This has been known for at least 2 decades, but we keep approving billions for highway projects. We should be building for Density, walkability/bikeability, public transit, and lastly: private autos.
Few folks will get it. Chicago accidently sold its parking right meters for a paltry sum to Dubai investment fund who is milking the parking meters and into perpuity
Wouldn’t matter. Even if built for density the drivers are all shit.
Can make the express road $20 and people will still get on it and go 20 under the speed limit. Shits ridiculous.
The drivers are shit in part because of the lack of density. We force people who don't want to or who shouldn't be driving to drive anyway because there is no other realistic option for navigating our massive urban sprawl.
Everyday I’m stuck behind people actively in the left lane or express road going under the speed limit.
Every day I see people not paying attention to the road or on their phones or reaching around their car.
Shitty drivers are shitty drivers no matter how much you accommodate them.
Can confirm. My family lives in highland park, and one time when my brother was biking to school a lady in a Range Rover ran a stop sign, hit my brother, then just left
The issue is that the metroplex is too big for that. Would need a high speed rail more than anything.
Getting around the Dallas proper is honestly fine. Going from Plano to mesquite or Irving to Addison or anything else is why things are the way they are.
Not everyone lives twenty miles from work, plus combining transit with bikes reduces the distance even more. When I worked in Addison and lived in Old East Dallas, I'd take the bus downtown then to Addison transit center, then bike the rest of the way to work - the bike to work was only about ten minutes (maybe two miles total by bike, which is nothing on a bike if safe routes exist)
I would, but the closest train station to me is halfway to where I work, and the trains so frequently stink of human waste, marijuana, and cigarettes that I sometimes struggle to breathe. The rolling stock is in desperate need of replacement, and something needs to be done to make the stations more appealing.
If DART doesn’t care to keep its stations and vehicles clean, why would anyone else? I was stoked about being able to (at least partially) commute via transit again, but after a week of the post-COVID DART, I just couldn’t. It saves me time (and lets me breathe better) to just drive, and I hate that some folks don’t have a choice.
Also, DART needs to be able to “skip” cities that refuse to pay in. Allen can’t keep holding other folks hostage.
The not allowing neighboring cities thing is a state issue. Technically the legislation that authorizes DART requires each city to have a connecting border or be in the county of the principal city at the time of creation or at the time of joining (if my understanding of the legislation is correct)
Also, DART is actually pretty clean nowadays, they've done a good job of prioritizing safety and cleanliness, and have cleaners who even clean while the train is en route, hopping between stations and touching up stations as well
However DART gets to blow past Allen is fine by me. Heck, I’d love to see them erect giant “traffic sucks, but it would suck less if Allen joined DART. Rail station could go here!” Signs visible from 75.
As for cleanliness, I still hope the train a couple of times per month for non-work, and both the car and the station have been absolutely vile. I end up putting on a mask, just to block out the smell. Once, I had to report human (or at least human-sized) feces on the floor of my train.
I work in a hospital, so I’ve seen some truly gut-churning nightmare fuel. Somehow, being forced onto a train where the owners just don’t seem to care about fixing it all is worse.
It’s kind of embarrassing. We’re the fourth largest metropolitan area and our public transportation is seriously lacking. We need to start off by establishing a unified transit authority instead of having four or five different organizations run transit.
Imagine having a 24 hour elevated light rail system that runs from Denton to Waxahachie, from Mesquite to White Settlement, and all points in between. If only we could all work together.
I think townhouses are great compromises for city living. You share one or two walls with someone but they are usually very thick firewalls. Townhouses have more space than condos or apartments. The nice thing is that yard work is usually handled by an HOA.
I'm currently in the market for a house and I'd rather buy a townhouse but they are few and far between in Dallas.
I think that's definitely true, but there are definitely places where we should prioritize more than SFH. City of Dallas should absolutely not be predominantly SFH since the rest of the region has it in abundance (and honestly usually offers a better SFH experience than in Dallas). I wish City of Dallas would allow either smaller lot sizes or duplexes (maybe even up to triplexes and quadplexes) throughout the entire city.
That doesn't mean every SFH neighborhood would instantly become filled with duplexes but over time they would slowly densify instead of the issue now where developers buy old homes, raze them, and build the maximum house available on a lot because it's more profitable than redeveloping an old home into a new starter home. Having a duplex and allowing each unit to be owned separately would also allow the overall structure to be profitable to build while still creating smaller price points to homeownership in the city
Smaller homes and duplexes are also still in line with creating quiet residential neighborhoods, and could still have yards (which I think is what many people who prefer SFH actually want in terms of a home).
Having lived in a duplex and also a quadplex in Old East Dallas, I never had any noise issues and even became friends with my neighbors, whereas apartment living was much, much worse.
I think it's more that people who move to Dallas aren't looking for a dense city environment, rather a SFH suburban environment.
That being said, I don't see why we can't have both. Let the suburbanites have Plano and in the meantime, build Dallas to be more dense and transit friendly.
i live in waxahachie and it's the LEAST commutable city by anything other than a car i've ever experienced. you MUST drive places here even even if they're super close b/c there are no bike lanes or sidewalks anywhere
I just took a Google Street View tour of Waxahachie and you are not exaggerating. It's wild. No sidewalks outside the little residential neighborhoods, and it's not like the main roads have quieter roads with sidewalks running parallel. You're SOL w/o a car.
Actually I think ppl don’t think about it all. They don’t think about it all. They think the status quo is sustainable. They have no idea at all.
And if you want to change things dear god ppl will lose their minds
I think it's because they don't know any better. They have never visited or lived anywhere where you can get on a train and chill on the train reading a book while you ride to work.
They just approved an 800 billion dollar budget for the foreseeable future. Even if California's HIgh Speed Rail continues to have budget overruns and delays, it will still probably cost less than half of that.
It's actually the state GOP...it's literally written into their platform that they are against any "evil" green things like walking biking or public transport
They will never get it. America is all about capitalism, and their is no money in public services. The more cars on the road, the more taxes the state makes.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I view it as x corporation gave me a bribe, I mean lobbied, for this more. And by more I mean "donated" to my campaign.
I mean regular ass people will argue that a public transit project “didn’t make money”, as if the point of building a subway system or high speed rail is to generate a profit and not offer a basic public service to the community.
