Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

The City of Dallas is hosting a public meeting to discuss the proposed Thoroughfare Plan Amendment and traffic calming improvements for the Main Street, Columbia Avenue, Abrams Road 2017 Bond Project. Please come out and provide your input. The Public Meeting will be held at:
Boys and Girls Club 4804 Worth Street Dallas, Texas 75246 Tuesday, October 23, 2018 6:00 p.m.

https://www.facebook.com/events/311947186256120/

This event just popped up on my social media feed, so I figured I'd post it here. I don't know anything else other than the fact that there is a meeting taking place. This would be a good opportunity to get some better biking infrastructure, but seeing as how they make no mention of any sort of bike improvements, I'm not getting my hopes up.

Don't worry, this is just a formality. The decision is already made to screw up the street. They'll take out two lanes and replace them with bike lanes. The 99% will once again get hosed to placate the 1%.

(I say this as someone who uses these streets to bike to White Rock Lake).

Another win for local residents!

The quality of life within East Dallas neighborhoods improve every time another street is stripped of the self-inflicted, well intentioned, gun-shot-wound-of-an-attempt to minimize congestion during peak commuter traffic.

No one expect suburbanites to bike into the city for office work. They can fatten-up and idle away those two hours a day car-pooling or driving alone on the highway, struggle through the two hours trying to take a bus or train into the city for office work, move into the city or get a job in the suburbs.

Converting neighborhood infrastructure to the benefit of neighborhood residents rather than non-residents improves cost/benefit of city living.

tamtagon wrote:Converting neighborhood infrastructure to the benefit of neighborhood residents rather than non-residents improves cost/benefit of city living.

Tam, sometimes I wonder if you're just trolling to get attention. I think you'll find very few thoroughfares in Dallas that are more dedicated to residents. Exactly "which" suburbanites drive down Columbia to get to work? If there are any, they must be pretty lost. I think you'll find that 99% of the commuters on that road are from Lakewood, Lake Highlands and East Dallas. Those are the folks that will be inconvenienced by this silliness.

As for telling those suburbanites to get a job in the suburbs -- they already have. Less than 5% of DFW jobs are in the downtown/uptown area. That boat has already sailed.

Hannibal Lecter wrote:Tam, sometimes I wonder if you're just trolling to get attention.

haha the hyperbole is a reaction to the notion that a complete street application is silliness screwing up the thoroughfares in East Dallas.

Hannibal Lecter wrote:Exactly "which" suburbanites drive down Columbia to get to work? ... 99% of the commuters on that road are from Lakewood, Lake Highlands and East Dallas. Those are the folks that will be inconvenienced by this silliness.

Commuters from M Streets, Lakewood and Greater Lake Highlands are precisely the target audience for all the extra wide and one way streets inhibiting East Dallas micro neighborhoods. Ross, Live Oak, Peak-Haskell Corridor, Columbia, Skillman Abrams -- most of the pedestrian geography has been stripped in an attempt to minimize travel time for peak commuters. I-345 is the culminating offender of a commuter traffic design approach that backfired.

Your least favorite solution is public transportation. For peak commuter trips less 10 miles, the bus should be a viable option that is as avoided as strongly as wider streets are sought out. Lakewood is already a devoted community, but the neighborhood shopping centers would be even stronger and varied if local commuters were able to gather and ride into town together.

Hannibal Lecter wrote:

tamtagon wrote:Converting neighborhood infrastructure to the benefit of neighborhood residents rather than non-residents improves cost/benefit of city living.

Tam, sometimes I wonder if you're just trolling to get attention. I think you'll find very few thoroughfares in Dallas that are more dedicated to residents. Exactly "which" suburbanites drive down Columbia to get to work? If there are any, they must be pretty lost. I think you'll find that 99% of the commuters on that road are from Lakewood, Lake Highlands and East Dallas. Those are the folks that will be inconvenienced by this silliness.

As for telling those suburbanites to get a job in the suburbs -- they already have. Less than 5% of DFW jobs are in the downtown/uptown area. That boat has already sailed.

It really doesn't matter who uses these streets.

They have a huge amount of excess capacity, and taking away a lane would have a negligible impact on vehicle delay. In exchange, you get streets that are safer for all users.

We do 4>3 lane conversions (going from 2 through lanes in each direction to 1 in each direction plus a middle turn lane) on higher volume roadways than this without difficulty.

In this case, I imagine they'd take it from 7 lanes to 5 (eliminating 1 through lane in each direction). That's still a very high-capacity roadway.

There is an event for this project tomorrow at 6PM:

Department of Public Works is hosting an public open-house meeting to present and discuss the Complete Street Conceptual Plan for Columbia Avenue/Main Street, which includes bike lanes and impacts to on-street parking.

https://www.facebook.com/events/2408860659345298/

Unfortunatel I can't make it, but if anyone is interested. It sounds like they are discussing the possibility of bike lanes?

Any updates on this project? Truthfully I have not driven down this street in years, so for all I know it could be underway.

DPatel304 wrote:Any updates on this project? Truthfully I have not driven down this street in years, so for all I know it could be underway.

It's essentially complete. If this is what the city calls a "complete street" - they can just go ahead and stop.

The protected bike lane is barely protected. They used some new bumper/reflector I haven't seen before. It needs a curb like the bike lanes in Victory Park.

The bus stop islands have been removed because drivers can't pay attention, and a few folks curbed their wheels and complained to city hall. And by golly, I've never seen city hall move so fast to please drivers. Bus stop islands were ripped out within two weeks. Now DART buses are expected to merge into the bike lane to pick up riders. Insanity right?

Thanks for the update! That's disappointing to hear, as I feel like this 'complete street' could have had a lot of potential. I'll have to go check it out for myself at some point, but I'll keep my expectations low.

I'd love to see what this looks like.