Dallas

[Plutonic Panda]

Traffic has been great today so far. It is almost rush hour so that is going to change, but my point remains valid.

[turnpup]

Well from what I remember, if you're not in "rush hour" and it's already past 3:00 on a Friday, you're doing pretty well. Have a safe trip!

[Plutonic Panda]

Well from what I remember, if you're not in "rush hour" and it's already past 3:00 on a Friday, you're doing pretty well. Have a safe trip!

Yeah haha.. the roads are usually full of cars, but Dallas has a wonderful highway and road network that usually keeps traffic flowing. It isn't like Houston or L.A. where the highway becomes a parking lot. The only highway I know in Dallas where that a regular occurrence is Stemmons freeway but that makes sense. I was traveling with traffic averaging 65-75 and hitting 90-95 on the the NDT. I just love Dallas so much. It is so relieving to be in a city where people can actually drive faster than 60 and have nice wide highways and roads that have medians and turn lanes! :P

I usually go to Dallas once every other week, but as of late, I've been hitting it at least once a week. I love OKC, but sometimes I have to dip to a real city. A city that understands 30 story buildings are NOT SKYSCRAPERS!!!

[ljbab728]

I usually go to Dallas once every other week, but as of late, I've been hitting it at least once a week.

Every gas station in two states thanks you for keeping them in business. I could live comfortably on the amount of money you spend for gas.

[JoninATX]

Dallas is a great city, I'll be there tomorrow. Plus here is a great picture of the recent construction that's going on.



3225 Turtle Creek Blvd APT 920, Dallas, TX 75219 is For Sale | Zillow

[UrbanNebraska]

I am actually flying into Love on Tuesday as well.

This project isn't urban or anything, but the scale is insane.

Nebraska Furniture Mart of Texas, said to be the largest furniture store in America

$400 Million
560,000 SF showroom
1,300,000 SF warehouse
2200 garage parking stalls/2000 surface lot stalls





It is projected to do over a billion in sales annually and has 6 miles worth of racking in the warehouse.

[JoninATX]

That's massive!

[Plutonic Panda]

On the NDT right doing 82 with traffic in rush hour

[jompster]

That Nebraska Furniture Mart is going to be neat. Our Dallas office has been doing the audio-visual stuff there. I didn't realize it was quite that massive, though.

[Spartan]

On the NDT right doing 82 with traffic in rush hour

82 mph. Dallas rush hour traffic. Rubbernecking development. And OKCTalk'ing while driving.

Nice!

[Urbanized]

Good choice using the tollway; if you were on 35E you would have been going 8.2. It's an abomination from Denton to well south of LBJ with no end in sight to the construction that's causing the backups. Worst I've ever seen in 30 years of driving to/in Dallas.

[bchris02]

Good choice using the tollway; if you were on 35E you would have been going 8.2. It's an abomination from Denton to well south of LBJ with no end in sight to the construction that's causing the backups. Worst I've ever seen in 30 years of driving to/in Dallas.

Yeah 35-E is terrible. It should be better once they finally finish the construction.

Other Dallas highways flow very smoothly for a city that size. I have hit Dallas several times during rush hour on the Central Expressway and while it does slow down, I have always been surprised how much it actually moves compared to Houston which is a real traffic nightmare.

[Plutonic Panda]

I

Good choice using the tollway; if you were on 35E you would have been going 8.2. It's an abomination from Denton to well south of LBJ with no end in sight to the construction that's causing the backups. Worst I've ever seen in 30 years of driving to/in Dallas.

I'm at friends bar with my man bchris and I m tell hunt there is a lot a of Cougars inlvoe me all I love Cougars me man I love you too urbanized thanks for all u do in OKC I need it on the shining machine

[Plutonic Panda]

See any trees I take of en I'm a tree wizard

[Plutonic Panda]

Tertint

[Teo9969]

Oh my.

[kevinpate]

babydult, I hope you got home safe last night.

[Plutonic Panda]

Riding Dart for the first time in a long time and the light rail is awesome. Wish OKC would get it going

[ljbab728]

Riding Dart for the first time in a long time and the light rail is awesome. Wish OKC would get it going

And we can understand you tonight too. That's encouraging.

[turnpup]

We just returned home from a long weekend in Dallas. It's the first time I've stayed overnight in Dallas proper in nearly 20 years. Having lived there to go to college back in the late-80s through early-90s, I can say that it's a much a different city now. Of course, we can say that about OKC now versus 20 years ago, too. A few observations:

The greater metro area pretty much starts just south of Gainesville. Gone are most of the stretches of farmland and clearly-defined borders between towns. As others have pointed out, the gridlock on 35E is horrific. We drove in Saturday evening around 7:00, so I'd expect the traffic to be fairly light. Not so. From north of Denton until we exited to the George Bush Tollway, it was stop and start. They're going to have to do something about that corridor. Around the Lake Lewisville/Lake Dallas area, they're building some sort of massive structure that's higher than the current roadway. I have no idea what it is, but hopefully it'll help.

Drivers in Dallas are NOT nice. I'm a very good driver, and make every attempt to be courteous to the other motorists, and to not make them have to evade anything I do. However, from time to time I'll be thinking an exit is from the left lane and it'll turn out to be the right lane, or vice versa. In Oklahoma, if you're going the speed of everyone else and you signal, you'll pretty much be let in. Not so in Dallas. Those people just won't budge. And they lay on their horns like nobody's business. My husband and I speculated that perhaps after enduring traffic like that for a long time, you just get jaded and don't want to be nice any more.

