DART Rail Green Line through Dallas’ Deep Ellum distric

Monday, May 18, 2009

DART Rail Green Line through Dallas’ Deep Ellum district heading into final stretch

BY PEGASUS NEWS WIRE

Bolstered by the receipt of $78.4 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the Green Line rail project of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is headed for an on-time and on-budget arrival at four new stations on September 14, 2009.

The first section of the $1.8 billion Green Line will extend from Pearl Station on the east side of Downtown Dallas to Deep Ellum Station, Baylor University Medical Center Station, Fair Park Station (at the intersection of Parry and Exposition), and the MLK, Jr. Station adjacent to the J. B. Jackson Jr. Transit Center on the east side of Fair Park. It restores rail service to a neighborhood that 50 years ago was home to up to four rail lines. Daily service to Victory Station will also begin September 14.

Fill-Up for the Rails

Fill-Up for the Rails

WEDNESDAY, 20 MAY 2009 09:13 DAN MCGRAW

"Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) has been running its light rail system for only about a decade, but ridership is now above 70,000 a day, and it's now the seventh-busiest light rail system in the country."

Get in your car almost anywhere in the Metroplex, on almost any day, and you're likely to end up in a traffic jam.

Sundays on I-35W? Stacked up. Driving east on I-30 near the new Cowboys Stadium? The recently opened extra lanes are already full. Dallas? Don't go there. It doesn't matter if you're trying to shop in Cityview, make your flight at the airport, or just get to weekday lunch on University Drive, the roads these days are a mess. The problem's not confined to North Texas, of course: A drive to Austin that used to take three and a half hours now is more likely to take five.

The problem has been evident to community leaders for a long time, but in recent months it seems to have finally hit home with drivers as well. A recent survey of Metroplex residents cited traffic congestion as the most serious issue facing the region. Transportation planners and local politicians cite the ills it causes: air pollution, economic pain because of the slowdown in delivering good and services, personal lost time, and overall, a lower quality of life.

DART station divides Lake Highlands residents

DART station divides Lake Highlands residents

LAKE HIGHLANDS — A design change to the new DART station set to be built in Lake Highlands has led many residents to voice their concerns of traffic and congestion.

Crews have already began moving dirt at the big Lake Highlands Town Center development, and DART is ready to build the adjacent rail station along the blue line.

DART's initial design called for passenger drop-off in the development on the west. However, the city expressed interest in connecting its trail network with the station. ...

Mockingbird Station loft decor achieves style on the cheap

Mockingbird Station loft decor achieves style on the cheap
Dallas Morning News, TX
From their terrace you get a glimpse of the DART rail, huge billboards and even a sliver of downtown's east side. The view and the fact that the SMU grads could walk or bike to school drew them to the urban oasis last year before embarking on their ...

DART, Fort Worth T seek private partner to help build Cotton Belt corridor

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The T)might establish a public-private partnership (PPP) to build a regional rail line in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

The agencies recently issued a Request for Information, seeking firms that would be interested in helping to design, construct, operate, maintain and finance a passenge-rail service along the Cotton Belt Rail Line beginning as early as 2013.

The majority of the service would operate on a 54-mile, DART-owned rail corridor that extends from Wylie, Texas, north and east of Dallas, and west to Fort Worth. The line would serve Plano, Richardson, Dallas, Addison, Carrollton and Fort Worth, as well as DFW International Airport.

The T currently is developing plans to establish rail service on another corridor in southwest Fort Worth, which could become part of the PPP and connect to the Cotton Belt line in the northern part of the city. The Cotton Belt corridor also would connect with DART's Red and Green lines, the Denton County Transportation Authority's proposed passenger-rail service between Denton and Carrollton, and the Trinity Railway Express line at the Intermodal Transportation Center and T&P stations in Fort Worth.

Ridership no factor in transit-oriented development

Ridership no factor in transit-oriented development

WRITTEN BY SAMUEL STALEY

THURSDAY, 28 MAY 2009 08:43 With high gas prices prompting a surge in transit ridership to 52-year-highs, there are calls to dramatically increase investment in public transit. The danger, however, is that transit advocates might take their argument about the successes of transit too far. Indeed, this may well be the case with the so-called claims about “transit-oriented development,” or TOD, where transit advocates often suggest that transit is a driver of economic development. For the most part, property values increase around transit stations. Often, the range of the increases is between 25 to 30 percent higher than the growth non-transit neighborhoods. Unfortunately, these same studies about property values have not examined the underlying causes of these price increases. Despite that, many observers simply assume proximity to transit is the most important factor. Lots of factors influence private investment, including public safety, access to jobs, quality housing, tax rates, financing, and zoning. Access to transit is likely far down the list compared to these other factors. A closer look at the numbers suggests that actual transit ridership has little relationship to the private investment around transit stations. Take the Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail network, or DART, which is often heralded as one of the most successful new systems in the country. DART’s light rail trains carried nearly 20 million riders in 2008, up 10 percent from 2007 and its website declares the system has “the power to drive land use and urban development in exciting and environmentally friendly directions.” An analysis of investment within one-quarter mile of transit stops - the standard rule of thumb for estimating maximum impact of transit - by economists at the University of North Texas at Denton estimated that the transit investments triggered $3.3 billion in new investment between 1999 and 2005. Unfortunately, the economists didn’t examine transit ridership. If they had, their conclusions might have been very different, or at least significantly tempered. The Mockingbird and downtown Plano DART stations, for example, attracted nearly the same level of investment - $270 million and $260 million in new investment respectively. Yet, their ridership is nowhere near the same. Plano’s annual transit ridership was just 22 percent of the level at Mockingbird.

DART: A view from Richardson

My wife, Chris, and I were at the Wildflower! Festival on the first night, Friday, May 15, sitting at the open area on the south side of the Renaissance hotel where one of the sound stages was set up. The Killdares, a Dallas-based Celtic/rock band, was one of the first acts to play at Wildflower!, and they were warming up the crowd nicely, to the point of bringing people in the hotel out on to their balconies to watch the performance.

Around the Eisemann Center and the other buildings, there were thousands of people already streaming around, stopping under tents to shop, watching a street dancing group whose acrobatics are amazing (and a little frightening), and moving from stage to stage nestled between the buildings that not only contain offices, but also have restaurants and shops on the first floor and apartments on the upper floors – in a fashion very much like long establish Eastern cities in the US or even Europe. Even the computer-driven fountain in the pavement – which pushed and stopped jets of water upwards from the pavement to the delight of dozens of children who were around it and in it on this warm Texas evening – provided the perfect example of an active life in an urban setting out in the streets and not behind closed curtains at home.

So, “Westmoreland”?

Well, not twenty yards behind the stage on which the Killdares were playing was one of the shells over the Galatyn Park DART station. A train was parked in the station, resting during one of its brief stops, and the electronic sign on the side of the car, barely visible through the shrubbery around the station, gave the name of the other end of the line as the train traveled south, that is, to the Westmoreland station.