Comment by instaheat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by instaheat | Hacker News Reader

Dallas/Ft. Worth

Since DFW is so spread out, many suburbs don't have public transportation or limited transportation. I cannot take a bus door to door to my office. I would have to drive to a "park and ride" location to begin my commute. There are no bus stops/lines near my home.

I suppose this would be a welcome change for someone living in NYC. Everywhere takes 15-30 minutes to get to. We don't measure distance in miles, everything is measured in how long it takes to get there. As an example, you can drive for 12 HOURS(!!) and still be in Texas.

Weather:

It's HOT in the Summer. Extremely hot. I'm used to it by now though and it does not bother me.

I am struggling to find other things to complain about.. I like it here but have lived here for a long time and crave change. I want to move to Southern California but know that I would be taking on state income taxes (Texas doesn't have any) and more expensive housing. Why do that to myself..?

I can help:

Dallas is a city of suburbs, sprawl, and strip malls. Looking for an artisan? That'll be 30 minutes driving please. Driving everywhere means people don't have places to walk. And when you do walk, you're walking amongst dangerous, loud, and smoggy traffic.

There's a race for larger and larger homes in Dallas. Those homes take more energy to cool and heat as the seasons shift, and the larger footprint means the sprawl accelerates.

What do people do with the larger homes? They get lonely in them.

TX property taxes are crazy high to offset no income tax, so the income tax is a trade off.

Yup, my house in CO is twice the price and half the property taxes of the TX house I had.

Very true. I'm a Mortgage Loan Officer by trade, doing a transaction for a client in Colorado right now. Her taxes are ~$2000 or so on a $500,000 house.

Compared to my ~$4000 tax bill on my $250,000 house.

You can dispute the bill and apply for exemptions that are applicable to you, but it doesn't help much.

> Since DFW is so spread out, many suburbs don't have public transportation or limited transportation.

Depending upon your outlook, this can also be seen as a positive as the maintainability of very-infrequently-used public transportation in very spread out suburbs can have much higher cost than benefit as opposed to the inner cities. If you crave culture, it's not for you, but if you crave peace and quiet you will be happy (outside of the city of course).

> I am struggling to find other things to complain about...

Liquor laws, bar laws, and gambling laws are some. But in the scheme of things, yes, very few things to complain about.

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