's not exactly next to last, but point taken.

I did notice that the data is from 2000, it will be interesting to see how it changes by 2010.

[Research Triangle Park (RTP) & the Triangle Biotech Cluster]

All of this talk about the growth in RTP has gotten me thinking about its relationship to the urban centers around it. We all know that the vast majority of the workers in RTP drive from the surrounding cities and towns to work in RTP and then back home at night (I use to be one of them, and I have to say I don't miss the commute).

My question is in regards to Austin, TX. We always hear how the Triangle and Austin compare to each other in regards to metro area size, research center, universities, biotech, quality of life, etc. Is the main research center located outside of the city? Is it essentially a vast office park like RTP? Do they have the same traffic and growth problems associated with this type of separation? Do they have a rail system?

Just curious if Austin has experienced any of the same issues and is there anything we can learn their experience.

[Crabtree Valley Mall]

The EXACT same thing happened with Pizzaria Uno, BTW. The original Chicago location is incredible, but this product they've franchised is horrible.

I have a friend here who grew up in Chicago. He always raved about the Pizzaria UNO up there and couldn't wait for the one to open in BriarCreek. We went there soon after it opened to check it out. It was terrible, barely above Pizza Hut in quality. He was not happy.

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

Here's a link to WRALs coverage of the meeting held yesterday. It says that work could begin as early as this spring. There's also a video with a few interviews, including some yahoo that wants to put in tunnels or bridges for pedestrians to cross the street. Yea, that will be cost effective.

http://www.wral.com/news/7445122/detail.html

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

So did anyone attend the meeting? I'd love to hear an update.

I was also wondering if the neighborhood association pushed to have it so early on a Saturday morning to discourage any of the "late night party crowd" from attending. Seeing as they couldn't get out of bed early enough to make an 8am meeting on a Saturday. Just a thought.