Meet Patrick Kennedy, the best-known non-driving person in Dallas.
Kennedy moved to Dallas in 2002, after growing up in Pennsylvania and earning a landscape architecture degree at Penn State University.
After living in parts of East Dallas and Uptown, he decided to give up his Toyota Corolla and move downtown in 2008. He moved into the Interurban Building, home to downtown’s only grocery store, and could walk to the job he had then in a downtown office building.
Kennedy thinks there should be more places in Dallas where people can live, work and play without having to hop in the car.
It’s about options, he says, not about giving up your car.
“Just because I did doesn’t mean other people have to,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy writes a blog about his experiences, which is presumably how he came to be known to the media. What was interesting about this story to me was that transit was barely mentioned. Kennedy can do most of his daily routine as a pedestrian, which has the benefit of being cheap and building in an exercise regimen as well. I’d be curious to know how many people live like this in Houston.
I read his blog regularly. It’s usually a very good read.
It’s an older entry, so this reply may not be noticed, but I kind of fit that. I’m lucky enough to have an affordable condo in the Montrose and live one block from my job. A grocery store is right over the fence.
I have a car but my life would work fine if I lost it. I have one block access to many bus lines for appointments and things that would come up. My wife works downtown and uses public transportation.
In an ideal world, buses would run later for entertainment purposes, monthly passes would come back, and the shopping centers like River Oaks Shopping would have wider sidewalks and shade trees instead of palm trees.