One of the main reasons why I wanted to live in Seattle was because of how the city is laid out and how land is used here. Seattle is not the only scenic city with good weather, but it's one of the ones that is developed well, meaning that there's more city than suburbs and you don't have to use a car to get everywhere. Seattle isn't as car-friendly as Dallas, but that's part of what makes it into such a great place to live.

Transportation is strongly related to how a city develops - not how quickly or profitably - but what type of development there is and in what direction the momentum is - out or up. The way Dallas and Seattle are built is very different, with development in Texas being very spaced out and spread out. The way the cities' transportation systems have developed complements how the cities themselves have developed. Seattle is rather dense so public transportation is common and the choice of 18% of the city's commuters. By contrast D/FW is very spread out, so getting around by car is vastly the common choice, and only 5.5% of people in Dallas and 1.5% in Fort Worth use mass transit for their daily commute.

You could say that D/FW just has bad public transportation, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Seattle's public transportation system is so effective because the city is denser. Buses can carry a lot more people when more people live closer together and close to a stop. People in Fort Worth would have to walk farther to a bus stop or the buses would have to stop a lot more often to carry the same amount of people. Also, while Seattle's mass transit system is good, it doesn't even include light rail, yet still carries more than three times (proportionally) the commuters of DART buses and light rail.

While density contributes to the success of public transportation, roads contribute to the failure of density. In Texas, whenever traffic is bad, common knowledge says that the roads just need to be expanded, that if the freeway were a little wider, or if they just build more roads, that it would solve the problem. However, that's almost never the case, as expanded roads normally fill up with more traffic and in fact encourage traffic and low density development. Freeways in the Metroplex are quite wide, but they still get busy. Contrast Austin with D/FW. Austin has bad traffic and there haven't been many roads built in a while. If Austin suddenly doubled their road capacity, then there wouldn't be that disincentive against building a house with a big yard way in the suburbs. In that case, traffic in Austin would still likely be just as bad in several years. Adding more roads is a temporary fix and results in a constant battle with traffic. In Seattle, the public transportation is so good partly because the roads haven't been expanded as much, so more people live in the city to avoid traffic. However, that doesn't mean that the city suffers, in fact, quite the opposite, while Seattle does get bad traffic, the average commute time - at 25 minutes - is still less than in both Dallas and Fort Worth.

All cities have traffic, but being able to provide people with a variety of ways to get around - not just by car - results in a better transportation system. Here, there are multiple ways to get around, fewer drivers, less pollution caused by traffic, and a shorter average commute time and all of this is made possible by density. Even though the Seattle metro area is about half the size of D/FW, there is a lot more city here, and that's what I like about it. I like the freedom to not have to use my car to get everywhere, having a diversity of transportation options, and having the convenience of living within a short walk of commercial establishments. While this is something that few people in Texas understand and fewer still enjoy, it's something that really differentiates Seattle from my former home and one of the reasons why we wanted to live here.