There's major road construction EVERYWHERE. It's amazing. I wonder if there's ever been, or ever will be, a period of time when things aren't really torn up. LBJ between 35E and Central Expressway/75 was a cluster. But they did have a really cool thing--it was a paid express lane. Not the HOV lane, but an extra lane you could take for $1.00. It went way down below the at-grade lanes around the Preston Road exit and then spit you back out around Forest/Abrams. It was pretty cool. My daughter (8 years old and her first time in a really big city) went wild about it. She also thought the tall flyovers (especially at the LBJ/75 junction) were the bomb.

We had good luck (i.e., not too much congestion) on the Dallas North Tollway and on the George Bush Tollway. It was almost like a ghost-town, but my guess is that it'll fill in vis-a-vis the "induced demand" that people talk about here.

People in Dallas are very nice. They reminded me of the people here in OKC. Just get them out of their cars and they're talkative, helpful and friendly. We were glad to see that, after having dealt with the nasty drivers. Also, there were a ton of people there from Oklahoma. We saw tons of OU/OSU/Thunder shirts around, and lots of Oklahoma license plates.

Prices at restaurants seem slightly higher than they are here, maybe by 20% or so. We didn't eat at any places that are here in Oklahoma, so that observation may not be terribly accurate. It just seemed like we paid more than we do when we go out here. We did eat at some chains, though. We had Uncle Julio's Mexican, and Snuffer's (which has expanded to quite a few locations across the metro and other places in Texas), and Texas de Brazil. It's going to be awesome having that place here in OKC. It was fantastic! My only regret is that I wasn't STARVING when I arrived there, so I filled up quickly and didn't feel like I ate enough to justify the cost. But that's my fault.

Liquor is more expensive, at least just outside Addison. We stopped and I grabbed a bottle of vodka. It was $30.00. That same bottle in OKC is $25 at a place like Byrons, and $27 at a smaller mom/pop store. Not sure how the prices are in Dallas proper, though.

Highland Park (which is similar to our Nichols Hills) is "McMansioning" itself, just as is our Nichols Hills. I was dismayed to see that, as I'm fond of the character and charm of the houses as they were when I was there. We happened to be driving through on Sunday afternoon and noticed an open house. It was a lot where the original house had been completely demolished, and a new Mediterranean-style McMansion erected in its place. It was pretty, mind you, but would've looked so much better in a suburb (in my opinion). They crammed this massive structure (they didn't list the square footage, but it was two-story, with at least 3 living rooms, formal dining and six bedrooms/bathrooms) onto a tiny corner lot. The back yard only had room for a small swimming pool and a tiny patch of grass. This could be yours for a mere $3.6 million. The Realtor was nice to us, and he confirmed that many of the classic houses in the area were being demolished in favor of the McMansions. Like I said, it's just like what's happening in Nichols Hills. Except the lots are quite a bit smaller and the price per square foot is quite a bit more (which is to be expected in Dallas). Same trend in the Preston Hollow area (although I believe they've been doing that for a lot longer).

There are apartments/condos everywhere. Bazillions of them. The larger population, combined with the higher cost of housing, is probably why. There were the 3- or 4 story sprawling types we have here, but also a lot of super high-rises, especially in the Uptown area.

The DART rail system was awesome to see, all over the city. We wanted to ride it, but didn't get a chance. Maybe next time. By the way, we had been driving around downtown for a long time before I even noticed that their system has wires. It's like they just blended into the rest of the scenery.

Finally, the sheer quantity of shopping centers, grocery stores and restaurants was overwhelming. But I guess you have to have more of everything to serve a population so much larger than ours.

Bottom line: It was fun, and I'll visit there more often than I have lately, but I'm happy to be home. We have really pretty much everything they have, just on a smaller scale. And we're improving--fast. Fighting the constant congestion (on the roads and in stores, at parks, etc.) wouldn't be worth living there, to me. Maybe it would be in another season in my life, but I'm so happy to be able to get on the road here and go places easily, and to be able to have a little elbow room. I'm also happy to be able to afford a house here that in Dallas would never even be possible.

[Plutonic Panda]

35E is undergoing construction. I'll post renderings and details when I get home.

[Plutonic Panda]

This is a great highway project and I'm extremely excited to see it happen. Can't wait until it's done!

Scope

The proposed $4.8 billion project would rebuild the entire 28-mile corridor and provide managed lanes with dynamic pricing to keep traffic moving at 50 mph. Approximately $1.1 billion in funding has been identified for the project with most coming from SH 121 regional toll revenue funds dedicated to Denton County.

The project consists of three segments:

Segment 1 – south end, I-635 to Bush Turnpike, 5.5 miles
Segment 2 – middle portion, Bush Turnpike to FM 2181, 12.1 miles
Segment 3 – north end, FM 2181 to US 380, 10.5 miles

Improvements

Phase 1 improvements include:

One additional general purpose lane in each direction
Two reversible managed lanes
Additional general purpose lanes and frontage roads across Lake Lewisville
Phase 2 will complete all remaining elements of the ultimate environmentally approved schematic not constructed in Phase 1.

Schedule

Phase 1 construction began October 2013 and is expected to be complete by mid-2017.

Phase 2 construction will be contingent upon funding and delivery method to be determined within the next eight to 10 years.

I-35E Project

[Plutonic Panda]

This is part of the North Tarrant Express master plan by TxDot.

Another beautiful highway that is under construction. It's price tag is about 2 billion. This is I35W and I think we can expect something similar on I35E.

[Plutonic Panda]

I'm trying to find I-35E rederings

[Plutonic Panda]

I'm going to have dig a little deeper I guess because I can't find it, but I know I have seen it. It is along the lines of the NTE Project for 35W