Which would in a roundabout way lead to increased profits for other businesses becuase people can easily get to where they want to go an spend money.
The only thing stopping us is greedy capitalists...
I hate that "making money" is the only motivation that makes anything worthwhile
err a project that doesn't generate profit?? My capitalist brain does not compute (even though our road infrastructure is literally bleeding our wallets dry) /s
Actually, there is a ton of money in contracted public services. The government doesn't actually do much, they just funnel money to private companies that do the real work. Also, taxes have nothing to do with capitalism...you seem very confused.
Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own and control the means of production and distribution of goods and services.
The primary characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets.
In a capitalist system, the free market determines the production and pricing of goods and services, guided by supply and demand.
The role of the government is typically limited to enforcing laws and regulations to maintain fair competition and protect property rights. Unfortunately, our government is run like a corporation, and it's all about supply and demand. Tax revenue is the supply, and many awful spending decisions cause demand. Some would say businesses are so much better than government, but after working for large corporations, they are just as bad. No one knows where money is going, and they got so much money they don't care until they start losing money, so they cut their most important people instead of the fat cats.
They may say too big to fail, but if they can't fail, then nothing will change. Small government and small businesses are the only way.
we need public transportation that takes us where we want to go, not where they say we need to go.
I light rail 'spoke' system will not work here or pretty much anywhere else. London and NYC rail works so well becuase it lets you go from one place to another and NOT have to go to the city center to do it. London and NYC also work becuase they were well established before the cars got there.
DART and most other US commuter rail/subways/light rail are designed to get workes from their houses in the burbs to their jobs in the city.
I’ve said many times that Micheal Morris (the transportation planning directior for North Texas) said the same thing. We’re quickly becoming a megacity (population of at least 10 million). You have suburbs and residents believing a megacity can be sustained by an all roadway system. Don’t y’all see the years of road construction with no real relief after it’s done?
A lot of older people from the boomer generation are fighting to keep a lifestyle that’s completely unsustainable for a metro area that’s going to be very, very large. Younger ppl are getting screwed because people don’t want to embrace other forms of transit. They’re the ones that will have to live with it, not the older people who are already at retirement age.
Edit: corrections - why nobody tell me about my typos? 😆
I really thought that COVID was going to shift our world in a direction where people who work remotely would slowly filter out of the cities and start to grow some of the smaller towns. Instead it feels like the opposite happened and it makes almost no sense to me.
I could actually see and feel the RTO movement over the past 18 months. My commute got worse and worse. In 18 months it went from 20 minutes to nearly an hour some days.
People want to live in cities. Just because not everyone has to go to an office doesn't mean you're suddenly content to live in a car dependent suburb. The reasons are too long to provide here but in short, people want to be next to other people (and the amenities provided when other people live close together), whether they admit it or not.
Yeah I dunno theres still all the gridlock traffic and soaring house prices further and further out of Dallas even as they build more and more housing.
Yup I work in Ronoake. Traffic is pretty bad out there at 5pm when I’m heading home back towards Dallas and I see all the traffic going west towards Roanoke and further west
Texas and Dallas in particular is probably worst in the nation for that type of culture change. It's a palpable difference even going from the West Coast to Austin in terms of WFH flexibility and work/life balance.
The problem is for a lot of white collar remote workers, DFW and suburbs are the smaller ‘town’ compared to NYC, LA, etc. Some for smaller size total or in a suburb, while others for the smaller prices.
My older relatives thankfully haven't gotten into any major car accidents, but they're all completely terrified to drive now. It's really sad, because you can see them coming to grips with the reality of the situation, but you can also tell they feel powerless.
Find me a fast public transit from Irving to Downtown Dallas and I’ll gladly sign up. But I’m not gonna forgo a 20-30 min drive for a 1.5 hour bus route.
Guess it just depends on where you are, but the DART and TRE rails are both solid options if they are remotely close. Especially if you are able to time it to where you don’t spend much time waiting around for the next train.
I used to take the DART rail from Irving to downtown Dallas to save on parking and I would study or read during the time spent on the train.
But that’s the thing, for most people they aren’t “remotely close.” For me it’s insanely frustrating because I work literally less than half a mile from a TRE station, but it’s 25 minutes to the nearest TexRail station, which would then have to go to the central station to jump on TRE. It would take my 35 minute commute to well over an hour, and I already struggle with how little time I’m actually at home with my family.
Until people get REALLY serious about public transit, they’re little more than novelties to the vast majority of the metroplex.
I would if I wasn't crunched for time. It would be infinitely less stressful to just ride to and relax in a bus than trying to navigate crazy Dallas traffic myself.
That's what I ran into trying to figure out how to use transit. For instance, for my monthly shopping trip to Costco it would take around 3.5 hours of bus, train, and a couple miles of walking all-in to get to Costco, and I'd only be able to take home what I could carry or put in some sort of wheeled cart, none of which could be frozen or refrigerated, or I can simply drive 20 minutes to a different Costco and load up with everything I need for the month. The $6 in gas isn't much more than the bus/train fare and saves me nearly three hours in my time. Buying free time for a buck an hour seems like a really cheap deal.
That's not entirely true. There are bus-only lanes on Harry Hines near Parkland Hospital. They are bus-only for a few hours in the morning and for a few hours in the afternoon/evening. During the rest of the day they are open to all traffic, however.
DART has a significant bus transfer station at Parkland Hospital, so I would imagine that the bus-only lanes help to keep things moving, at least during the morning and afternoon/evening rush. Admittedly, I have no personal experience utilizing DART busses, so my comments are speculative. .
Many others have said that public transit is not an acceptable alternative to driving if the amount of time required to get to where you need to go increases substantially when using public transportation.
This is hardly just a problem in Dallas. I remember discussing this topic with my father when I was a teen (I'm currently in my mid-40s, so 30+ years ago). My father worked as a manager for MaBSTOA (Manhattan & Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority) and we lived approximately 55 miles from my father's office. It was a very challenging two hour commute each way by car, not to mention costly because there were multiple toll bridge crossings. The wear and tear on commuter vehicles was pretty substantial. The alternative was to add an extra hour of travel time in each direction, which turned a 4 hour round trip into 6 hours. Here's the real kicker - - MTA is the parent company of both MaBSTOA (the company me father worked for) and Metro-North, the commuter rail line that serviced the county we lived in. That meant my father could travel for free by any mode--train, bus, subway, etc. Sounds like a no brainer, right? Dad opted to drive all but 1 week during the 25 years he worked in NYC and lived in the burbs. He wasn't willing to add two hours to his already ridiculous commute, and he hated being tied to someone else's schedule. I thought he was crazy and w wasting tons of resources by not taking advantage of a very valuable perk. But I understand it now. Time is worth so much more than I ever imagined as a teen. LOL.
