Mass Transit

 

 

 

Mass Transit
Rail getting transit on track
By MARK MACESICH
Special Contributor / The Dallas Morning News

Midday, mid-May, and the gray sky rains down on the chilly, wind-whipped light-rail platform at 15th Street, at the edge of old downtown Plano.

A gaggle of tittering Brinker Elementary fourth-graders, bound for Dallas' Old City Park, huddles under a canopy.

Like the damp air, their excitement is palpable.

The 50 youngsters, their teachers, chaperones and a DART tour director prepare for the arrival of a sleek, white and yellow light-rail train with a flurry of mini-lessons on rail platform safety, train etiquette and DART rail station art.

A group of classmates returning from Old City Park already has been dropped off at 15th Street by a northbound train and is headed to the nearby Interurban Railway Station Museum for a lesson in Plano's rail history.

"With DART opening [the Plano rail line], it's a perfect compare-and-contrast opportunity for the elementary children ... because it brings history alive," says Donna Koch, a volunteer with Plano Conservancy. The group operates the museum in the old Texas Electric Railway station, which was built in 1908 for trains serving North Texas routes

But the main lesson of this soggy day seems to be the nascent enthusiasm for using DART's 21st-century trains, not just for commuting, but as a link to points of interest all along the lines, from Plano (Red Line) and Garland (Blue Line) to downtown Dallas, the West End, the Dallas Zoo and beyond.

"It's way more cool taking the train instead of a school bus," says Gene Ingram of Richardson, who was planning to accompany her daughter's second sixth-grade field trip of the school year from Arapaho Station two days later – this one to the Dallas Aquarium in Fair Park. And the kids aren't the only ones who love it: "I'd rather go on the trains myself," she says.

Mrs. Ingram says her in-laws, both in their 70s, use the train to get around town when they visit from Ozona, Texas. "It gives them flexibility. They feel independent."

The downtown Plano station was one of five opened near the end of 2002, extending the overall light-rail system to 44 miles. But the trains still are only a piece of the Dallas-Fort Worth region's transit puzzle for commuters and tourists.

DART also provides 13 municipalities with bus, paratransit and vanpool services, which link to the light-rail system; transit centers with park-and-ride facilities; Trinity Railway Express commuter-rail service (in partnership with the Fort Worth Transportation Authority); and HOV lanes.

See www.dart.org for additional information and transit system guides. More details on The T, as the Fort Worth transit agency is known, are at www.the-t.com. TRE information is available at www.trinityrailwayexpress.org.

Following is a summary of transit services in the region:

RAIL

DART (light rail): More than 55,000 one-way passenger trips reported weekdays.

Trinity Railway Express: Nearly 7,700 one-way passenger trips reported weekdays. The commuter train travels between Union Station in Dallas and the Texas & Pacific Station in Fort Worth, with stops at the Medical/Market Center, South Irving, West Irving, CentrePort, Hurst/Bell, Richland Hills and the Fort Worth Intermodal Transportation Center. The train also stops at American Airlines Center in Dallas for special events.

BUSES

Dallas: DART provides about 122,000 passenger trips daily with local and limited express routes between downtown Dallas, neighborhoods and key destinations, and between transit centers. The transit agency also provides express routes between downtown and major locations in Dallas and the suburbs; suburban local routes between locations such as transit centers outside downtown; crosstown routes between locations such as high-employment areas; and service to rail stations.

Fort Worth: Besides regular service, The T provides express service from designated park-and-ride lots to downtown and the TRE commuter-rail station, plus customized "rider request" service in some areas and "free zone" service in Fort Worth's downtown.

TROLLEY LINES

Dallas: Local trolley buses or "circulator" trolleys, some designed in early 20th-century streetcar motif, operate in and around areas such as Southern Methodist University, NorthPark Center, Galatyn Park to Arapaho Road in Richardson, downtown to Parker Road and Collin Creek Mall in Plano, Addison to the Galleria, and Dallas' Cityplace, Arts District and West End.

Fort Worth: Daily service from the Intermodal Transportation Center to Stockyards National Historic District, Sundance Square and Cultural District. Daily "lunch" service includes downtown and Sundance Square, and Saturday-only service runs from the transportation center to the Stockyards district.

HOV LANES

High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, open to buses, vehicles with two or more occupants and motorcycles, serve commuters each weekday. Routes with HOV lanes include Stemmons Freeway (Interstate 35E), LBJ Freeway (Interstate 635), East R.L. Thornton Freeway (Interstate 30) and South R.L. Thornton/Marvin D. Love Freeway (I-35E/U.S. Highway 67).