Am I Scott Griggs?

Short answer no, but listening to the Economic Development Committee this week might have given someone who reads this blog a different impression.

I have mentioned the urban design flaws of Victory Park before. One of the items before the EDC this week was the latest proposal by the owners of Victory Park to turn it around. I won't go into details since I only know the generics, turn Olive into a more pedestrian-friendly street, widen sidewalks all over and get rid of some one-way streets in favor of two-way. Sounds good, but without concrete proposals or blueprints, I just can't comment with certainty. Victory Park in its generic form sounded good, but the devil was in the details.

But I offer these quotes from Griggs.

"If you want these water-colors (artist renderings) to be a reality, you have to stop focusing on the events and focus on everyday life."

"You can't have events drive the every day. We want to build a successful community in an urban environment and to do that you need life between buildings on a day in, day out basis."

Victory Park is "one of the biggest failures of urban design ever imaginable."

No link to the Katy Trail "is going to be a regrettable mistake."

Griggs also noted the poor relation to Victory Park and the DART light rail station.

He wasn't the only one with attention directed towards the flaws. I think we are finally getting council members who get urban areas.

Adam Medrano questioned city staffers on why bike lanes were absent in the redo plans. His council district covers the area.

Lee Kleinman, similar to Griggs, noted there is a lack of everyday needs for the area. He also made mention that arena-anchored areas tend to fail, something I have said many times, particularly on the economic development front.

It is really refreshing to see Council members ask the hard questions and point out the obvious, rather than take the developers word and hope for the best.

Success in Arlington

It has been hard for me to find information on the MAX bus service in Arlington that opened last month, but my Alma Mater's school paper was able to give some information on the early performance of the new express route from the TRE's Centrepointe Station to the College Park district at UTA and in downtown Arlington.


The bus system, which opened Aug. 19, averaged about 227 riders per day in its first week. The system averaged about 248 riders per day in its third week.

Arlington city officials are pleased with the numbers, said Alicia Winkelblech, Community Development and Planning manager.

“We estimated 250 riders per day at the end of the first year, and we’re already hitting the low end of that year one goal,” she said.

...

The city council will receive ridership reports quarterly with the next report coming in January, Winkelblech said.

So based on their metric, the express route is a success.

The MAX stop at the southwest corner of UTA Blvd and Center St.

I took the route and was pleased with what I saw. The timing wasn't perfect, though it was at least decently timed to not make the transfer times overly long. The main problem is that there are likely two transfers to make this work, one from the first mode to the TRE and the second from the TRE to MAX.

The stop at College Park was clean, noticeable and convenient, at least if you are going to anything in the immediate district. Considering that the major reason I would use it would be athletic events at the arena, College Park Center, it would work really well for me. The average student has a small hike if they are headed somewhere else on campus.

A close-up of the stop.

There are a few tweaks that would make the service a lot better. First, the University operates its own quasi-bus service that links parts of the disparate campus. Its primary function is to navigate students from the outlying parking lots to the main sections of campus. Increasingly, as the on-campus student population grows, it is developing into more of a bus service to circulate passengers within the service area, but it is still predominantly used by the commuters.

Not one of the shuttles has a stop at this location. There are a couple that get close, but not directly at the new stop. Certainly ridership would increase if at least one of the main routes did.

Second, I really feel that in order for this thing to take off, the transfer times have to be tightened. Coming from downtown Dallas, the hub of the DART system, it took almost two hours. Coming from the same spot, I could have drove in 25-30. I guarantee you, of those 248 average daily riders, almost all of them either don't/can't drive or are going someplace where there are external costs to motor vehicle operation, like paying to park. Otherwise, very few will take the service. About 15-25 minutes of that was waiting for the next transit mode to come.

Part of the issue in tightening the times is that MAX is timed to try and meet TRE trains in both directions. Inevitably with commuter rail, whose headways are roughly one hour in non-peak times, that will mean one direction will wait longer than the other.

Of course, that gets into a whole new debate about providing transit service in a low-density area such as ours, and I really don't want to dive into that again.

Humorist on DART

If you don't know or have heard of Gordon Kieth, You are in a decreasingly smaller pool. He started out at Sportsradio 13010 The Ticket, a station I used to work for back in the day. Keith was known as a humorist. He didn't talk or know much sports, but was up to date on current events. Despite his occasional annoying, confrontational style, he was a likable guy as well. He has been at the station since the beginning, 1994.He has the ability (but doesn't always do it) to have a deep discussion with a side of laughter. In the last few years, he has been increasingly on TV and in print, branching out.

Why do I bring this up on a planning-related blog? Well he commented on DART on the DallasNews.com page.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/columnists/gordon-keith/20130822-gordon-keith-missing-the-bus-on-dart.ece

While it isn't meant for an academic discussion, I bring it up for several reasons. One, it does come from a common man perspective. When he says:

The buses and trains don’t run frequently enough, far enough, quickly enough, or close enough. DART can’t correct those problems until enough people ride it. And enough people won’t ride it until DART corrects those problems.

it has the depth that shows there is more to it than he can get to in the column.

