In some ways, Austin is a decent city for getting around: It's pretty small, geographically, at least for the parts of town that a tourist would want to visit. In other ways, it's a nightmare: The train is a joke that runs once an hour and stops running entirely most days at 6 o'clock, along one sad little track that barely goes anywhere in the first place. The buses only run a little more frequently, and they inexplicably refuse to run east-to-west—or in a straight line going north and south. If you're coming from a city that has actual public transportation, then just assume that you will have no use for the buses and trains in Austin. It's cheap, at $2.50 for an entire day, but it's definitely an example of "you get what you pay for."
Advertisement
You can rent a car, although be prepared for Austin traffic, which is miserable. Austin was designed to be a sleepy college town where a part-time legislature meets every other year for a few months—but with a population that's grown by 50 percent in the past 15 years, driving from one end of the city to another can be way more stressful than anybody should seek out on a vacation. If you don't want to pony up for a rental car every day, but you also don't want to rely on public transportation or Lyft and Uber, there's also Car2Go, if you're in one of the dozen-plus cities where the company offers memberships—you can pick up a pay-by-the-minute rental all over the city.
The reason you might not want to rely on Lyft and Uber is because it's never totally clear how long they're going to exist in Austin. Basically since the companies entered Austin, they've been threatening to leave, and depending when you visit, it's possible that they won't be offering services. If they are, you're in good shape—both companies have plenty of drivers on the road when they're active, so if you want to get back to your hotel or Airbnb in a car driven by somebody with a bachelor's degree who thinks he's too good for his job, you'll have plenty of options. Otherwise, cabs in Austin are spotty—they take a long time, they're expensive, and they can be impossible to find downtown after midnight. The taxi companies in Austin launched their own ride-hailing app to help them compete with Lyft and Uber, but they still don't have enough cars on the road to be super reliable.
Depending where you're staying, though, you might not need to worry too much about motorized transportation. Austin's relatively small geographic size means that walking is an option to get from, say, the East Side to the Red River music district, or from downtown to South Congress. There are also bikes—Austin has a B-Cycle program, where you can pick up a bike at stations throughout downtown and at a handful of places you'd want to go like Barton Springs, East Austin bars, or the University of Texas campus, and drop it off at another station. You get a day pass for $8, or a weekend pass for $15, and that covers all of your rides, as long as you get each bike back to a station within half an hour. Keep in mind that Austin is hilly as fuck, though, so if you're from a flat city, you should plan on getting worn out by big hills. Also, drivers in Texas sometimes hate cyclists because they make 'em feel lazy and self-conscious, and they like to demonstrate their disdain by putting their lives in peril. Luckily, B-Cycle comes with a helmet, so hopefully you won't die if somebody in a car treats you like an asshole. Welcome to Texas!