It's Snow Fun to Poke Fun of Texas!

Ok, so northerners laugh at us Texans when the weather turns cold. We seemingly panic and shut down schools, churches and businesses. While I’ll agree many Texans panic when the mercury drops anywhere below 60 degrees (where’s my jacket?), there are some things northerners and non-native Texans need to understand about Texas when it snows and ices.

First of all, you have to understand the sheer massiveness of our state and our metro area. To show comparisons, I will stick with three major metropolitan areas that are traditionally cold-weather: Chicago, New York, and Boston. The DFW Metroplex covers more than 9,200 square miles. By comparison, the Chicago metro area is about 7,212 square miles. The New York City metro area is about 6,700 square miles, while Manhattan is a measly 22 square miles, 4 square miles smaller than our airport. Boston, well – the entire state of Massachusetts – is 7,800 square miles, Boston being only about 3,200.

When the land size of the DFW Metroplex is taken into consideration, coupled with the fact that there is virtually no mass/public transportation, there is an inordinate amount of drivers on the roads. Dallas has the DART bus and light rail system, but once you leave the city center of Dallas, the routes are sparse and so spread out; one would most likely need another mode of transportation to arrive at his or her actual destination. Dart “bus services moves more than 220,000 passengers per day across our 700-square-mile service area.” The Trinity Rail Express in Fort Worth is another mass transit light rail service that transports 51,000 passengers per week, make that about 7,200 per day.

Chicago has the Chicago Transit Authority, and their website states, “The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) operates the nation’s second largest public transportation system. On an average weekday, 1.7 million rides are taken on CTA. The CTA is a regional transit system that serves 35 suburbs, in addition to the City of Chicago, and provides 83 percent of the public transit trips in the six-county Chicago metropolitan area either with direct service or connecting service to Metra and Pace.”

Compare both of those with New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, the nation’s largest mass transit system, which moves 7.3 million people per day. According to the MTA’s website, four of every five rush-hour commuters to New York City's central business districts avoid traffic congestion by taking transit service.

In Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, according to their website, transports nearly 1.3 million passengers per day.

So, Dallas transports 227,000 passengers daily to Chicago’s 1.7 million, New York’s 7.3 million, and Boston’s 1.3 million. When compared to population, see the table below.

It shows that only 3.5% of the DFW metroplex’s population rides mass transit. That means the rest most likely drive. That’s a substantial amount of more drivers on the roads than other cold-weather metropolitan areas.

	Mass Transit Passengers	Population	Percent of the population that uses Mass Transit Daily
DFW	227,000	6,500,000	3.5%
Chicago	1,700,000	9,520,000	17.9%
New York	7,300,000	19,900,000	36.7%
Boston	1,300,000	4,500,000	28.9%

 

Next, the infrastructure of the DFW Metroplex needs to be examined. There are eight interstates through DFW. In addition to the interstates, six US routes go through the metroplex, eight state highways, seven loops, and five major tollways. That makes 34 major highways in the DFW metroplex for more than 6 million people to drive every day.

In order for most people to travel from one place to another in the DFW metroplex, it is necessary to use the highways. There are rarely backroads or less dangerous or congested routes to take to get to work or school. Most backroads or side roads are not thoroughfares; interstates and highways are.

It is important also to note that the majority of these highways do not contain traffic lights. They are non-stop, three-to-four lane (sometimes six-to-seven lane) freeways that must intersect at some point. At these intersections, enormous mixmasters are erected with the primary purpose of keeping the traffic moving without interruption. Some of the bridges over interstates are 100 feet in the air. For example, the “High Five” is a five-level stack bridge interchange system where Interstate 635, and US 75 converge. According to Wikipedia, “the interchange is as high as a 12-story building and includes 37 bridges spread across five levels, 710 support tiers, and 60 miles of additional highway. The highest ramps are 120 feet (37 m) above ground.”

While the High Five is the largest of these mixmasters, it is indicative of the type of infrastructure the DFW metroplex has across its 9,200 square miles. There are close to 40-50 mixmaster bridge systems in the DFW metroplex where the 34 major highways intersect one another. Many of these bridges are high in the air, as well as some bridges being nearly .25 miles to .5 miles long.

When the extensive infrastructure of DFW was designed, it was not designed to withstand the freezing temperatures that only visit down here maybe once or twice a year. It was designed to handle the heavy flow of traffic the other 363 days of the year.

Not only are the roads built to suit the 363 days a year of warm/hot weather, so is all the equipment the people own. The cities are not equipped with large numbers of sand/salt trucks. We don’t own snow shovels, snow blowers, or roof brooms. Most of us only own one set of tires for our cars, and they don’t leave the car, and we certainly don’t have chains. It would not be economically wise to spend that kind of money to snow-proof our vehicles for something that *might* only happen once or twice a year for a day or two at a time. It would equate to a northerner purchasing an outdoor pool for $25,000 if he could only use it once or twice a year for one or two days at a time.

Lastly, we rarely get snow here. It’s usually ice. Snow is drivable, and snow can be cleared from the roadway. It compacts, and there is traction between the snow and the tires of the car. In Texas, we get ice. When it sleets, it clings to the warmer than 32 degree roadways, especially bridges, and the roads get slick. Sometimes the ice is inches thick. No amount of training or experience in snow driving can keep control of a car sliding on ice. Think about trying to drive a car on an ice rink. That’s what the Texas roads are like when it sleets and we get snow days.

When considering the number of people on the roads of DFW, the number of roads in DFW, and the infrastructure, it makes much more sense why Texas “shuts down and freaks out” when there is cold weather. It can be extremely dangerous on the bridges, as well as the roads. So please keep these things in mind the next time you want to make fun of Texans when we get a snow day.

 

Sources:

I know; I’m an English teacher, and it should be in APA format, but it’s just a blog. Sorry. Deal with it.

Wikipedia, mta.com, tre.com, dart.com, cta.com, bmta.com, and google.