Dallas Needs Second Metro System
After having almost lost DART’s future connection to DFW Airport, it is clear that the light rail is a regional rail system. What Dallas needs is a practical way to get around.
Last month, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system (DART) was almost coerced into one of those idiotic fits of bad urban planning that make generations wonder what this city is smoking. Think of those frustrations from the past that haunt us today: paving over streams in East Dallas that still rage and flood after storms, surrounding downtown with highway canyons, paving Fair Park into a great concrete mess, failing to keep the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas, thus losing any hope of ever having our storied professional sports franchise in any sort of urban setting. Last month the Texas Legislature almost passed a tax revenue bill that would have required DART realign the future orange line, terminating it not at DFW International Airport, as is planned, but out in Southlake somewhere.
The premise was funding. Pulling in more suburban entities into DART’s pay-to-play one-cent additional sales tax funding structure would have helped fund future light rail extensions. But by avoiding DFW Airport, DART would have rendered itself a transportation laughing stock. (The TRE can take you to a DFW Airport station today, but from there you need to take a shuttle bus.) What metro system doesn’t connect the airport with the city? How can we pass a referendum to spend millions of dollars to build a convention center hotel one week, and then turn around the next and almost eliminate the only way for future guests to get to that hotel without the inconvenience of a shuttle bus or an expensive taxi ride?
The answer is actually rather obvious. The hotel was a city deal. DART is run by a collection of area cities. Right there you can see where the gap in interest lies. As much as DART’s future extensions will make it easier to get around Dallas (adding this September a route to Deep Ellum and Fair Park, as well as a way for Pleasant Grove and South Dallas residents to get to other parts of the city), the light rail system is essentially a regional transportation system. It is best at getting people from outside the city center into the city center for work. At that, DART is good, and with each extension, it gets better. What DART is not great at is helping non-commuters get around Dallas.
I take DART to work everyday. I am lucky enough to live and work within walking distance of DART stations. I walk about two miles a day. Because I take DART, I often find myself in the position of trying to use it like a city metro system by taking it to various events and meeting places after work. Sometimes it is easy. I end up frequenting Trinity Hall at Mockingbird Station merely because it is the closest bar to a DART station. There’s a great new frozen yogurt place on McKinney in the West Village I probably would never have tried except that it is easy to meet the wife and kids within walking distance of the Cityplace Station.
But after a film screening at Studio Movie Grille at Royal Lane and Central Expressway a few weeks ago, I found the buses had stopped running. I had to walk a few miles on curbs and across vacant lots on the North Central Expressway service road to the Walnut Hill Station. I didn’t mind walking or the cars barreling by, but I know I’m in the minority.
The point is, for all of DART’s successes the recent Texas Legislature fiasco reminds us that Dallas still lacks a functioning urban metro system. There is a rather extensive bus system, but it’s difficult to navigate. Too many lines run too infrequently to be practical (something I learned when I went completely carless in Dallas for nearly ten months).
But if Dallas really wants to build a walkable urban vision, if it wants to create an intersecting web of multi-use districts, if it wants a more vibrant street life, if it wants its touted future urban spaces – the Woodall Rogers Park and the Trinity River Project among them – to function according to their planned visions, eliminating the need for all of our city’s offerings to be surrounded by sprawling parking lots or expensive underground parking garages, then an alternative to DART must be on the table.
Luckily, there is a model. Go to the Dallas Public Library and pull out the maps of Dallas’ street car system from the late 1920s. The dozen or so inner-city lines that stretch into the parts of town Dallas wants to see revived and inter-connected were connected in 1927. Many of those streetcar lines are still buried and underneath asphalt, something the Oak Cliff Transit Authority hopes to capitalize on with its planned street car line. But the noble efforts of community organizations to revive the historic lines are not the answer. Dallas needs to take a comprehensive approach to uncovering and modernizing its streetcar system. Without an urban metro system we risk turning all of the city’s investments in forward-thinking, urban projects into new urbanism ghettoes – interesting pedestrian zones that lack a fundamental functionality in that they do not connect practically or organically with the rest of the city.
Luckily, the legislature did not succeed at realigning DART away from DFW Airport. But the rail system’s connectivity to the airport represents only one of the ways public rail transport is needed to realize urban functionality. The pressure to realize this functionality should not be put entirely on DART. DART is a regional network, and a successful one at that. City leaders should instead take up the same will and gusto they showed for the Convention Center Hotel and apply it to creating a new inner-city metro system.
Thank you, Renegade Bus for your thoughtful post–a voice of reason. I heard the same report about the possibility of skipping DFW Int’l Airport and couldn’t believe it was even a consideration. Are u kidding me? Visiting Washington D.C., you can take the Metrorail to Reagan and BWI. Recently, close to a billion was allocated to begin the DC to Dulles metrorail system.
I hear you about making light rail work better for urban dwellers. I’m spoiled now living close to the new Green line plus Blue and Red lines, so I can get to most of my favorite spots pretty quickly from light rail. But I would love to take a trolley all the way to Ross & Henderson, Lower Greenville, or from Pearl to McKinney Ave.
I don’t know why Dallas hasn’t figured out how to make street cars work for urban dwellers or tourism. Recently, I ran into a European couple looking desparately for the trolley at the Pearl light rail station. I suggested to them that they could easily take Bus #21 to McKinney Ave, but they were insistent on seeing the trolley as an attration. I drew them a serious map to get to Akard & Ross to catch the trolley.
Leaving these folks, it made me think how great it would be if we had a trolley system to all major attractions in the city core. A recent visit to San Antonio reinforced my feeling that this can be great for city inhabitants and visitors. We used the trolley bus in San Antonio alot to get to many of the restaurants, bars, and attractions which weren’t within walking distance. Kudos to San Antonio. Just wish I could be singing the praises of Dallas on this issue.
17 June 2009 at 1:24 pm