Should Plano and other cities ditch paying for DART? (Dallas: condos, homes)

[DWong]

Originally Posted by Spade

as much as the suburbs are spreading outwards, condos, townhouses, and midrises are also rising in the inner city. I don't think D-Wong has been to Uptown in a while. I don't think D-Wong has been to downtown in a wihle. I don't think D-Wong has seen the plans that around the new green line metro stations that will provide very dense liveable and affordable conditions. People are now starting to come BACK to the city.

I wonder if anyone can find know the density of the Dallas inside loop 12.

Havn't been there in the past year, most time spent in Plano and Garland however......

It's not the super spread out place it was 20 years ago, people have come back to the city, but again.. the growth in outlying cities are far greater.
The growth of Dallas, vs Fort Worth and all other surrounding cities are miniscule.

I think y'all missed the big picture. As much new development may be going up... the overwhelming majority, nearly 10:1 are in homes not in condos/apartments. For the metro at least.

[portyhead24]

Originally Posted by DWong

I know it's a good option to have and is something to showcase, but it's not used by that many and is pricy. That's all folks!

Well, I think one of the problems with our country and government is lack of foresight and forward-thinking. On the transporatation issue though, I feel DART and the City of Dallas are doing a pretty darn good job.

[verybadgnome]

The DC area has a lot of sprawl but also has a very effective, efficient subway system going out to the burbs. One of the secrets is that - whether by gov't initiative or free market growth - the areas around subway stations have created high density, high value real estate. That is around the Ballston stop in Arlington, VA for example you have high density, mixed use development which gradually tapers off the further you get from it. That means that developers built residential communities that were more inclined to take transit around these stops even though there was a tradeoff of smaller homes and few if any single family homes. Tranist Oriented Developments can take shape naturally or with incentives and multiply the benefits when compared to a poorly planned and zoned area.

Also this idea of all-or-nothing in regards to car ownership is missing the point. Having a two person household with one car instead of two does reap rewards of its own, allowing almost as much flexibility for a much lower cost to the household.

[ctrres]

Originally Posted by Dangerfield

Not sure what you mean, but if you read the brief article it states;

"Integration with other transit modes, customer service, value for money, safety and high performance standards were a few of the categories in which DART was judged."

Sorry, I guess a smiley would have helped there. I was just acknowledging DART seems to be better at spending within its means than other transit agencies.

[grindin]

DART light rail didn't start until 1996, right? And it covers parts of Dallas and Collin counties with about 48 miles or so of track, correct? For a system to start so recently and to get the ridership that it has is nothing to sneeze at. Reviewing that list of nationwide light rail ridership, most of the systems that "beat" DART are older and/or serve much denser areas, or have more miles of rail, so lets have a bit of perspective here. It's going to take a bit of time and more expansion before the system has larger ridership numbers, but a daily ridership of 69-71,000 is nothing to dismiss so quickly. The most comparable system on that list in terms of ridership and miles was the RTD in Denver, which is a newer system as well.

By all accounts, DART seems to have exceeded expectations, and unlike here in Atlanta, people in the Metroplex actually want to expand their mass transit system, and the Transit-Oriented development along the lines is better that what I've seen along MARTA. Way to go Dallas!

I've ridden DART before, and I found it to be an efficient, clean system. It's nowhere near as janky as MARTA. Even if I did almost have an experience of vertigo on the CityPlace station escalators. Also, is DART still proof-of-payment/honor system, or do they have faregates now?

[Huckleberry3911948]

mass transit could work anywhere it was safe to ride it.
last 40 years our streets got very mean. most are not even aware of this bek they have been in steel/glass security vehicles called automobiles for 40 years.
its the same in france, they got trains they got buses but everybody tried to buy a little car, a sunami of non french immigrants not all nice people.

[kdogg817]

Dwong is in love and obssesed with Dallas. I understand why now she is quite glamorous?

[Bostonian08]

DART is a system in its infancy. To disparage DART as it is right now is like criticizing a newborn infant as a non-contributing burden on society. A huge investment like DART won't repay itself a first. It's gonna take time.

Driving by Galatyn Station I notice they are just about to open a whole neighborhood of 6 story brownstones all within easy walking distance to Galatyn. Also the are two high rises right over Mockingbird Station. I agree that density is necessary to spur ridership, but I also know that convenient nearby public transit spurs density. I knew this before I came to DFW and was scanning the map for neighborhoods near the train lines.

NYC was no different. When they built Grand Central there was nothing in Midtown. It grew up around the train.

History
Imagine Park Avenue from 45th to 49th Street as a rail yard-a corridor of smoke and cinders extending uptown from 49th Street. Think of breweries and factories operating where the Waldorf-Astoria, Lever House, and the Seagram Building now stand. Picture to the east a district of tenements, warehouses, and slaughterhouses. In place of the United Nations and Tudor City, the squatters' shacks of Dutch Hill, inhabited by paupers, criminal gangs, and a herd of goats. It is hard to conceive that this cityscape ever existed, let alone that it was the environment in which Grand Central Terminal took shape less than one hundred years ago.

Grand Central - History

Midtown Development
With Grand Central acting as an anchor, development around the terminal took off. Between 1913 and 1917, the Biltmore Hotel, the Yale Club, and two office buildings were constructed on railroad property across Vanderbilt Avenue. During the 1920s, as hotels and apartment buildings began to rise on the "air rights" tracts of Park Avenue, skyscrapers simultaneously sprang up along East 42nd Street. Warehouses gave way to the fifty-six-story Chanin Building, the fifty-four-story Lincoln Building, and the seventy-seven-story Chrysler Building.

Grand Central - History - Midtown Development

I envision Dallas 50 years from now being much denser particularly around the train lines. My job is a bit uncongenial to public transit, but when they open that line that goes right to BUMC I hope to make better use of it so I can ditch the stress of highway wars for the comfort of a big yellow chaffeur.

[DWong]

Originally Posted by kdogg817

Dwong is in love and obssesed with Dallas. I understand why now she is quite glamorous?

No comment. I'm in love.

[DWong]

Good info gets lost on older pages, but here are the facts again...

List of United States light rail systems by ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dallas Area Rapid Transit: Heavily Subsidized | WebCogito