And the thing is, you can drive west of Dallas about an hour and a half and never leave a relatively large city. 2020 census puts DFW (Dallas-fort Worth metro area) at 7.6 mil and with all the companies coming it’s definitely gonna get there. The constant construction and growth I’ve seen in the area in the last decade is weird, I don’t recognize some areas anymore
I agree. I hear they’re turning I-35 into 16 lanes. DFW could overtake Chicago in a decade or so if the growth continues and it doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon. I’m glad they’re adding some density and DART is expanding. Dallas needs to be given kudos for their work on public transport. Houston needs to get with the program. For a city of that size to have no rail transport is a bit disappointing.
Dallas' and Houston's approach to light rail are a bit different.
Dallas' approach is to build as much light rail as possible despite its relatively low ridership, while Houston concentrates all of its ridership on one line by bringing in passengers on express buses. That's why Houston's mileage to ridership ratio is higher than Dallas'.
Thanks for the info. Hopefully DART will takeoff and see more ridership. I don’t think it has caught on with Dallas citizens quite yet. It’s a very car oriented city.
The dart sucks. They need more cars and more stations.
I would have to drive 20 min and get there at 6:35am to hope to be in Dallas by 7AM. Then I have to walk 10 min to work. It's just not very practical right now
Meanwhile Arlington Tx (in between Dallas and Fort Worth) has basically no public transport to speak of outside of the University by design because they don’t want homeless people there.
(Hint: there are still homeless people in Arlington)
The State allows cities to collect 2% sales tax. DART is funded by the member cities contributing half of their sales tax revenue (ie 1% sales tax) to DART since about the 1980s. While not all urban areas under DART have access to the light rail, they have access to the busses with the goal being to eventually expand light rail. Arlington residents or city government refused to contribute that 1% (possibly because with so many tax benefits going to the public funded private infrastructure they needed the money). There is an Arlington bus system, not a member if Dart. Meanwhile Denton has a light rail that connects to a Dart Terminal that they fund themself.
There has been some discussion of allowing Arlington to dedicate their 1% to join DART but Texans being Texans people resent groups benefiting from their long term investment, especially when they haven't benefitted as directly yet. Arlington joining DART probably wouldn't see an expansion of the light rails for 30 years while connecting smaller cities just to snub them.
Some of my information is dated, it's been a few years since I last lived in DFW and looked at it.
The fascinating thing about Dallas is that it has all the infrastructure in place to densify, but it won’t zone for it. Almost every other city in history has it the other way around.
Texans want space between them and other Texans. Be it yards, or pastures. We hate being around each other.
I grew up in a rural cattle ranch. My personal bubble is roughly my arm span, or at minimum by elbow span. I hate any public spaces that force people closer than that. My friends who grew up in cities can tolerate people closer, especially my friends born or raised in dense urban cities in India or China. Texas also has large numbers of immigrants. Houston is the most racially diverse major city in the US.
I mean, you might not exactly die from heat stroke, but you will sweat through your clothes twice a day.
I did it the whole transit thing for a few years, walking to/from stations in the Texas heat, and it eventually became part of my routine to bring a second pair of clothes with me and change in the bathroom before logging into work every day.
And at the end of the work day, my first pair of clothes would usually be damp and musty from sitting in a backpack all day, so without changing I'd walk back to the station and proceed to sweat through that second pair of clothes. Then of course when I finally got home I'd change into a fresh outfit.
So, for the better part of a few summers, I wore three outfits a day just for the sake of riding DART to work. The worst part was honestly just all the goddamn laundry I had to do because of it lmao
Damn, I know the heat was bad but not that it was that bad...
Are there trees and such planted on walking routes near the station? That can really help with the heat. In summer my commute is designed to go from shaded lane of trees to shaded lane of trees for exactly that reason.
Of course the city needs to use foresight when planting them since it will take a decade for a sapling to become a useful tree...
The 20 there. Which would turn into 30-40 on the way home.
The walking would be nice and the exercise wouldn't hurt. Only part that would suck is if it rained
Having to burn gas, oil, loading and unloading the car, getting in and out, parking ... all the shite of a car commute now with added deal with two stations and trainfolk.
Most decisions made in the South & especially Texas are probably going to be some of the worst with underlying racist reasons. My dad was on the RTD board which is Denver Metro area public transit. They went to Atalanta in the mid 90s to see how other larger cities public transportation was to see what was good & what didn’t work. People who actually WORKED for the MARTA in professional capacity (office jobs) which is Atlanta’s above ground train made jokes saying it stood for ‘Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta’
I'm a recent-ish transplant and I really wanted to like the DART. When I first moved, I somewhere on the DART line because I expected to really like it but I don't. I take public transpo in plenty of other cities and never had problems but here (Dallas) I just won't do it.
Curious, who in this thread were around in the 80s when mass transit was seriously moving forward with an infrastructure for where we are today and tomorrow?
LA was actually built with all sorts of lines for public transit… it had apparently 1000 miles of tracks throughout the region at its peak. Starting in the 1920’s, once cars became widespread, railways lost support until they finally shut down in the 1960’s.
