Living in Dallas without a car

[DWong]

Let's face it people; Dallas like many mid-American cities and TX cities is a driving town..
What's the one thing DFW has different than other major metros?
LOW DENSITY! If I'm not mistaken, low to mid 3,000 per sq mile. Ranking near last for large cities.

Makes for a pain public transportation. People in TX love there cars and ARE NOT going to give them up for riding a bus or rail. I think thats what makes DFW unique is that it's probably the last major metro where you can still have the nice big house on a big lot and not pay millions for and be close enough to the city center.

Don't spend billions to make it something it's not - that's one of the biggest draws to DFW. (ask anyone in SF, NYC, LA or Chi how much a nice house on big lot 15 minutes from Downtown would cost? - forget it)

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by DWong

Let's face it people; Dallas like many mid-American cities and TX cities is a driving town..
What's the one thing DFW has different than other major metros?
LOW DENSITY! If I'm not mistaken, low to mid 3,000 per sq mile. Ranking near last for large cities.

You are mistaken, DWong. Your numbers for density are also incorrect. Metro DFW has 627 people per square mile, Atlanta has 580, Houston has 525, Phoenix has 265. http://www.census.gov/compendia/smadb/SMADBmetro.html

Driving town? Face it, every metropolitan area in America is a driving town, the vast majority of the population everywhere own and drive cars. When you look at the San Francisco city residential areas, the street curbs are completely filled with parked cars.

Makes for a pain public transportation.

No it doesn't because every metro, regardless of its overall average density, has certain dense travel corridors where transit is the best solution.

People in TX love there cars and ARE NOT going to give them up for riding a bus or rail.

It seems that people in Texas' 2 largest metros already have given up driving in favor of riding trains.

I think thats what makes DFW unique is that it's probably the last major metro where you can still have the nice big house on a big lot and not pay millions for and be close enough to the city center.

Not the case... housing near the center is mostly row houses with very small land footprints, and very hefty prices.

Don't spend billions to make it something it's not

On the contrary, people in the DART service area are very happy to spend the billions... they don't like the current situation and they want to change it to something else.

ask anyone in SF, NYC, LA or Chi how much a nice house on big lot 15 minutes from Downtown would cost? - forget it)

It's true that in just about every urban demographic category, DFW housing is cheaper than Northeast or West Coast counterparts, but that's because Blue states have higher prices in general due to the effects of politics on the local economy. A Red state such as Texas or Georgia or Arizona has less government mismanagement and more realistic prices for everything.

That's what got us into the current mess. The Blue state local governments overregulated their housing industry, driving down the supply and wildly inflating housing prices. The prices became so high that home loans were driven out of most people's price ranges, more or less forcing banks to write loans with many different gimmicks that sooner or later people were unable to pay for. Then, banks began to collapse due to worthless loans, and investment banks such as Lehman collapsed due to their underwriting of these problem loans, and now the Federal government has to borrow a Trillion dollars from the Chinese to keep our banking system from total collapse.

Ultimately, the solution is to allow housing to be priced like we set the price of a new car... the cost of manufacture and sale, plus profit... but no windfall profits due to artificial scarcity created by government.

[ctrres]

Originally Posted by aceplace

It seems that people in Texas' 2 largest metros already have given up driving in favor of riding trains.

Originally Posted by aceplace

...row houses... .

In Dallas...,TX?

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by ctrres

In Dallas...,TX?

Yes. In Uptown, in Old East Dallas, in Knox-Henderson, and other places.

[ctrres]

Originally Posted by aceplace

Yes. In Uptown, in Old East Dallas, in Knox-Henderson, and other places.

So it's like Baltimore, or Brooklyn, or Philadelphia.

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by ctrres

So it's like Baltimore, or Brooklyn, or Philadelphia.

I don't know about Brooklyn or Philadelphia, but yes, Dallas has row houses similar in some ways to Baltimore's Federal Hill district. They are brand new, but similar in appearance.

[zatires]

Originally Posted by aceplace

It seems that people in Texas' 2 largest metros already have given up driving in favor of riding trains.

HUH?

Yes. In Uptown, in Old East Dallas, in Knox-Henderson, and other places.

WAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That is why you see no cars in Knox-Henderson and other places.

Knock, knock

Somebody bring this guy to the reality.

Just because the ridership in train is increasing does not mean people are giving up their cars. It just means that people from suburbia is taking the train to downtown Dallas. And even for suburbia, to reach to that train station they still drive.

I see the Knox-Henderson, Uptown, Downtown, VP, and other areas of in-Dallas every day, and I don't see packed busses running around, or people walking on the streets any more than they used to a few years back.

Nobody in those areas gave up their cars. At night the uptown is still packed with cars lined up on the streets, all the shopping and eating areas are packed with cars each and every day.

WHO GAVE UP THEIR CARS?

WAKE UP!

And a few rowhouses in Knox-Henderson?
They call them townhomes

It does not matter if you put townhomes in rows and rows, what matters is the actual pedestrian and public transport friendly city planning. That is what Dallas lacks, and will do so, until the crap hits the fan.

We will actually see people giving up their cars when the oil crises happen again, until that time some people will only keep on dreaming in Dallas.

[aceplace]

Zatires, I don't see any reason to engage you in a discussion. You're just not knowledgable about transit in Dallas.

[zatires]

Originally Posted by aceplace

Zatires, I don't see any reason to engage you in a discussion. You're just not knowledgable about transit in Dallas.

It is not that you don't see any reason, it is because YOU CAN NOT.

My knowledge in transit systems around the world seems to surpass yours in any given minute, and I proved all this with the posts I wrote.

Unlike you, I do not make personal claims, I prove the argument.