There is only one thing I take excpetion to and that is:

There’s also a psychological reason beyond the practicality. Cars are our independence. They’re our bubbles. They give us a justifiable aloneness in a day filled with the needs of other people. They get us door to door and leave when we want to. Texans are rugged individualists. We like our horses hitched outside and ready to ride at a moment’s notice. Life on another man’s schedule doesn’t sound much like freedom, and nobody likes to share a horse. So we settle into our commuting routines.

If you read my blog enough, you will know why. If you don't, let me explain. People, regardless of race, culture or status, will do what is convenient. Here, we have made only one thing convenient. It has nothing to do with independence. Are you really independent if you have to rely on something, in this case a vehicle? Yes, they may provide you with isolation, unless you consider there are three million other cars in our region a driver has to share the road with in their solitude.

So, I hope you take it for what it is worth and read it.

Is Arlington on the Bus?

Small bit of transit news I have to relay and comment on, something that is near and dear to me. I love my Alma Mater UT-Arlington, which obviously happens to reside in Arlington, a city I happen to dislike. It creates a very big conflict for me. One of the big reasons I dislike Arlington is that for all intents and purposes, having a car is mandatory.

That really hasn't changed, but the City, UTA and business leaders funded and worked up plans to launch a shuttle bus that runs from downtown Arlington, specifically near UTA's new arena in the College Park District, to Centrepointe Station on the TRE commuter line. That debuted on Monday. It runs weekdays, 6am to 10pm. Since Centrepoint is the fare boundary on the TRE line, riders need only one fare, regardless of destination.

Website here
DMN story here

This continues a trend of area suburbs, without a full time agency providing service, contracting with Dallas Area Rapid Transit for some form of shuttle. With Mesquite, it was a commuter shuttle to the Green Line. For Allen, they want to funnel shoppers to their shopping centers. McKinney is a hybrid. Only Mesquite has gotten their service off the ground so far. As of this week, they now aren't alone.

First, I want to say I am proud of my Alma Mater. They convened something akin to a sustainability council several years ago and were able to get a lot of things done to lower their environmental impact. One of their recommendations was a transit service of some kind. They operate a shuttle service within the campus, but there are no broader connections. I thought this particular point was going to rest in the report and stay there. But, to my surprise and happiness, they were one of the main driving points in getting this shuttle running. My campus is now like many of the Dallas County Community College Campus and has at least some form of rudimentary transit service. Kudos to them for finding a way to get it done.

For this particular route, I really like it, especially when taken into context. Unlike the Mesquite route, this runs all day. Love it. Wish the frequencies were better, but they were timed to coincide with the TRE train, which is commuter and therefore a transit service with long headways, and that has nothing to do with this shuttle route. UTA is a school of 33,000, and since roughly 20,000-25,000 don't live on campus, it should have at least some using the service. Selfishly, I can now attend a weekday basketball game and not drive. Awesome.

But, as was my problem with Mesquite, this is still just a piecemeal approach, and is still plagued with the same political stumbles.

The rest of Arlington is still suburban-oriented. A car is still a must to be here and this bus doesn't change that, though there are plans for a stop in the sprawling entertainment district (I hope there is more than one, because the distance between the stadiums and amusement parks are great and a freeway even bisects the area. If it is just one, that will assuredly lower the ridership).

A lot of Arlington leaders recognize the shortcomings, and say that this will help change the attitude of Arlington residents toward transit. They have voted against transit initiatives three times after all. However, I debate that.

They voted against the 1980 Lone Star Transportation Authority, 741 for to 5,381 against but so did about 60 other area cities. Only four approved it. It was too vague and no details about service, governing structure or day-to-day managing made it very sketchy.

In 1985, a serious proposal came through that would have had only Arlington bus service, with a light rail line on Cooper or Collins with a Commuter rail connection to Dallas. Other than the lack of regional connections, just one on a commuter line, I liked the proposal, but it was defeated, 4,507 for to 5,735 against.

Then in 2002, a city-only bus proposal was put forth and it failed. In my opinion, it was so pitiful that I couldn't support it either. The vote totals were 7,716 for to 10,576 against.

So, of the three rejections, a transit proponent like me would have voted against two of them. Does that make them anti-transit?

Looking at the vote totals, the closest outcome was in 1985, when 44% supported it. That was also the best overall service proposal. With the change in times and demographics, I seriously believe that a simple yes or no vote to join either the Fort-Worth-based T or DART would be successful.

