Dallas Among Worst Places to Walk

As I walked back from Uptown along Bowen/Cedar Springs last night, I came to a section near Turtle Creek with no sidewalks on either side of the dark road. The sidewalks just end, forcing pedestrians into brush or onto the street. This seems like such an easy thing to remedy, yet my guess is its been that way for some time. A missing section of vehicular roadway would not be tolerated for a day.

Today a tweet came across my deck regarding preventable pedestrian deaths. Listed were then ten worst places in the U.S. to walk, and coming in at number ten on that list is Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington.

Here's a video I shot trying to walk from the TRE Medical/Market station to Katy Trail.

As the group Transportation for Americans points out, Beyond making new and refurbished roads safer for pedestrians, we need to create complete networks of sidewalks, bicycle paths and trails so that residents can travel safely throughout an area.

Public Transportation in Dallas: Not There Yet

Until I moved to DFW area, I had always been using public transportation.

There were not many people who could afford owning a car when I grew up in China. True, in the 90’s almost everyone rode a bicycle for commuting. Almost, as I said here because my mom is one of few in China who doesn't know how to ride a bike. But she has been fortunate to always live within walking distance of work. I remember the excitement when waiting for the bus with my mom to go shopping on those Sunday mornings. Occasionally the bus was so crowded that nobody could walk around without pushing others. You handed out a dime to someone next to you and he relayed to the next and so on and on until the money reached the bus assistant and then the fare ticket came back in the same manner. 

When buses are the only means to transport people from point to point, you don’t complain about the service – you deal with it and it is part of your life.

For a short period of time, I lived in a small town in Japan and worked in a neighboring city. The on-time performance of my daily commuter bus was so stunning that the difference between the actual arrival time and the schedule could be counted in seconds. Every regular commuter had their own seat and we greeted each other with a nod and rode the next 30 minutes or so together in silence.

In the next stop of my life journey, Pittsburgh provided a public transportation service that paled in comparison. The wait for the next bus could feel excruciating on dark winter nights. And rivers, bridges and meandering roads made a seemingly close destination much further away. It was on those buses that I finished reading many New Yorker Articles, including “The Climate of Man”, a three-part article that made me aware for the first time that riding a bus helps reduce a carbon footprint.

But it went deeper than my newly converted greenness. Using public transportation gives me the freedom to either retreat into my own world or diligently observe the sights and sound of the city, or glimpsing at other anonymous passengers. The sub-consciousness pulls on me and out between solitude and interaction within a small public space that moves through different neighborhoods and has had a great positive boost to my productivity. By the time that I got off the bus in Pittsburgh, I always felt I had rested enough and was eager for the next task.

New York is the only city I've lived in where schedule brochures for subways systems seem unnecessary. Riding a train was never as quiet as a bus ride in Japan or as mind-soothing as in Pittsburgh. It is a platform where arrays of commuters, with occasionally real entertainers, absorb other fellows into a kaleidoscopic assembly of colors, smells, sounds, languages and motions. I have learned those rats living underground are deaf from train noises, at least that's how conventional wisdom has it, and the tricks of which train car to get on in order to get out quickly.

Moving from New York City, it was natural for me to hop on a commuter train the first day I moved to a new place in Dallas that enabled me to use public transportation for work. Trinity Railway Express, a commuter rail line which connects Dallas with Fort Worth through many of the Mid-Cities, has something even New Yorker may envy: A bi-level cab car with free internet.

On my first morning ride, the train was empty, partially because that particular one only went to DFW airport, which is still 30 minutes away from Fort Worth. A guy in security uniform fell asleep. And a woman was playing with her smart phone all the time. After all, the route is not scenic. Named after the Trinity River, which also links Dallas with Fort Worth, most of the sections between Dallas and DFW airport are in the southern part of Irving, which alternates between isolated shopping plazas, desolate houses and industrial warehouses.

There is a streamlined shuttle connecting TRE Centerport station (DFW airport) with nearby corporate headquarters during rush hour. I felt like having a chauffer service even though the ride was merely one mile long.

Yet it was a totally different story on the way back. After getting off at Medical/Market Center station, I was instructed by Google Map to either walk or wait for a free shuttle bus in order get to another bus for transfer near Parkland Hospital. The walk was not long, in fact merely 0.7 mile; yet it was more than 100 degrees at 5:20 p.m.

I decided to walk. Luckily I was wearing a polo shirt. However, right after I turned around at the Children’s Hospital, I realized that I made a mistake. The walk involved crossing Harry Hines Boulevard, a major six-lane alternative highway (to I35) in rush hours. According to Wikipedia, the boulevard is regarded as the very first “highway” in Texas. Normally it takes some courage to cross such a monstrous road, yet I was lucky that road construction slowed traffic dramatically at the intersection.

Fifteen minutes later, I was outside the Parkland Memorial Hospital’s new site (under construction) where 11 different bus lines plus two different DART light rail lines merge (sort of).

