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Old 02-25-2016, 08:59 AM
 
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I can't believe someone from Atlanta is complaining about DART and the lack of urban environment in DFW. This is a total joke!

Last time I check DART has more rail in terms of mileage than MARTA.

Dallas is easiet to get around.
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Old 02-25-2016, 09:10 AM
 
Location: In the heights
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mjtinmemphis View Post
I can't believe someone from Atlanta is complaining about DART and the lack of urban environment in DFW. This is a total joke!

Last time I check DART has more rail in terms of mileage than MARTA.

Dallas is easiet to get around.
The big difference is that rail for DART is light rail and that for MARTA is heavy rail.
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Old 02-25-2016, 09:19 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
The big difference is that rail for DART is light rail and that for MARTA is heavy rail.
Its serves the same purpose.
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Old 02-25-2016, 09:28 AM
 
Location: In the heights
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mjtinmemphis View Post
Its serves the same purpose.
Yes, I suppose just as buses serve the same purpose.

However, there are different levels of efficiency here. Generally, heavy rail is faster and has greater capacity per mile than light rail does and is more expensive to build. Generally, heavy rail in the US is completely grade-separated and doesn't mix with traffic at all so isn't subject to traffic disruptions while light rail in the US often has at least parts of their system that are not grade separated. Those are some of the differences there and partially why Atlanta, though not exactly a particularly urban and dense city, has MARTA rail ridership at 70+ million passengers a year while Dalla's DART rail ridership is at about 30 million passengers a year.
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Old 02-25-2016, 10:32 AM
_OT
 
Location: Miami
2,183 posts, read 2,388,269 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mjtinmemphis View Post
I can't believe someone from Atlanta is complaining about DART and the lack of urban environment in DFW. This is a total joke!
Dallas does lack an Urban environment; I guess one could say uptown, but the it's still very much sprawled compared to DC, Seattle, LA, New Orleans, etc. Outside of Downtown, I'd say Deep Ellum is probably the most Urbanized neighborhood in Dallas, buts its still very much disconnected from other areas.
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Old 02-25-2016, 10:36 AM
 
Location: Georgia
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If you haven't visited or lived in Atlanta in the past decade, get out now. We don't need ignorant comments about Atlanta's density and character.
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Old 02-25-2016, 10:40 AM
 
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That isn't my argument. Atlanta has never been in a position of superior urbanism to other sunbelt cities. It may be small slight better but in the grand scheme of things they are the same.
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Old 02-25-2016, 10:59 AM
 
Location: Surprise, AZ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by netdragon View Post
Dallas
-------

I was in the Dallas-Ft Worth area for the second time, and I have to say that metro Dallas is way way way too car-centric. Last time I stayed in the Galleria Mall area and went to downtown Dallas. This time I was in the Las Colinas area of Irving (a pretty little planned community, mind you).

The idea of having to drive everywhere in Dallas to do anything is just sickening... Doesn't it make people in Dallas mad? It seems appropriate for a small metro, but for a major top-10 metro in the country, Dallas may be the absolute worst in their love of the automobile. Maybe after Detroit.

The major roads in metro Dallas outside of downtown are on the same kind of mile-by-mile type grid you see up in Detroit and pretty much all looks the same throughout metro Dallas... Drive-up type restaurants and shops in strip mall after strip mall on the main roads, houses in-between. Occasional areas where things go verticals at interchanges of highways. There's really no true sense of place... All artificial by city name. But compare Coppell to Frisco to Grapevine to Plano... What's different? The name? It all looks so much the same it's maddening. If I plopped you into an area blind-folded let you pull down the blindfold for a second and put it back on, and repeated that about 10 times in a close area, you'd have no clue where you were. You'd probably guess Plano when you were in Irving. It all looks the same!

The flyovers of the dozens and dozens of highway interchanges litter the sky like some shrine to cars.

People are used to flying around in cars. There's no consideration for walk-ability anywhere but downtown Dallas. It's as if the metro is a giant monument to cars, cars moving fast. If they can't move fast enough - heck build some more flyovers! There are hardly any sidewalks anywhere. They often abruptly end, and even where there are sidewalks, things are obnoxiously laid out for cars.

And highways... I've never seen a metro so in love with highways. It's a grid of highways. It's extremely annoying hitting interchange after interchange, even for drivers. So, hey, more flyovers, eh?

I've ridden the red line of DART up to Plano and the orange line up to Las Colinas and I have to say that it is an attempt to fix the problem. It may end up some day in the distant future with walkable strips along these lines. For now, it's just causing disjointed mid-rise apartment development in "walking" proximity of the stations (for people that don't mind dodging speeding cars). However, metro Atlanta had heavy rail transit already from the 70s and has already built a streetcar off it, and more are on the way.