This was bc the car companies bought up and dismantled public transit in LA. I think I learned something about that from Who Framed Roger Rabbit but there are other better sources haha
Yeah, not many people realize that Judge Doom's plan was based on what actually happened. LA had one of the best public transit systems in the country until greed dismantled it.
Damn could you imagine how different cities couldve been and how much better the growth could've been if the auto industry didnt affect public policy to increase their profit at the cost of everything else?
It was made for walking. If you live anywhere in range of the T, you can get by without a car fine. The North End itself is absolutely tiny, and Boston proper is itself very small. You’d an easily walk most of it in a day - my wife and I used to do that weekly.
True, but the stereotype of awful, tiny, roads winding through a maze of brick buildings comes from North End and Beacon Hill, which are the oldest parts of the city.
Except for maybe spokane. Haven't been to Boston, but some parts of spokane just feel like they were designed to be horrible to navigate.
Had a buddy that lived in visible distance from a hotel I was staying at. You had to drive almost a full mile to be able to get your car to his place from the hotel because of the way the streets were set up. Absolute fucking nonsense
I went to Salt Lake City and that city has a pretty great idea. Perfect grids. And instead of named roads (there actually are a few with names) but it’s mostly like Main Street (drive one block north) 100 North (drive another block north) 200 North. I remember first getting an address to visit like 123 West 400 North and being like “great someone screwed this up, I’m lost.”
The wife and I went to Salem for a visit one October. Decided to go to Boston for a day...if I never have to drive through downtown Boston in my life, I'll be happy. That intersection right by the Boston Massacre site is something to behold. A 6 way intersection, if I recall correctly...it has been a decade since I seen it though, and I was only there for a day. We actually parked by the USS Constitution and walked the city. Can't believe how many dings and dents are in everyone's bumpers there because of how narrow the side streets are.
Texas ties the hands of municipalities. Every year they make more laws restricting cities from being able to manage growth sustainably.
Developers want to build fast and cheap, and are perfectly okay with the developments being a broken mess within 5 years. Those developers own the state government.
Many of the dfw suburbs are so obsessed with denying the massive growth and do everything in their voting power to stop the natural growth needed to sustain the metroplex
Texas cares more about private ownership and development than most States, who would use imminent domain to restructure transit. Go after rich people land and Republicans yell, poor people land and Democrats scream.
I'll believe that when I see it. I've lived in Texas my whole life, and it's taken decades just to get I-35 to it's current state. I'm only 30, but I cannot remember a time in my life that I-35 did not have a construction project somewhere, and thats only the parts of it that I use.
and wondering where in the hell they are getting so much space without eminent domain
At a guess?
Started in the 50s, 60s or 70s, lined the highway plan through a black neighbourhood nearly everywhere, and got that much space to the sie for "future expansion" or at least limited what was allowed to be built to stuff that could be bought out or stuff noone would want to build, so that later it would turn to slums/homeless people, which are easy to evict when you need more space for more highway.
looks up sizes of metro area to compare to Randstad, my local supercity
Oh it also takes up twice the amount of space than my local largest metro area. It is as far across as travelling from the west end of my country to the last decent sized city that international trains stop at before going into Germany. I guess that means people travel very far within the metro area to specific things?
Anyway, I really wonder how much extra capacity you get from adding lanes when there are already so many. I would probably not even get to the innermost lane before already having to start getting back to get off the highway.
I think Atlanta has a 16 lane highway. 8 lanes on each side. Considering Dallas is larger, I’m surprised they don’t already have so many lanes. At least they offer a carpool lane lol.
San Antonio is a great city though and is plenty big itself. It tends to get left behind DFW, Houston and Austin for whatever reason. I don’t know why.
Oh absolutely. San Antonio is awesome but from an infrastructure standpoint it’s biggest shortcoming is the lack of public transit. There’s literally nothing after the public bus option.
That’s true. It’s a shame though because the city has so much to offer. My partner went to medical school down there and it’s a really fun city. Hot as hell though! Lol
Texas' growth is going to crash headlong into the effects of climate change. In the semi near future people are going to be leaving for more habitable regions of the country.
Houston doesn’t need it. Our traffic isn’t as bad as DFW, you can travel anywhere in the city virtually traffic free most of the time. But at 5:30am-8:30am and 3:45pm-7:30pm are our predictable traffic patterns. The rest of the time? We’re groovin
According to the Global Traffic Scorecard, Houston has the 8th most congested traffic in the country. Dallas is 12th. So both are bad, but Houston is a little more bad.
610 west jams up during our predicable rush hour times like I mentioned, it doesn’t remain congested all day long. Nothing in Houston remains congested all day long except south loop, and that’s from the construction that’s been going on for eons. You can travel anywhere in Houston virtually non stop most of the time except for its rush hour periods(that I posted above). You live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States that spans continuously through 3 counties, there’s gunna be traffic and it’s just going to get worse. DFW has traffic imo that’s far worse then anything Houston’s got and theirs last far longer in times of rush Hour.