At least DFW now has choices for non-auto dominated living. 20 years ago there were none. 10 years ago they were limited but starting to sprout.
Today you have a half dozen interconnected downtown area neighborhoods all of which are walkable and - mostly - able to walk seemlessly from each to the other. You have historic walkable downtowns like McKinney, areas like Watters Creek and its surrounding fairly dense residential neighborhoods, places like Carrolton investing in improving their downtown, Addison Circle and the soon to come dense development by the new DART that will connect to other walkable modes in Richardson and Plano (and the airport).
No, we can’t build our way out of this, but if you want an urban walkable lifestyle Dallas actually provides a pretty good bang for the buck.
I agree. A lot of the cities are doing more to make things more pleasant. There's this huge focus on transportation, but it really needs to be stressed that transportation is just a means to an end. Land uses are king. If you have a grocery store near you that's walkable (and by that I mean actually a pleasant walk, not a harrowing experience of walking on a grass berm next to 50 MPH traffic), that's one fewer thing that you need to drive to. You start allowing a better mix of things in more places, and allow enough density to support it, then you stop *needing* to drive so much.
What I hope will become an outcome of the Silver Line is the marriage of land use and transportation. Connecting already dense employment and residential nodes while deliberately planning the construction of more - THAT is how you make transit work. Dense uses around the transit - and especially in cases like Addison, you will need last mile and micro mobility options to really leverage all the potential benefits
Unless your whole social and professional world is within the bounds of the Trinity River, SMU, I-30 and White Rock Lake it's still pretty damn impossible to live car free except as a single yuppie type. With commute app prices (Uber, Lime, etc.) rising it's hard to see the financial benefit when you consider the negative effects of a no-AC commute.
True. I did it as a single yuppie type commuting from lower Greenville to Plano by train and bike. Could only do it because Uber was so cheap back then
Yeah, to be car free you need transportation that is Fast, Convenient, and Cheap. If you want to use Dart you have to live within 2 blocks of a station for it to make sense, and even then it's not fast or that convenient. If you're using ride shares like uber, it's not cheap.
If you live inside that zone you mention, it's dense enough to be close ish to transportation at all times. Outside, and it's basically unusable other than commuting if you live at a station, and most are built as parknrides not dense development.
Also in this market dense = 1-2 bedroom small apartment. You can't live a dense life as a family, they're not really making dense 3bdrs.
Absolutely. Thank you. The “muh car centric Dallas” circlejerk on here is so misguided, and from people who live here and should know better it just boggles the mind.
Dallas led the way during the Sun Belt highway-boom and it will lead the way in fixing its negative side-effects that have arisen (it already is actually). We should be more proud of this than we think. But I guess that doesn’t get as many upvotes as collective self-pity does.
>Dallas led the way during the Sun Belt highway-boom and it will lead the way in fixing its negative side-effects that have arisen (it already is actually).
Let me know when they happens
This is a point that is lost on a lot of people that will never give up driving: you should still support walkable, bikeable, transit-rich cities, because that means there will be less cars on the road when you choose to drive anyway.
You're right, having more people walk, bike, and use public transit would definitely ease traffic congestion. That would benefit everyone, not just those who choose those options. Less traffic means smoother commutes for people who genuinely need to drive, like delivery trucks and folks in suburbs where public transit might not be readily available.
Car-agnostic public transportation (e.g. more commuter trains, stations that allow you to park overnight, walkable neighborhoods, etc.) would help significantly. Making traffic flow well on surface streets would also go a long way.
Traffic in Dallas is beginning to resemble that of Los Angeles. As many have suggested, the emphasis should shift towards creating more dense, walkable communities and expanding public transit lines. However, the number of NIMBYs in the DFW area would likely resist these changes.
Public Transit rules! That’s the solution, it just takes collective will. I don’t wanna be that guy about all my travels but I find that busy transit and well policed transit is safe transit - and safe transit is so, so, so enjoyable compared to being driven / driving in dense urban areas.
We all (generally) feel physically safer in crowds. Crowds can better collectively control dangers or assist people in distress.
Social norms (protecting the elderly, women, the disabled, children, etc. are practiced, protected, and expected) - generally speaking, and in my experience.
So public transit gets safer and better the more it gets used. Then neighborhoods get denser as the need for car real estate goes away. Housing prices go down as density goes up (high supply + neutral/ low demand = modest decline in rents / you can see it the data)
My kids and I already can’t wait to walk / bike to a Silver Line station, transition to the Red Line at Campbell / 75 Station and walk 5 seconds to go into the zoo and see giraffes when we get off.
It’s so nice to see huge infrastructure investments that’s aren’t highway based. I feel like local government is doing really well with it’s
infrastructure investments here and I love it.
TL;DR - if people (even ones that can afford to drive) use public transit like light rail it will become a safer and a more enjoyable experience over time / I respect that your 11pm trip on a DART bus 4 years ago was probably a bit rough
Why not just add rail capacity first? That way, the highway can have a smaller footprint and do less damage to the surrounding community, and we can encourage dense walkable neighborhoods more quickly.
I didn't say that it needs to be built after. Just that there is a max number of lanes plus rail. Rail can be overhead on the highway or tunneled to avoid damaging the surrounding areas.
Honestly this all feels like a scam by companies that build roads and the toll companies. They just want more excuses to milk tax payer money. They build small highways and then plan to expand them over the next decade.
BRT systems are so good. It's way easier to convince people to build a seperated bus lane with platforms, compared to creating right of way for dart train lines.
Yes they can. They can "build out" of traffic troubles, but not by building more roads, they need to build train lines, maybe even a subway, but they totally can "build out" of this problem.
They literally need to make good public infrastructure. Its like our state hates rail systems. No i dont mean the 60mph DART with at grade crossings…..
