What do you think of the DART? (Houston, Dallas: apartments, condos)

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by DWong

Ya those lines in Riverside/San Bernard getting you close to work will be like winning a small lottery. Sure it can get you to the city, but now what?

Once you get to downtown LA, you take the Purple line and the BRT to the areas along Wilshire Blvd, or you take the Red line to the Hollywood area.

Long commutes in LA? Welcome to Hell. If you don't like it, move to Dallas.

[Lakewooder]

Actually we do have a subway - the lines from Mockingbird to downtown are underneath Central Expressway with a subway station at CityPlace/West Village.

[GHJohn]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

Actually we do have a subway - the lines from Mockingbird to downtown are underneath Central Expressway with a subway station at CityPlace/West Village.

That is hardly a subway system.

The question most people should be asking is, why does it take me 25 to 30 mins to drive 5 miles in traffic on I35? How many more bridges and tollways are they going to build? How much wider can they make the damn roads before someone wakes up and says, you know what, this public transit thing might not be such a bad idea.

[EarthyPalette]

As a daily DART/TRE rider, I found this Dallas Observer article very interesting.

Dallas - News - DART Needs to Build a Subway Downtown

[aceplace]

The Observer article makes an issue about the difficulty of auto traffic crossing the existing DART line on Pacific. In all likelihood, though, that will be less of an issue as time goes by. Why? The area south of Pacific is becoming less and less of an office district, and the center of downtown is moving north to Woodall Rogers. McKinney Avenue north of Woodall Rogers is developing as an office canyon in its own right. Buildings on Main and Elm, by contrast, are so old and undesirable for office space they are being vacated, and the excess space is being converted to residential.

Do we continue to funnel excess rail traffic on the existing transit mall on Pacific? I guess we could. A better alternative might be to use the existing trolley tracks on McKinney itself, extending the tracks to Victory Park, where they would join the existing DART rail alignment. This would cost very little, actually.

The transit mall on Pacific could still support its 24 trains per hour, or less, and the additional rail traffic would just ues the McKinney Avenue corridor, to serve the burgeoning Uptown office and residential area. This would also provide a rail alignment between downtown and Uptown.

Well, it's not DART's fault that China and India are buying the world's steel and concrete for their own projects and raising the price for the rest of us. So we don't need to continually flog DART over this. And we don't need to flog the suburbs for looking after their own interests... their voters don't pay taxes to Irving and Carrollton in order to benefit Dallas... they moved out of Dallas because they didn't like it. But Dallas can certainly be clever enough to serve its own interest.

[pupu]

So you think DART is not secure enough especially downtown. I will be working basically from 8 a.m to 7 p.m maybe 8 p.m. If the DART is not secure enough at night I'd rather take my car, even if I wanted to spare some money.

[cityconvo]

Excellent points aceplace. I also do not buy the assertion that if a second downtown line is built that it has to be a subway, especially if it is on the south side of downtown.

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by pupu

So you think DART is not secure enough especially downtown. I will be working basically from 8 a.m to 7 p.m maybe 8 p.m. If the DART is not secure enough at night I'd rather take my car, even if I wanted to spare some money.

You need better evidence of some alleged danger than one person's opinion or anecdote. Plenty of people ride DART rail at 7PM without fearing for their lives.

[lh_newbie]

Originally Posted by aceplace

You need better evidence of some alleged danger than one person's opinion or anecdote. Plenty of people ride DART rail at 7PM without fearing for their lives.

And you can certainly buy a couple day passes to test the system before buying monthly subscriptions.

[FarNorthDallas]

Originally Posted by pupu

So you think DART is not secure enough especially downtown. I will be working basically from 8 a.m to 7 p.m maybe 8 p.m. If the DART is not secure enough at night I'd rather take my car, even if I wanted to spare some money.

During the regular standard time - non Daylight Savings Time in the winter months - it gets dark at 6pm. I make sure and leave me office by 5:30 during those months. I don't like walking around downtown alone in the dark as a single female - whether I'm walking to my car or walking to the train station. But y'all can...it's your judgment call. Whatever works for y'all.... Some co-workers I have get building security to walk them to their cars past 6:00. Do whatever you think is right for yourself.