Decades of rapid population growth in Dallas-Fort Worth has brought about a problem with no easy solutions – no amount of highway construction can “build” North Texas out of its growing traffic troubles.
“We can't build our way out. We don't have the funding to do it. And, frankly, we don't have the ability to construct the amount of capacity that we need,” said Dan Lamers, the senior manager of Metropolitan Transportation Planning for the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG).
The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex grew faster than any other major metropolitan area in the country between 2022 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census. Nearly 153,000 people were added to the approximately 8.1 million who now call the DFW area home.
“It's been my job to forecast travel demand and forecast roadway usage and transit usage for the last 39 years in the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” said Lamers. “When I started, we were a region of 3 million people. Now we're over 8 million.”
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That rapid growth has made it difficult for transportation expansion to keep up.
“We have not been able to add as much transportation capacity or other infrastructure capacity to support the rapid growth that we've been seeing,” Lamers said.
The NCTCOG is currently in the planning phase of Mobility 2050, a long-range transportation plan that aims to identify and solve traffic troubles of the future.
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Public input on the Mobility 2050 plan will go a long way toward helping the NCTCOG prioritize “access to jobs, education, healthcare, and healthy food, and improving system safety and air quality,” according to the organization.
The request for public input includes a survey that asks questions like “In an ideal scenario, how would you prefer to access your job or workplace?” and “What is your biggest pain point when it comes to transportation?”
You can access the survey here.