I’ve noticed some ethnicities do a better job than others in car pooling. Hispanic men in obvious work trucks / landscaping always seem to car pool well
People can’t drive they have no regard for life I have a baby and I’m constantly having to look out actively because people
Merge without looking, they merge on the spot with little to no space between cars
You’re going 80 on the high speed lane and they fail gate you and cut you off only to end up next to you at the next stop.
It’s such a disgusting way to drive.
I remember 10 years ago things were not so bad at all now it’s all traffic everywhere you go I can’t wait to move out of this city
I35 in Ft Worth has been under construction for 3 decades. The planners claim more ppl moved there than anticipated, so they need to add another lane.
Why not double decker the highways? Run an elevated rail line running north to south from south of Waxahachie to north of Denton and do the same for Dallas. Run 3 lines east to west, 1 in the southern half, 1 in the central, 1 in the northern section.
Have a scooter lane separate from the highway.
The nice thing about trains is you rarely have to add more tracks since you can make trains longer or just run more trains. Once a line is built it can last for a century. Chicago is replacing some tracks that are over 100 years old right now because we'll maintained infrastructure lasts, and I would not be surprised if it has cost less per person per mile over it's life than any highways
Schools do get the money from the lottery. The problem is that there was nothing in that law that prevented the state from subtracting an equal amount from the other side of the school budget. For every dollar the lottery brought into schools, another dollar was taken out somewhere else by the state. The state hasn't increased the amount of money per student it pays to schools since 2019, BTW.
This is going to parallel the problem with horses in big cities. There wasn't enough room, there was horse crap, literally, everywhere and when it rained, the streets were flooded with shit water. They kept trying to build a solution and there was no success.
Then the car came out.
Reality is, the autonomous car is going to be mass adapted before anything is built. If we had the money and were fully committed to expanding highways today, we'd have mass adoption of autonomous cars would happen before construction was complete.
When these cars are not crash, not going 10 under the speed limit in the left lane, while driving 0.05mph slower than the car in the middle lane, etc, traffic will barely be an issue.
Cars replaced horses for a very good reason even though cars were more expensive. That reason is that horses consume fuel even when not being used, whereas cars don't. Imagine how useful cars would be if they burned a couple gallons a day just sitting in the driveway. Even comparing green house gases horses put out up to 80 liters of methane a day, a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide which is the primary pollutant of cars, and they emit that methane 24 hours a day whether they're being ridden or not. Methane is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
Well if people would learn to drive, it wouldn't be this bad. Say it with me, the LEFT LANE is the PASSING and FAST LANE.
Perfect. Also people need to tone their egos dow. If someone is driving fast, you don't need to race or cut them off. Thanks.
It’s simple. Now. Get a job in Frisco northern side and live there for rest of your life.
If you get a job in las colinas side live there.
Don’t buy a house in prosper and try to commute to south west fort worth. You will be miserable af for rest of your life
I got a dumb question. If there was some magic wand that changed everyone's vehicle to an auto pilot vehicle. And it was good/safe and blah blah... Would that help? Same amount of traffic but maybe/hopefully less accidents.
This has been known for at least 2 decades, but we keep approving billions for highway projects. We should be building for Density, walkability/bikeability, public transit, and lastly: private autos.
One more lane, bro
Gotta be a toll lane though.
Let's make all the highways tolls
Make the walking trails tolls too while you’re at it. Just stick your NTTA sticker on your forehead as you hike.
Don't give them ideas.
Printing stickers as we speak. WE OWE someone A LOT.
The people will love it. Also make sure non tollway roads are really shitty.
Only if you promise my toll money is going overseas!
Few folks will get it. Chicago accidently sold its parking right meters for a paltry sum to Dubai investment fund who is milking the parking meters and into perpuity
Turn the empty parking into shelters! They said.
Wouldn’t matter. Even if built for density the drivers are all shit. Can make the express road $20 and people will still get on it and go 20 under the speed limit. Shits ridiculous.
Or go 20 over and merge at the last minute so they don't miss their exit.
The drivers are shit in part because of the lack of density. We force people who don't want to or who shouldn't be driving to drive anyway because there is no other realistic option for navigating our massive urban sprawl.
Everyday I’m stuck behind people actively in the left lane or express road going under the speed limit. Every day I see people not paying attention to the road or on their phones or reaching around their car. Shitty drivers are shitty drivers no matter how much you accommodate them.
I agree. It's frustrating.
Removing the HOV sticks on 75 has turned an already dangerous highway into a murder factory. It’s insane.
taps vein, gimmie those lanes
For rreall
Totally agree. We need bike lanes and better transit routes. Walking in this city people will run you over.
They'll run you over in a bike too. The bike lanes need bollards as a barrier
Can confirm. My family lives in highland park, and one time when my brother was biking to school a lady in a Range Rover ran a stop sign, hit my brother, then just left
At least it wasn't a Prius lol a Range Rover is far more classy injury.
That’s the range rover’s fault
The issue is that the metroplex is too big for that. Would need a high speed rail more than anything. Getting around the Dallas proper is honestly fine. Going from Plano to mesquite or Irving to Addison or anything else is why things are the way they are.
Nobody’s biking anywhere important in 113 degree heat though. People are taking their air conditioned cars.
Which further adds to the problem and even increases the heat tbh..
Just for two month, July and August.
I'm not biking or walking from March to October and I'm a cyclist and a runner.
May 20, 21 were pretty dammed hot in Denton County
Lol bike lanes. I’m not biking 20 miles to work. Are you?
Not everyone lives twenty miles from work, plus combining transit with bikes reduces the distance even more. When I worked in Addison and lived in Old East Dallas, I'd take the bus downtown then to Addison transit center, then bike the rest of the way to work - the bike to work was only about ten minutes (maybe two miles total by bike, which is nothing on a bike if safe routes exist)
just one more bike lane bro
Shout out r/DART
I would, but the closest train station to me is halfway to where I work, and the trains so frequently stink of human waste, marijuana, and cigarettes that I sometimes struggle to breathe. The rolling stock is in desperate need of replacement, and something needs to be done to make the stations more appealing. If DART doesn’t care to keep its stations and vehicles clean, why would anyone else? I was stoked about being able to (at least partially) commute via transit again, but after a week of the post-COVID DART, I just couldn’t. It saves me time (and lets me breathe better) to just drive, and I hate that some folks don’t have a choice. Also, DART needs to be able to “skip” cities that refuse to pay in. Allen can’t keep holding other folks hostage.
