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Originally Posted by AlpacaObsessor
Despite these encouraging trends in residential construction, I remain extremely skeptical that DART will play any serious role in the revitalization efforts. For one, there's the issue of the cotton belt line which was pretty controversial at the time of its approval since it puts the transit agency under a serious debt load and risks future funding for the downtown D2 Alignment. Then there's the simple fact the rail network just fundamentally isn't very useful for getting anywhere other than downtown. And the fact that for some troubling reason the vast majority of employers are still deciding to locate in the suburbs. Dallas currently ranks something like 30th out of the country's largest 35 cities in terms of how much construction is occurring downtown vs in the suburbs (the statistic is 18% just so you know). One theory I have is that most of the companies deciding to locate in DFW aren't exactly chasing the best talent but are moreso looking for the cheapest places to operate their back-office operations which are naturally drawn to the suburbs for cost-related reasons, but that's sort of getting into a different conversation altogether.
I'm just gonna end on the note that my personal vision for a multi-modal Dallas involves lengthening the Oak Cliff streetcar a few miles down Davis or Jefferson and a mile or two into downtown, maybe even construct a new one down Singleton or Commerce in West Dallas, creating a decent grid of high-frequency bus routes connecting all of the downtown adjacent neighborhoods, and jettisoning a couple of suburbs out of the agency for some more autonomy. Just my 2 cents.
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Wow! You want DART to concentrate its efforts providing a better service to 18% of Dallas' economic growth, and not to concentrate its efforts to providing a better service to 82% of Dallas' economic growth. That's a formula for ultimate failure. DART needs to provide better transit services to everyone, urban and suburban alike. It certainly taxes everyone the same.
Kicking suburban cities out of DART and concentrating transit to Dallas alone is not going to change where that economic growth is occurring by itself. I believe DART is doing far better job providing needed transit to more people under the current board than it would under you. Following you, BART would not have any transit at all in the East Bay, the tunnels under the Bay would never have been built, concentrating all transit services to just San Francisco; or MTA of New York concentrating all transit service to just Manhattan alone, let Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island fend for themselves. I repeat, that is a formula for ultimate failure.
If you want downtown Dallas to flourish much better than it is today, look at the City Council to change things and not at DART's Board. When developers from around the world invest in property and are denied building their dream real estate projects by actions taken by the city, do not expect downtown to grow much. Every project delayed and cancelled is one less project around to spur even more growth from other developers.