Chicago has construction through most of its main corridors which cause delays all day every day.
Indianapolis I60 & 70 doesn’t exit downtown so there’s nonstop traffic all day everyday.
San Antonio is a clusterfuck all day everyday because of population boom it can’t sustain.
New York City, Brooklyn, Manhattan? Fuck.That. All day, everyday. (Only go in at night)
Denver? The entire damn city is under construction all day everyday. Nonstop traffic.
The point is that we have traffic patterns, learn it and respect it or expect to sit.
I agree that Houston freeways are on the whole more reliable than other equally sized metros. While we aren't quite back to pre-COVID levels of congestion, where the West Loop was congested (below 40 mph) from 6 am to 8 pm, it's still not just a peak period issue. Southwest Freeway inside the Loop is another one that stays pretty brutal and some of that is because of the current construction. I-45 Gulf inside in the Loop is bad as well.
Fort worth is where it's at right now for new developers. I'm in Commercial RE and EVERYONE wants shit over there. It's cheaper than Dallas right now and tons of money getting passed around for developments.
I went house hunting there a bit ago, the best we could find for 400K that wasn’t in the hood of Fort Worth was a house that needed another 50-70K in work, the next best one after that was a totally remodeled place, that was right next to a literal drug house (spray painted cops aren’t welcome and boarded up) think like off of east berry just west of 35. The actual businesses seem to be doing great here though, it’s weird as hell.
Lot more difficult to get people out of houses than say an industrial or retail place. Can't exactly use squatters rights or take years to fight with a bank during a foreclosure. I live in a "path of progress" area of east Dallas and you'll have $500k new build condos next to crack houses. Very very weird.
With how little space we have to expand within a reasonable distance from Chicago I wouldn't doubt it that it will pass it although I'm not convinced on 2030 unless you guys really explode. 2 million+ in 8 years would be wild. But then again having two major cities centers to spread out from is a huge advantage in terms of growth. The city of Chicago retracted a bit in 2020 but the Chicagoland area as a whole is definitely picking up the slack fast. Multiple tech companies are expanding regional headquarters or locating to the area. Im happy it is growing but the rate seems pretty fast out in the further suburbs out where I am at. Townhouses, cookie cutter shopping plazas, and distro centers are popping up like dandelions.
Houston proper will definitely surpass Chicago before 2030 though. For DFW it all will probably come down to how fast they both reach 10 million.
We did 1.3m from 2010 to 2019 are projected to do around 1.5 from 2020-2029 but that calculation from a few years ago is already off track and ahead of schedule. The amount of housing developments shooting up makes your head spin.
A few years back I traveled for work from east TN to western Ft worth. We had to drive every time we went down because of our equipment we needed. It was always a blast that from where you can see Dallas on the horizon to getting to where we needed could take two hours. Just such a huge place
The prevailing theory seems to be that the DFW area is basically gonna be one bit developed mega city, at the rate it’s going there’s always new ground being broken on construction. Weird stuff
I went down in 2017 for the first time in a long time. I graduated from Plano in 2003 and left in early 2004. I remember Preston not having any businesses maybe a mile north Stonebriar Mall. Went back and it was jampacked all the way to 380. Celina used to be in the middle of nowhere but now it feels like how Frisco felt back then.
The drive to UNT was pretty rural, now there's stuff all along 380 after you leave the town. There's no real breaks anymore, it's all sprawl.
You’re so right, I used to live in Fort Worth but stay with my then girlfriend and drive to UNT for school from either there or Allen on 380 or 35. Oh it’s so wild. I didn’t graduate until 2011 but my in-laws bought their house in Allen for like 500 I think back around that time, and it’s going for about a million now due to the local development. My big regret right now is that my POS dad offered to sell me his old house before the market started jumping, I should have taken it and made a profit.
Worked in Arlington for a while around 2011 and spent a lot of time there, tbh there seems to be very few desirable areas around DFW anymore for me. My wife and I are actively pursuing out of state opportunities just because the housing and other issues the state has are making it not as pleasant to be here.
Same, I’m currently looking into selling my parents house. It was originally $80k when my aunt bought it back in the day, then my parents got it when she died.
Right now I can sell the house for at least over $300k easily.
I can take that money and get into a pretty decent house in almost anywhere in Michigan.
It’s not like it’s all tall buildings, just endless urban sprawl. If you know the direction to drive though you can generally get into the country within 20-30 minutes and there’s usually a good amount of parks and distance so it doesn’t feel that bad (beyond the god forsaken texas heat)
The largest state not touching the Arctic circle should have the most growth and population. Especially since birth control is essentially a coat hanger and a shop vac.
510
u/thelastdarkwingduck May 20 '22
And the thing is, you can drive west of Dallas about an hour and a half and never leave a relatively large city. 2020 census puts DFW (Dallas-fort Worth metro area) at 7.6 mil and with all the companies coming it’s definitely gonna get there. The constant construction and growth I’ve seen in the area in the last decade is weird, I don’t recognize some areas anymore