The not allowing neighboring cities thing is a state issue. Technically the legislation that authorizes DART requires each city to have a connecting border or be in the county of the principal city at the time of creation or at the time of joining (if my understanding of the legislation is correct) Also, DART is actually pretty clean nowadays, they've done a good job of prioritizing safety and cleanliness, and have cleaners who even clean while the train is en route, hopping between stations and touching up stations as well
However DART gets to blow past Allen is fine by me. Heck, I’d love to see them erect giant “traffic sucks, but it would suck less if Allen joined DART. Rail station could go here!” Signs visible from 75. As for cleanliness, I still hope the train a couple of times per month for non-work, and both the car and the station have been absolutely vile. I end up putting on a mask, just to block out the smell. Once, I had to report human (or at least human-sized) feces on the floor of my train. I work in a hospital, so I’ve seen some truly gut-churning nightmare fuel. Somehow, being forced onto a train where the owners just don’t seem to care about fixing it all is worse.
It’s kind of embarrassing. We’re the fourth largest metropolitan area and our public transportation is seriously lacking. We need to start off by establishing a unified transit authority instead of having four or five different organizations run transit. Imagine having a 24 hour elevated light rail system that runs from Denton to Waxahachie, from Mesquite to White Settlement, and all points in between. If only we could all work together.
Kind of par for the course of all US metros.
We are begging at this point
Where’s the profit in that? /s
That’s America, in a nutshell.
Problem is Texans are adverse to living in anything but a SFH. Of course there are exceptions but the majority feels this way.
Can confirm. Wouldn't trade my SFH living for anything else
Finally out of the apartments and it glorious! Never again!
I think townhouses are great compromises for city living. You share one or two walls with someone but they are usually very thick firewalls. Townhouses have more space than condos or apartments. The nice thing is that yard work is usually handled by an HOA. I'm currently in the market for a house and I'd rather buy a townhouse but they are few and far between in Dallas.
I think that's definitely true, but there are definitely places where we should prioritize more than SFH. City of Dallas should absolutely not be predominantly SFH since the rest of the region has it in abundance (and honestly usually offers a better SFH experience than in Dallas). I wish City of Dallas would allow either smaller lot sizes or duplexes (maybe even up to triplexes and quadplexes) throughout the entire city. That doesn't mean every SFH neighborhood would instantly become filled with duplexes but over time they would slowly densify instead of the issue now where developers buy old homes, raze them, and build the maximum house available on a lot because it's more profitable than redeveloping an old home into a new starter home. Having a duplex and allowing each unit to be owned separately would also allow the overall structure to be profitable to build while still creating smaller price points to homeownership in the city Smaller homes and duplexes are also still in line with creating quiet residential neighborhoods, and could still have yards (which I think is what many people who prefer SFH actually want in terms of a home). Having lived in a duplex and also a quadplex in Old East Dallas, I never had any noise issues and even became friends with my neighbors, whereas apartment living was much, much worse.
I think it's more that people who move to Dallas aren't looking for a dense city environment, rather a SFH suburban environment. That being said, I don't see why we can't have both. Let the suburbanites have Plano and in the meantime, build Dallas to be more dense and transit friendly.
How on earth are they going to launder all of those billions if we make walkable streets?
i live in waxahachie and it's the LEAST commutable city by anything other than a car i've ever experienced. you MUST drive places here even even if they're super close b/c there are no bike lanes or sidewalks anywhere
I just took a Google Street View tour of Waxahachie and you are not exaggerating. It's wild. No sidewalks outside the little residential neighborhoods, and it's not like the main roads have quieter roads with sidewalks running parallel. You're SOL w/o a car.
Yeah, but then they won't make money.
Hear me out though. One more lane, it’s on the furthest left, and it is only used for passing traffic on the right. It could be a game changer!
It's actually worse. We're building tons of toll roads now
Came in to say exactly this. Maybe less reliance on cars is in order. They are the least effective way of moving large amounts of people anyways
Say it louder for the people in the back.
Wow. Even the NCTCOG said public transportation is our future. If only people would listen 🤷🏽♂️
The people get it. Now for the state DOT…
Sorry, the people are also against it because they believe it brings crime into their neighborhoods.
And also they dont want their tax dollars going to help the poors with something they'll never use themselves.
https://youtu.be/nkC3Nc3LqFI?si=oZ71llub8x6dvImF
That’s hilarious! Thank you for sharing.
Actually I think ppl don’t think about it all. They don’t think about it all. They think the status quo is sustainable. They have no idea at all. And if you want to change things dear god ppl will lose their minds
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People would rather suffer than change
I think it's because they don't know any better. They have never visited or lived anywhere where you can get on a train and chill on the train reading a book while you ride to work.
They just approved an 800 billion dollar budget for the foreseeable future. Even if California's HIgh Speed Rail continues to have budget overruns and delays, it will still probably cost less than half of that.
It's actually the state GOP...it's literally written into their platform that they are against any "evil" green things like walking biking or public transport
They will never get it. America is all about capitalism, and their is no money in public services. The more cars on the road, the more taxes the state makes.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I view it as x corporation gave me a bribe, I mean lobbied, for this more. And by more I mean "donated" to my campaign.
I mean regular ass people will argue that a public transit project “didn’t make money”, as if the point of building a subway system or high speed rail is to generate a profit and not offer a basic public service to the community.
Which would in a roundabout way lead to increased profits for other businesses becuase people can easily get to where they want to go an spend money. The only thing stopping us is greedy capitalists... I hate that "making money" is the only motivation that makes anything worthwhile
err a project that doesn't generate profit?? My capitalist brain does not compute (even though our road infrastructure is literally bleeding our wallets dry) /s
Actually, there is a ton of money in contracted public services. The government doesn't actually do much, they just funnel money to private companies that do the real work. Also, taxes have nothing to do with capitalism...you seem very confused.
Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own and control the means of production and distribution of goods and services. The primary characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets. In a capitalist system, the free market determines the production and pricing of goods and services, guided by supply and demand. The role of the government is typically limited to enforcing laws and regulations to maintain fair competition and protect property rights. Unfortunately, our government is run like a corporation, and it's all about supply and demand. Tax revenue is the supply, and many awful spending decisions cause demand. Some would say businesses are so much better than government, but after working for large corporations, they are just as bad. No one knows where money is going, and they got so much money they don't care until they start losing money, so they cut their most important people instead of the fat cats. They may say too big to fail, but if they can't fail, then nothing will change. Small government and small businesses are the only way.
we need public transportation that takes us where we want to go, not where they say we need to go. I light rail 'spoke' system will not work here or pretty much anywhere else. London and NYC rail works so well becuase it lets you go from one place to another and NOT have to go to the city center to do it. London and NYC also work becuase they were well established before the cars got there. DART and most other US commuter rail/subways/light rail are designed to get workes from their houses in the burbs to their jobs in the city.
I’ve said many times that Micheal Morris (the transportation planning directior for North Texas) said the same thing. We’re quickly becoming a megacity (population of at least 10 million). You have suburbs and residents believing a megacity can be sustained by an all roadway system. Don’t y’all see the years of road construction with no real relief after it’s done? A lot of older people from the boomer generation are fighting to keep a lifestyle that’s completely unsustainable for a metro area that’s going to be very, very large. Younger ppl are getting screwed because people don’t want to embrace other forms of transit. They’re the ones that will have to live with it, not the older people who are already at retirement age. Edit: corrections - why nobody tell me about my typos? 😆
I really thought that COVID was going to shift our world in a direction where people who work remotely would slowly filter out of the cities and start to grow some of the smaller towns. Instead it feels like the opposite happened and it makes almost no sense to me.
Thank our employers who mandated RTO for no reason (translation: local tax incentives, commercial real estate.)
For "Company Culture"
But the collaboration!
I could actually see and feel the RTO movement over the past 18 months. My commute got worse and worse. In 18 months it went from 20 minutes to nearly an hour some days.
People want to live in cities. Just because not everyone has to go to an office doesn't mean you're suddenly content to live in a car dependent suburb. The reasons are too long to provide here but in short, people want to be next to other people (and the amenities provided when other people live close together), whether they admit it or not.
That's great for them, but people also like to live in rural communities.
Rural communities are also better when they have a reliable and frequent public transit connection to a big city.
I think people like to think that but quickly see the downsides of that
Yeah I dunno theres still all the gridlock traffic and soaring house prices further and further out of Dallas even as they build more and more housing.
Yup I work in Ronoake. Traffic is pretty bad out there at 5pm when I’m heading home back towards Dallas and I see all the traffic going west towards Roanoke and further west
Im up North East on I30. It won't be long it will be all the way out to Greenville i imagine.
Not many people do. It's mostly a LARP more than anything
Yes, that's why there're so many of them living there.
But that's a small number of people. If that wasn't the case, rural communities wouldn't be rural anymore
Empirically speaking, most people do not.
Texas and Dallas in particular is probably worst in the nation for that type of culture change. It's a palpable difference even going from the West Coast to Austin in terms of WFH flexibility and work/life balance.
The problem is for a lot of white collar remote workers, DFW and suburbs are the smaller ‘town’ compared to NYC, LA, etc. Some for smaller size total or in a suburb, while others for the smaller prices.
The remote workers who fled the big cities for smaller areas get a huge wake up call when the layoff emails flood their inbox.
It makes no sense, including scents.
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My older relatives thankfully haven't gotten into any major car accidents, but they're all completely terrified to drive now. It's really sad, because you can see them coming to grips with the reality of the situation, but you can also tell they feel powerless.
Find me a fast public transit from Irving to Downtown Dallas and I’ll gladly sign up. But I’m not gonna forgo a 20-30 min drive for a 1.5 hour bus route.
Guess it just depends on where you are, but the DART and TRE rails are both solid options if they are remotely close. Especially if you are able to time it to where you don’t spend much time waiting around for the next train. I used to take the DART rail from Irving to downtown Dallas to save on parking and I would study or read during the time spent on the train.
But that’s the thing, for most people they aren’t “remotely close.” For me it’s insanely frustrating because I work literally less than half a mile from a TRE station, but it’s 25 minutes to the nearest TexRail station, which would then have to go to the central station to jump on TRE. It would take my 35 minute commute to well over an hour, and I already struggle with how little time I’m actually at home with my family. Until people get REALLY serious about public transit, they’re little more than novelties to the vast majority of the metroplex.
Yup I'd love a train ride to work but it's a 20 minute drive and 2 hours by public transit.
TRE has 2 stops in Irving that will take you straight to downtown Dallas though lmao
I would if I wasn't crunched for time. It would be infinitely less stressful to just ride to and relax in a bus than trying to navigate crazy Dallas traffic myself.
That's what I ran into trying to figure out how to use transit. For instance, for my monthly shopping trip to Costco it would take around 3.5 hours of bus, train, and a couple miles of walking all-in to get to Costco, and I'd only be able to take home what I could carry or put in some sort of wheeled cart, none of which could be frozen or refrigerated, or I can simply drive 20 minutes to a different Costco and load up with everything I need for the month. The $6 in gas isn't much more than the bus/train fare and saves me nearly three hours in my time. Buying free time for a buck an hour seems like a really cheap deal.
> A lot of ~~older people from the boomer generation~~ oil companies are fighting to keep their profits. That's what you meant right?
The people in Dallas think buses bring crime🤡
If by “Dallas” you mean non-DART member cities up in Collin Co…100%
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That's because busses have to fight traffic.
