The entire metromess is about 25 years behind highway infrastructure. They looked at mass transit by expanding rail service but as mentioned before unless you grew up in one of the major metro areas of the country, everyone loves their cars. Also the expansion that has happened in the last 10 years has been toll roads which I think is a big middle finger from the government. We pay taxes on gas for road infrastructure and now they charge us for using them. The history of the DNT is a perfect example. When it was first proposed the toll was only supposed to be until the road was built but they saw the cash cow and didn't follow thru. Basically the fuxking government being the fucking government still would rather deal with traffic here than in shithole Houston.
Originally Posted by aldo3178
This ^^^ 100%. I don't live in Dallas, so I'm just brainstorming opinion. This subject interests me because my
cousin in Oklahoma is losing her land and house to Imminent Domain. She has attended and spoke out at every city council meeting about it for several years now. They want 600 houses removed to build a turnpike. They are not valuing my cousin's acres as much as her very simple plain jane old house. She lived there since the 1970's, just up and moving is not such an easy concept for her and her personal pets like cows and horses.
They are not forthcoming with answers, so she is protesting to the bitter end. I don't blame her one bit. I can't imagine going thru that, especially now with real estate in the shape it is in.
I think another issue that reminds me of this subject is development. Imho, the whole method of operation developers do is exploit. They exploit land, city councils, tax breaks, infrastucture, etc. Their whole objective is to romance city council with all kinds of pie in the sky promises. They get the okay, their next objective is to exploit available land. Then they try to sell the development before they even finish building it. They have no skin in the game, they seek to unload what they created immediately. Then the buyer raises rents and leases to recoup. This causes all rents and leases around to rise. Meanwhile, there is a blight everywhere of empty buildings that never get leased or rented, the owners just look to claim losses against their taxes owed. Not very responsible if you ask me.
We are a nation and a state that values autonomy over all else. We cannot trust our government officials because they lie and twist laws to advantage their own special interests. We have no trust in doing the right thing for the future because there is no integrity. As humans in general, our nature is to exploit and hoard. Eventually society suffers and then rebels. In the past, that meant conquering and conquests. Too extreme and it could all end up deserted and decayed. Nowadays, we are not able to start over somewhere else. We are overpopulated and overwhelmed. Even public transit is exploited, much of it here in the U.S. is full of criminals who find an enclosed transit a great thing to trash completely, to cause it to resemble the same ghetto that they live in.