Category: Dallas

» Forced to choose between an extension to DFW Airport and a new downtown rail line, Dallas won’t get everything it once planned for.

Even the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan area is incapable of following through with its 20-year long-term transit expansion plans, joining the list of recession-hit regions.

Despite growing by leaps and bounds, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex’s primary transit provider, Dallas-focused DART, is being forced to reevaluate how much it will be able to build over the next few decades. When it was approved just three years ago, DART’s 2030 Transit System Plan assumed that the region would grow to eight million inhabitants and be able to raise $5.2 billion in new funds to pay for 43 miles of new light rail service, a major expansion of bus offerings, and commuter rail improvements. Ten billion dollars would be earmarked for operations expenses.

This did not include planned investments in neighboring cities like Fort Worth, which has its own transit system.

But the sour economy and the slow decline in both the education level and wealth of the region’s newest inhabitants have taken their toll: Fewer tax returns, even with a bigger population, mean that Dallas and its neighbors may find themselves with 40% fewer funds than expected. This could mean a virtual shutdown of new transit capacity projects, with a likely $3 billion cut in capital spending by 2030.

DART board members will assemble next week to consider the consequences of the downturn.

That’s quite a disappointment for a region that has made a serious effort to promote density both in downtown Dallas and in suburban centers like Irving, which is planning a huge redevelopment on the former site of the Texas Stadium, just adjacent to a proposed Orange Line light rail stop.

Even so, three projects currently under construction are secure, including the entire Green Line (whose first phase to southeast Dallas opened in September 2009), an extension of the Blue line from Garland to Rowlett, and the Orange Line. Cumulatively, Dallas expects to have 90 miles of light rail in service by 2013 — making it the largest operator of that transit mode in the country.

Downtown Dallas’ modern streetcar and the Denton County A-Train commuter rail line are still on track, with local and federal commitments basically assured. The Cotton Belt line, a commuter rail project connecting Plano with DFW Aiport, has been re-framed as a public-private partnership dependent on currently non-existent outside funds. Fort Worth’s SW to NE rail corridor (from the southwest side of the city to DFW Airport) and its proposed downtown streetcar are awaiting more funding, but both are unaffected by DART’s fiscal problems.

But the unexpected drop in revenues may force DART’s board to choose between two proposed lines for completion over the next decade: a new downtown light rail trunk route, originally planned for 2016, or an Orange Line connection to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, supposed to be open by 2013. Both were assumed to be essential elements of the region-wide transit network.

Projects reserved for the 2020s, including extensions of the Red, Blue, and Green Lines; a West Dallas light rail corridor; and a new crosstown bus rapid transit link, will likely be delayed by a decade or more if no new source of revenue is identified.

For now, though, the biggest question is whether to prioritize the Orange Line extension or the new downtown line, called D2. DART CEO Gary Thomas told Irving leaders that the Orange Line project would come first. Irving has fostered more than $4 billion in development around planned stations partially by promoting the close airport connection. Meanwhile, the downtown line is several years behind the Orange Line in planning, putting it at an inherent disadvantage.

But it’s hard to know how the DART system will work when trains from the fully activated Orange and Green lines join the Blue and Red lines on downtown’s Pacific Avenue and Bryan Street, the core segment of the network. When Portland opened its new Green Line last fall, it made sure to construct a new downtown alignment to avoid traffic tie-ups on the existing light rail routes. Can Dallas move ahead with the Orange Line, knowing full-well that its fate is to have serious train congestion in the center city without building the D2 link?

One solution may be to simply terminate Orange Line trains at Union Station, an option that’s technically feasible albeit less-than-ideal for Orange Line riders, who won’t get direct access to the business center. Another possibility could be building a cheaper downtown link than the one currently proposed, which is needlessly expensive because of plans to connect it to a convention center hotel via a tunnel that will generate relatively few riders. A surface-level route would take road space from cars but could be constructed at a far cheaper cost. This may be necessary: It’s just not clear to me that it will be possible to run four light rail lines along the same downtown route segment without reducing train frequencies on some routes.

Dallas council member Linda Koop has suggested that replacing some proposed light rail routes with other technologies could save money for DART. For the West Dallas line, for instance, a streetcar service is possible, since the route is relatively short and streets are uncongested. Several extensions of the light rail lines could also be built as streetcars, sharing space with automobiles in order to save funds for the agency while still extending rail services into the suburbs. It’s fiscal constraint for a fast-growing region.

» Full $1.8 billion project will extend further southeast as well as northwest to North Carrollton.

It’s the weekend of Green Lines. Yesterday, as Portland was celebrating its light rail extension along I-205 to Clackamas County, Dallas previewed the first 2.7-mile segment of its new transit corridor, which will provide rail links to the southeast side of the city for the first time in decades. Revenue service begins tomorrow. The full line, running 28 miles from Carrollton to Buckner, will open for customers in December 2010.

Dallas has one of the most ambitious rail programs under development today, with a new Orange Line planned to reach the airport in 2013, a circumferential Cotton Belt Line running around the north side of the city, a west Dallas corridor, and further extensions of the Red, Blue, and Green lines. But the first phase of the Green Line may be one of the most important, as it connects some of the city’s most important assets directly to the central business district, including Baylor University Hospital and the state fairgrounds.

The Green Line provides the spine for the Orange Line, which will share the former’s route until Bachman station, where it will split off to the west. The two new lines will add a total of 45 miles to the DART light rail network and an estimated 60,000 daily riders, to 120,000 systemwide.

Unlike Portland’s corridor, the Dallas Green Line runs in its own right-of-way adjacent to minor city streets, rather than a huge highway. This slows speeds a bit, since trains will have to go through intersections, though traffic lights will be automated to stop cars before trains pass through. On the other hand, the project’s routing will maximize surrounding development opportunities and make walks to and from the station convenient and comfortable, ultimately increasing ridership. Stations are generally well linked to nearby buildings and parks; each is unique in design and some even include fantastic sculptures. It says something really good about Dallas when it is building its rail lines more effectively than is Portland. Even so, stations further down the Dallas line still under construction are less interesting, more oriented around parking lots than neighborhood connections.

The project is especially consequential for the revival of the Deep Ellum neighborhood, which was the city’s underground arts center for much of the 1990s, but which lost some of its appeal as crime increased and arts-oriented businesses were replaced by clubs. The community has recently seen increasing investment in the form of high-density residential buildings along the line, and several old warehouses are being renovated for new use. The rail line could spur new vitality.

Further down the line, the inhabitants of the poor, mostly black areas around and south of Exposition Park are excited to see increased mobility coming their way. Too much excitement over the line, however, could be problematic, causing gentrification and increasing housing prices — and leading to the less weathy having to move out. Even so, with the entire Dallas region to benefit from new lines over the next few decades, this fear seems unlikely to come to fruition, so the Green Line is probably all-in-all a good thing.

The project’s opening will put added stress on Dallas’ downtown light rail route, which is already used by the Red and Blue Lines and runs on Pacific Avenue and Bryan Street. With the addition of the Orange Line and the eventual creation of a West Dallas corridor, the city will need a new route downtown to handle the number of trains. No problem: planners recognize this issue and have already allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for a second downtown corridor, complete by as early as 2014.

Note: See Human Transit for a discussion of the right place to route rail lines; See Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space for a discussion of designing for beauty in transit systems.

Image Above: Green Line Map, from DART