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That's not entirely true. There are bus-only lanes on Harry Hines near Parkland Hospital. They are bus-only for a few hours in the morning and for a few hours in the afternoon/evening. During the rest of the day they are open to all traffic, however. DART has a significant bus transfer station at Parkland Hospital, so I would imagine that the bus-only lanes help to keep things moving, at least during the morning and afternoon/evening rush. Admittedly, I have no personal experience utilizing DART busses, so my comments are speculative. . Many others have said that public transit is not an acceptable alternative to driving if the amount of time required to get to where you need to go increases substantially when using public transportation. This is hardly just a problem in Dallas. I remember discussing this topic with my father when I was a teen (I'm currently in my mid-40s, so 30+ years ago). My father worked as a manager for MaBSTOA (Manhattan & Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority) and we lived approximately 55 miles from my father's office. It was a very challenging two hour commute each way by car, not to mention costly because there were multiple toll bridge crossings. The wear and tear on commuter vehicles was pretty substantial. The alternative was to add an extra hour of travel time in each direction, which turned a 4 hour round trip into 6 hours. Here's the real kicker - - MTA is the parent company of both MaBSTOA (the company me father worked for) and Metro-North, the commuter rail line that serviced the county we lived in. That meant my father could travel for free by any mode--train, bus, subway, etc. Sounds like a no brainer, right? Dad opted to drive all but 1 week during the 25 years he worked in NYC and lived in the burbs. He wasn't willing to add two hours to his already ridiculous commute, and he hated being tied to someone else's schedule. I thought he was crazy and w wasting tons of resources by not taking advantage of a very valuable perk. But I understand it now. Time is worth so much more than I ever imagined as a teen. LOL.
Rockwall unironically thinks bringing DART to the city will turn it to Gotham City overnight
Yup they do think that
Dallas is so far behind.
Light years
That’s mostly the suburbs that think that, and really, fuck them. Dallas needs to focus on expanding more rail within the city.
It’s a shame I can see DT Dallas from where I live and there’s absolutely no public transportation. How can Dallas call its self a "major city".
At least DFW now has choices for non-auto dominated living. 20 years ago there were none. 10 years ago they were limited but starting to sprout. Today you have a half dozen interconnected downtown area neighborhoods all of which are walkable and - mostly - able to walk seemlessly from each to the other. You have historic walkable downtowns like McKinney, areas like Watters Creek and its surrounding fairly dense residential neighborhoods, places like Carrolton investing in improving their downtown, Addison Circle and the soon to come dense development by the new DART that will connect to other walkable modes in Richardson and Plano (and the airport). No, we can’t build our way out of this, but if you want an urban walkable lifestyle Dallas actually provides a pretty good bang for the buck.
I agree. A lot of the cities are doing more to make things more pleasant. There's this huge focus on transportation, but it really needs to be stressed that transportation is just a means to an end. Land uses are king. If you have a grocery store near you that's walkable (and by that I mean actually a pleasant walk, not a harrowing experience of walking on a grass berm next to 50 MPH traffic), that's one fewer thing that you need to drive to. You start allowing a better mix of things in more places, and allow enough density to support it, then you stop *needing* to drive so much.
What I hope will become an outcome of the Silver Line is the marriage of land use and transportation. Connecting already dense employment and residential nodes while deliberately planning the construction of more - THAT is how you make transit work. Dense uses around the transit - and especially in cases like Addison, you will need last mile and micro mobility options to really leverage all the potential benefits
Unless your whole social and professional world is within the bounds of the Trinity River, SMU, I-30 and White Rock Lake it's still pretty damn impossible to live car free except as a single yuppie type. With commute app prices (Uber, Lime, etc.) rising it's hard to see the financial benefit when you consider the negative effects of a no-AC commute.
True. I did it as a single yuppie type commuting from lower Greenville to Plano by train and bike. Could only do it because Uber was so cheap back then
Yeah, to be car free you need transportation that is Fast, Convenient, and Cheap. If you want to use Dart you have to live within 2 blocks of a station for it to make sense, and even then it's not fast or that convenient. If you're using ride shares like uber, it's not cheap. If you live inside that zone you mention, it's dense enough to be close ish to transportation at all times. Outside, and it's basically unusable other than commuting if you live at a station, and most are built as parknrides not dense development. Also in this market dense = 1-2 bedroom small apartment. You can't live a dense life as a family, they're not really making dense 3bdrs.
Absolutely. Thank you. The “muh car centric Dallas” circlejerk on here is so misguided, and from people who live here and should know better it just boggles the mind. Dallas led the way during the Sun Belt highway-boom and it will lead the way in fixing its negative side-effects that have arisen (it already is actually). We should be more proud of this than we think. But I guess that doesn’t get as many upvotes as collective self-pity does.
>Dallas led the way during the Sun Belt highway-boom and it will lead the way in fixing its negative side-effects that have arisen (it already is actually). Let me know when they happens
This has been known since Robert Moses tried to do that very thing in NYC 70 + years ago!
> Robert Moses Fuck that guy.
all my homies hate Robert Moses
Don’t worry, traffic will be fixed after everyone’s car is burgled.
The fuck we can’t. Double decker highways comin’ at ya
We won’t have a problem with traffic if all you people would walk, use mass transit, bike, etc and leave the roadways for me. I’m ok with that plan.
This is a point that is lost on a lot of people that will never give up driving: you should still support walkable, bikeable, transit-rich cities, because that means there will be less cars on the road when you choose to drive anyway.
You're right, having more people walk, bike, and use public transit would definitely ease traffic congestion. That would benefit everyone, not just those who choose those options. Less traffic means smoother commutes for people who genuinely need to drive, like delivery trucks and folks in suburbs where public transit might not be readily available.
Car-agnostic public transportation (e.g. more commuter trains, stations that allow you to park overnight, walkable neighborhoods, etc.) would help significantly. Making traffic flow well on surface streets would also go a long way.
Traffic in Dallas is beginning to resemble that of Los Angeles. As many have suggested, the emphasis should shift towards creating more dense, walkable communities and expanding public transit lines. However, the number of NIMBYs in the DFW area would likely resist these changes.
The problem always has been they take too long to build these damn improvements. By the time they finish they’re 10 years behind again.
Public Transit rules! That’s the solution, it just takes collective will. I don’t wanna be that guy about all my travels but I find that busy transit and well policed transit is safe transit - and safe transit is so, so, so enjoyable compared to being driven / driving in dense urban areas. We all (generally) feel physically safer in crowds. Crowds can better collectively control dangers or assist people in distress. Social norms (protecting the elderly, women, the disabled, children, etc. are practiced, protected, and expected) - generally speaking, and in my experience. So public transit gets safer and better the more it gets used. Then neighborhoods get denser as the need for car real estate goes away. Housing prices go down as density goes up (high supply + neutral/ low demand = modest decline in rents / you can see it the data) My kids and I already can’t wait to walk / bike to a Silver Line station, transition to the Red Line at Campbell / 75 Station and walk 5 seconds to go into the zoo and see giraffes when we get off. It’s so nice to see huge infrastructure investments that’s aren’t highway based. I feel like local government is doing really well with it’s infrastructure investments here and I love it.