For the rest of the metro, I don't think it'll ever happen. Nor do I think it'll go vertical... People seem perfectly happy just moving out to the next development when an area gets too congested instead of building up.

Dallas makes me think of what Detroit / Southfield / Ann Arbor would look like if it kept growing and built more highways.


Atlanta
--------

Compared to most cities, metro Atlanta has a pretty good road system. However, for the amount of development in the North metro, it's inadequate.

For the most part, North metro Atlanta has accepted it isn't going to get better. We don't try to race everywhere and build flyovers everywhere.. Instead, we've embraced "smart growth" and build vertical now. Areas in outer metro being developed are really being re-developed. There isn't much open land getting developed for the first time like you see in metro Dallas. It's just tearing down what's there and putting in denser developments.

Communities in metro Atlanta, unlike Dallas, have realized the car isn't the solution to everything, and are making strides to be walkable. From Marietta's new roadside trails to Smyrna's existing ones, to the Silver Comet Trail, to the new 400 trail, and the Chattahoochee river trail, to the trail network being built way out in the outer suburbs in Cherokee county and North Cobb. Trails trails trails. Then there's the beltline in Atlanta. MARTA already exists - heavy rail and not light rail like DART. Cobb county is eyeing BRT and Atlanta is gearing up to build its streetcar grid, starting with the streetcar it has already built downtown to connect to MARTA.

Along the I-285 North perimeter, from Atlanta to Doraville, up and down I-75 and I-85, Atlanta is making use of existing infrastructure rather than frantically building more roads, adding more lanes everywhere, and is focusing development on key areas that have always been high density: Kennesaw Town Center, Cumberland, Perimeter Center, Doraville, Windward/Northpointe, Buckhead, midtown, downtown, airport. If you went back 20 years, that's where office was being built, and where it's being built now. Just more and more vertical.

Mixed-use developments: It seems Texas-style "mixed-use" is stripmalls next to apartments where you have to drive from the apartments to the strip-malls because they are too darned far away to walk to even if they are right next door, since they don't actually connect (save the cute little development in metro Dallas going up in Coppell). Metro Atlanta has hundreds of true mixed-use developments. There are over a dozen alone in the general area of Smyrna, outside the perimeter mind you. These are connected up by trails along roads, but people can actually shop and play right next to where they work.

Trees
------

Metro Atlanta has a treeline and hills. It's just beautiful, naturally. It's amazing with the density it has (not too much less than metro Dallas) that you can fly over it and see almost nothing but trees. Dallas only has beauty when it's artificial.

Las Colinas is one of the few exceptions. It has a lake and hills. Sure, the lake was made from a drained swamp, though Lake Lanier and Lake Allatoona were created by a dam, so can't completely fault that. But once you leave the little enclaves like Las Colinas, it's pretty dismal. It's just a lot of new stuff. But nothing stays new forever.

The future
-----------
As I've said, Dallas people seem content to just keep sprawling out. I don't see it going much more vertical, or walkable, maybe until it gets to L.A.'s size.

Metro Atlanta, on the other hand, has realized there's a limit to what cars can do. Metro Atlanta residents have just given up getting anywhere too far during rush-hour. Dallas commuters seem to still act like it's the good 'ol days where the car is all ya' need.

Both have horrible traffic. Both in the worst 5 of the nation. It just seems Atlanta has done a lot more with less highways, less lanes and less interchanges than Dallas, and will continue to do so, simply because building up always beats building out. If you don't believe it, look at Detroit and see the ultimate pinnacle of building out and what it does...

What's really ironic is that with all the highway miles being built in metro Dallas, Atlanta has almost matched it in growth and this could speed up since metro Atlanta is increasingly building vertical. The latest hotspot to start building vertical is the NW metro of Atlanta.
Of all the major metro areas, Atlanta is perhaps one of, if not the worst offender when it comes to sprawl and low density. Having said that, I would recommend not visiting Dallas moving forward if this bothers you so much.
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Old 02-25-2016, 11:02 AM
 
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Only part to me that seems very connected in Atlanta is the eastside and westside neighborhoods. Marta does seem better to me as it gives you that big city subway feel not only that it covers all the main areas of the city. Atlanta just seem more grittier in its core also.

I wouldn't try to say ATLANTA is truly better than Dallas they are almost the same
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Old 02-25-2016, 11:51 AM
 
Location: Willowbend/Houston
13,384 posts, read 25,583,506 times
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An Atlanta resident complaining about Dallas being too car centric? Pot meet kettle.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Staysean23 View Post
Only part to me that seems very connected in Atlanta is the eastside and westside neighborhoods. Marta does seem better to me as it gives you that big city subway feel not only that it covers all the main areas of the city. Atlanta just seem more grittier in its core also.

I wouldn't try to say ATLANTA is truly better than Dallas they are almost the same
Yep. Very little difference.
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