All bus stops are scattered around a wasteland with overgrown grass big enough to fit in a basketball stadium. It was very hard to tell what bus stops are where from distance and there is no map for guidance. Worst of all, there was no shade at all. Just as I was wondering where was the bus stop for my bus to Oak Lawn, a 409 bus circled around and stopped on the other side of the grass dune. I decided not to run to save my dress shoes and myself from a heat stroke. So it left without waiting for me. The next 20 minutes was long. I didn’t melt, but I expected to. The only relief that I got was from the shade of the small bus sign. The bus ride was merely 12 minutes yet the waiting (plus walking) part cost me 35 minutes, all directly under the sun.

By the time that I got home, it was one hour twenty minutes later from when I stepped out of the office.

Neither the TRE ride nor bus ride was bad at all, yet Dallas public transportation system fails to connect people point to point. It is, instead, designed for interconnecting regions; yet without point to point coverage, public transportation cannot be a feasible solution for most of residents.

For example, TRE Medical/Market Center station is NOT anywhere nearby DART Southwest Medical District/Parkland station. If one prefers light rail and trains for connection, they have to take TRE to the next stop (Victory Station) and then ride a DART train back to one kilometer.

It is probably too late to change the route of either rail system to make them connect, then an alternative solution is to have most of the buses which stop at Southwest Medical District/Parkland station take a three minutes detour to the TRE station so that anyone who needs a transfer does not have to relay on a particular free shuttle.

Lastly, it is understandable that buses may have some delay and a maximum twenty-minute wait can occasionally occur, yet it is important to at least make such a wait tolerable. A shelter with a full partial roof helps. For a big transport hub with many bus stops clustered, a center passenger wait room with detailed bus route/connection and schedule information is more attractive.

Recently, the Dallas Morning News published an article about the DART ridership. It puzzles many that less people are using DART now even though gas prices are at historical high. Yet without being able to connect people to where they want to go and without consideration of daily commuter’s basic needs such as route, time, frequency and a simple shelter, it won’t win their hearts, easily.  

So, What's Wrong with Lemmon Avenue?

Removing San Francisco's Central Freeway

To the average observer, it would seem to be very hard to divert the auto traffic enough to make Lemmon Avenue a pleasant thoroughfare for pedestrians. To the average drive, any attempt to do so would impede the flow of traffic and make it take longer to cut across town. Yet both have been convinced in other situations that it can be done.

During the years I spent in San Francisco I saw two major pedestrian improvements, neither which seems to have done much to impede traffic flow and made a world of difference for pedestrians and neighborhoods.

The first was the replacement of the double tiered Embarcaderro Freeway with The Embarcaderro, a lively bicycle, walking and pedestrian street that extends from the Ferry Building at Market Street to Fisherman's Wharf. Soon after the Market Street Railway tracks were extended from the Ferry Building, along the Embarcaderro to Fisherman's Wharf. That's right, two layers of freeway were successfully replaced with a boulevard without resulting auto traffic jams.

The second was the replacement of the Central Freeway with Octavia Boulevard, which now includes lanes for bikes and pedestrians, and yes, cars.

Before Octavia Boulevard, the Central Freeway emptied directly onto a San Francisco neighborhood busy with pedestrians.

Car-Free on New York's Park Avenue

Of the two, Lemmon Avenue is probably closer to the example of Octavia Boulevard, although may be ahead of the game because there is no freeway on ramp leading directly onto it. According to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, the Octavia Boulevard project has delivered a transportation facility that provides neighborhood access to a regional freeway while providing an attractive public space.

The biggest difference may be a large amount of retail along Lemmon Avenue. That however brings more pedestrians, which makes the improvements all the more critical. Part of those improvements will be to begin to rebuild the retail into sidewalk-oriented storefronts with parking more condensed or in the rear of buildings to limit auto traffic turning on and off of Lemmon Avenue.

The short of what's wrong with Lemmon Avenue is that it's unfriendly, unattractive and worse, dangerous. As it exists, it's the result of years of misguided traffic planning that focused on the movement of cars, in some cases completely disregarding the existence of pedestrians. It's the result of suburban traffic planners who thought not of living in Dallas neighborhoods, but of making it easy to drive through them. It's also obvious not one ounce of thought was given to building a thoroughfare that added to the attractiveness of its location.

Today more than at anytime in recent memory, Dallas is a place where demand for housing is increasing. There will still be a need for others to pass through, but not at the expense of safety or aesthetics to the residents. Today we understand that a great city must have arteries that take into consideration a variety of transportation forms including bicycles, foot traffic, buses and automobiles. The businesses along those routes must also consider multiple routes of pedestrian entity.

Experience shows, it won't stop traffic. New York City is a prime example. Multiple acres of roadway have recently been completely closed off to traffic, including areas of Times Square without much impact on traffic flow. It's made New York a better place to live.

Let's try it. Close Lemmon Avenue for a car-free day and see what happens. It may just turn out to be no big deal. Cars will find alternative routes and patterns will change without much prodding (Hey, it worked on Park Avenue). In the long-run, closing it off to traffic won't be necessary. Auto traffic is part of the urban mix, but so are parking bump outs, safety barriers, bike lanes and wider sidewalks.

Rethinking and Rebuilding Lemmon Avenue will help do the same for Dallas.

A Sunday Bike Ride on the Katy Trail