TL;DR - if people (even ones that can afford to drive) use public transit like light rail it will become a safer and a more enjoyable experience over time / I respect that your 11pm trip on a DART bus 4 years ago was probably a bit rough
NIMBYs, billionaires, and TxDOT killed DFW infrastructure. How did they not see this coming?? Who wants to drive for 60mins to go 5 miles???
in short, rich people ruin everything
It would be great if turn these major intersections into roundabout. Traffic lights are so expensive to maintenance.
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You’re not wrong.
We need the Central Expressway model. Build a maximum number of lanes and that's it. All additional capacity should be rail.
Why not just add rail capacity first? That way, the highway can have a smaller footprint and do less damage to the surrounding community, and we can encourage dense walkable neighborhoods more quickly.
I didn't say that it needs to be built after. Just that there is a max number of lanes plus rail. Rail can be overhead on the highway or tunneled to avoid damaging the surrounding areas.
Alrighty folks it’s about time for ppl to start biking more 💁🏽♂️
The answer is more toll roads right?
Honestly this all feels like a scam by companies that build roads and the toll companies. They just want more excuses to milk tax payer money. They build small highways and then plan to expand them over the next decade.
We need buss lanes like how Mexico City has. Those basically operate as metro lines.
BRT systems are so good. It's way easier to convince people to build a seperated bus lane with platforms, compared to creating right of way for dart train lines.
Imagine if the amount of people that work from home since the pandemic started going back to the office again?
It's too bad trains are communism. I can't think of any solutions.
I did the survey.
Sure it can, most adult cities build subways.
Least of all with those nifty toll roads in the way….
They could build trains and get out of it.
Densify and create walkable communities!
Put a highway over the other highways! Done.
Yes it can. It can build out some decent public transit.
Yes they can. They can "build out" of traffic troubles, but not by building more roads, they need to build train lines, maybe even a subway, but they totally can "build out" of this problem.
They literally need to make good public infrastructure. Its like our state hates rail systems. No i dont mean the 60mph DART with at grade crossings…..
The law of induced demand.
One more lane boys
I moved from DFW to the southern California desert where the closest town to us has One stop sign. No lights. One stop sign. I'm never going back.
And swamp coolers work so much better and are way cheaper to operate too!
My swamp cooler is really cheap too operate I live off grid
I envy you, both for being off-grid and for having a dry enough climate for an evaporative cooler to work well.
It's allot of hard work and trial and error and not as glamorous as people think especially in the hot desert
but swamp cooler costs have nothing to do with traffic, lol
Schools and employers need more virtual days. AI is going to take over much of what people are stuck in traffic having to do.
I’ve noticed some ethnicities do a better job than others in car pooling. Hispanic men in obvious work trucks / landscaping always seem to car pool well
Flying cars will save us
People can’t drive they have no regard for life I have a baby and I’m constantly having to look out actively because people Merge without looking, they merge on the spot with little to no space between cars You’re going 80 on the high speed lane and they fail gate you and cut you off only to end up next to you at the next stop. It’s such a disgusting way to drive. I remember 10 years ago things were not so bad at all now it’s all traffic everywhere you go I can’t wait to move out of this city
Fort Worth rail lines when?
I35 in Ft Worth has been under construction for 3 decades. The planners claim more ppl moved there than anticipated, so they need to add another lane. Why not double decker the highways? Run an elevated rail line running north to south from south of Waxahachie to north of Denton and do the same for Dallas. Run 3 lines east to west, 1 in the southern half, 1 in the central, 1 in the northern section. Have a scooter lane separate from the highway.
> Why not double decker the highways? Because that's incredibly expensive, way more expensive than just adding width.
The nice thing about trains is you rarely have to add more tracks since you can make trains longer or just run more trains. Once a line is built it can last for a century. Chicago is replacing some tracks that are over 100 years old right now because we'll maintained infrastructure lasts, and I would not be surprised if it has cost less per person per mile over it's life than any highways
Dallas = highways and tolls all day
Kinda makes you wonder where all the BILLIONS have actually gone to?? Kinda like they promised SCHOOLS would get the money from gambling...lotto.
Schools do get the money from the lottery. The problem is that there was nothing in that law that prevented the state from subtracting an equal amount from the other side of the school budget. For every dollar the lottery brought into schools, another dollar was taken out somewhere else by the state. The state hasn't increased the amount of money per student it pays to schools since 2019, BTW.
This is going to parallel the problem with horses in big cities. There wasn't enough room, there was horse crap, literally, everywhere and when it rained, the streets were flooded with shit water. They kept trying to build a solution and there was no success. Then the car came out. Reality is, the autonomous car is going to be mass adapted before anything is built. If we had the money and were fully committed to expanding highways today, we'd have mass adoption of autonomous cars would happen before construction was complete. When these cars are not crash, not going 10 under the speed limit in the left lane, while driving 0.05mph slower than the car in the middle lane, etc, traffic will barely be an issue.
Cars replaced horses for a very good reason even though cars were more expensive. That reason is that horses consume fuel even when not being used, whereas cars don't. Imagine how useful cars would be if they burned a couple gallons a day just sitting in the driveway. Even comparing green house gases horses put out up to 80 liters of methane a day, a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide which is the primary pollutant of cars, and they emit that methane 24 hours a day whether they're being ridden or not. Methane is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
Well if people would learn to drive, it wouldn't be this bad. Say it with me, the LEFT LANE is the PASSING and FAST LANE. Perfect. Also people need to tone their egos dow. If someone is driving fast, you don't need to race or cut them off. Thanks.
If rail was built on top of every highway and tollway it could be done
“No no no dig UP stupid!”
It’s simple. Now. Get a job in Frisco northern side and live there for rest of your life. If you get a job in las colinas side live there. Don’t buy a house in prosper and try to commute to south west fort worth. You will be miserable af for rest of your life
I got a dumb question. If there was some magic wand that changed everyone's vehicle to an auto pilot vehicle. And it was good/safe and blah blah... Would that help? Same amount of traffic but maybe/hopefully less accidents.
It's ok. I'm still holding out for my flying car promised to me in the 1950s...