more facts on portland vs. dallas:

check out sustainlane.com’s quality of life ratings for 50 major u.s. cities (http://www.sustainlane.com/us-city-rankings/). their methodology is very thorough, and combines a ton of data, which is linked on each cities page. portland ranks number 1, while dallas ranks 24. this, by the way, is the quality of life ranking for the residents, and not the visitors. the worst rating portland receives is in housing affordability, and dallas still ranks higher in that category. check out the “metro congestion” ratings for both cities. dallas is the one that’s graph is almost off the chart. i have many friends who live in portland, and not one of them would trade places for dallas. the best anecdote they relayed was that congestion in portland means you’re having to drive on the highway at 30mph, instead of 50mph. obviously, congestion for dallas means stop and go traffic.

the 2007 texas transit institute mobility survey for u.s. cities ranks dallas as fifth for overall highest congestion rates, while portland ranks 33rd (a number which has gone down from previous years). New York City’s numbers continue to go down as well. LA is at the top…the way we are currently building is exactly the way LA does. it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that major changes need to be researched.

and in regards to subsidization of transit modes, U.S. current tax and fee payments to the government by motor-vehicle users fall short of government expenditures related to motor-vehicle use by approximately 20-70 cents per gallon of all motor fuel, says the Institute of Transporation Studies from UC (http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/download_pdf.php?id=1088%20). This means, on a dollar basis, U.S. drivers are underpaying local, state and national governments by $40 to $105 billion a year.

I’m not saying that we should abandon cars, and everyone needs to ride a bike, but I do believe a responsible transit plan is comprehensive, and multi-modal. right now, we are heavily skewed to the automobile (i know, i know, because everyone owns one), but we haven’t been given many other choices. we will continue to grow by a million in a short time, so we need to be looking at what other massive cities do (ie. Tokyo, London, New York)…all of which have an array of transit options, and not just highways.

oh yeah, and sprawl is bad.

And I’m happy to see that you, too, married smart!

Actually, only 60% of the traffic on the toll road will be people that don’t live and work in Dallas. What that means to the rest of us, however, is that those people won’t be clogging up the mix master so those of us that DO live and work in Dallas will have a more pleasant commute.

a) save the lecture on punctuation for your children…this is a blog, not a term paper.

b) please cite the statistics on portland’s pissed off residents. unless you’ve lived there, i’m not buying the hearsay.

c) okay, don’t take travel&leisures word for it…take boeings.

newsflash: urban sprawl IS bad. and if we build like gas is always going to be $3 a gallon, then we’re going to all learn a pretty hard lesson, and your kids are going to remember your generation as being moronic, and self-serving. remember, studies have shown that the tollroad is being built for suburbanites to go through the city, and not to it. why don’t we just pump our local tax dollars into building up mckinney’s chamber ofcommerce? it would save us all a lot of time and energy.

Please don’t go throwing more down on cyber-paper than exists in actuality. “It will kill the whole thing” is the straw dog continually tossed out by Leppert and Co. Those of us voting “yes,” and more correctly “for” the proposition, are doing it for many reasons. Least of which is to kill the whole thing.

You have done some fine, thoughtful writing on this topic, both here and in the mag. The devil is in the details and the details are being continually, thoughtfully and forthrightly misrepresented by the pro-tollroad side.

You may want to read some more devilish details at Sam Merten’s latest diggings here:
http://www.dallasblog.com/200710291000865/sam-merten/more-vote-no-deception.html

For those reasons, plus the fact that I think it’s INSANITY to trust the Corp to design and build a road inside a floodway, the voters in our family are voting “yes.”