Great Tool for Dallas Residents
I know that some people like to complain just for the sake of complaining. But for those of us that (mostly) only complain when there’s good reason for it – Dallas has an online system where you can bring it to the attention of somebody that can do something about it.
Lately when I’ve been coming home from work and need to run by Wal-Mart (yes, the evil empire) or Walgreens, I’ll exit the tollway at Keller Springs and hit whatever store, then head south on Montfort towards the apartment. 9 times out of 10 during evening rush hour, the westbound traffic on Beltline gets backed up, so when the light changes, the right-most southbound lane is blocked. This backs traffic up a loooong way and is extremely frustrating.
Well the other day I decided I was tired of getting ticked off about it every time I went that way, so I called 311 while I was stuck at the light. After waiting on hold for much longer than one should ever wait on hold, I gave up – but not before hearing about their online 311 system. So you go to the website, choose a “type” for your service request, and follow the prompts from there.
The jury is still out on how effective it is… But I have to tell you I’m impressed at how quickly I got an initial response. I filed a “service request” for the issue above, and for another traffic-related issue, around 1 this afternoon. I received an email confirmation that included a link where you could check the status. Around 2 I followed the link just to see what was there, and it already said “Closed”. I was ticked! Around 3 I had a few minutes of downtime and decided to look up the phone number (included in the email) to see why it had been closed already – but to my delight I had an email from a Sergeant with the Dallas Police Department asking for some additional information!
They have an SLA of 14 days, so we’ll see what happens. I asked for the police to monitor the intersection and, if possible, to have a red light camera system installed. I know people would be ticked, but I can’t STAND those people that rush through a red light at the last minute and block traffic! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR (now that I think about it, that intersection is technically Addison. Hm. We’ll see if they hand it off or what happens…)
So the moral of the story is that whenever you have a gripe — whether it’s about potholes, traffic, stray dogs, grass/weeds that need to be mowed, or whatever else — try putting in a service request at 311.dallascityhall.com. It can’t hurt and might actually help!
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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View Comments to “Great Tool for Dallas Residents”
lsi September 4th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
it would be better with other languages support, but thanks..
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