I can't say for sure if this made a difference in the votes, but a local bus service isn't worth much if there aren't regional connections. In a region this size, very few stay within municipal borders. There are also economies of scale at work. Look at the northern DART suburbs as an example. One route can cut through Garland, Richardson, Dallas, Addison and Carrollton. That route would be far, far less effective if it was only in one of those. Making the citizens vote on a regional transit service will likely change enough minds that it would pass.

In many ways, I think it may be the addition of something I believe to be a waste of municipal dollars and energy that is responsible for the renewed focus of Arlington civic leaders, Cowboys Stadium (or whatever the latest corporate name is for it). The auto traffic is so bad there that there is no choice but to realize the car is not the only piece here.

There are a lot of reports that contain Arlington is the largest city in the country without transit and that Arlington is hostile to the idea of transit. I would say that is somewhat inaccurate. Arlington leaders are very receptive to transit, but they don't have a lot to work with. Their sales tax doesn't allow for them to join the T, which needs a half cent, let alone DART, which is a full penny. Within the framework of how North Texas provides transit, what are their options. Until just recently, they couldn't even contract for bus service like they do know.

In the end, it doesn't matter if this helps change negative minds about transit in Arlington. If there isn't sales tax room, there can never be a vote, unless somehow a different funding mechanism is found AND agreed on by all parties. I don't think it is impossible, but the provincialism that runs rampant in DFW is no small mountain.

For what it is, I think it is really solid. This is a route I will use, as will several more since it hits one of the denser parts of Arlington, specifically the University and its potential student population. It will require multiple transfers if they are Dallas bound, since Union is adjacent to very little.

I'm often asked if something is better than nothing, even if it isn't perfect or near it. In this case, I would have to say yes.

D2 in the DMN

Frequent commentator Ken Duble and I did a dual column for the Viewpoints Section in the Dallas Morning News.

Link here: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/local-voices/headlines/20130308-j-branden-helms-and-ken-duble-where-should-a-second-downtown-dart-rail-line-go.ece

Ken Dublé and J Branden Helms live and work in downtown Dallas. Both have strong opinions about where a second downtown rail line should go. DART and city planners and experts have discussed this for years, and they have a few options (though no funding yet). The map above shows the options they are debating, but you can explore other alternatives on the interactive map at www.DART.org/D2. Some people, like Ken, want the rail system to help support major events, tying the airports, major hotels and the convention center together, creating a large multi-modal hub around Union Station. Others, like Branden, want the system to be affordable and convenient for the greatest number of daily commuters.

Branden: If we want DART to be a true transit system, the focus has to be on riders. Among other North American cities, the ones with the highest ridership are the ones that focus on residents.
There are two options that will give users of the DART system the most destination options: the subway under Commerce Street or the line on Young Street. Commerce Street has the most density and most pedestrian-friendly urban design of all the options to really boost ridership potential.
Ken: Concerning the alternatives you cite, Commerce has the highest ridership, but it would be second only to the convention center hotel route in cost. Young Street is the least costly, and it’s the only route DART believes it could build without outside funding.
Before deciding where to lay a track, you must first decide what you want it to do. Commerce would create a tight circle around one part of downtown, but that area is already developed. We ought to anticipate growth, not chase it. Let’s make the loop as large as possible and let streetcar lines serve the interior.
Branden: Ken, what you say has merit, but my major concern with using development potential as a factor is Dallas has a very poor track record of true transit-oriented development. Due to a lack of development controls, existing transit-oriented development like Victory Park or the Shops at Park Lane are more accurately “transit adjacent.” There is no connectivity. Neither development pumps any significant amount of everyday riders, mostly due to poor design.
Meanwhile, Commerce already has great design and land uses. If a subway were put down, the density of offices, residents and hotels along the route would add riders. The design and density are already done.
Ken: I share your frustration with Dallas’ history of poor land usage around suburban stations, but the issue before us is a route downtown. The entire system now shuts down when there is a problem along the Pacific-Bryan track. Also, providing a second track means DART could double its schedule.
We’ll lay the track someday. The question is where. This could be our last rail line. Given the size of downtown, do we really want to lay a second track three blocks away from the existing one?
Branden: I would say yes, if it moves the most riders. Why would we make folks who work at the large office concentrations like AT&T or nearly every resident downtown walk farther to use the new line or risk losing riders with yet another transfer? Every major city’s transit agency has major lines a block or three away, so this isn’t outside-the-box thinking.
Ken: While Commerce ridership projections look impressive, many now catch the existing line three blocks away, so they wouldn’t represent new ridership. DART currently operates two bus transfer centers along the corridor, including the poorly located East Transfer Center.
The Union Station-convention center option could replace both with a single multi-modal terminal at Union Station, which could someday serve high-speed rail service from Houston. The former Reunion Arena site has a mammoth but underused parking facility in place. To focus on the West End is to bet the 21st century will be much like the 20th. Is this a bet Dallas can afford to lose?
Branden: If the Orange and Green Lines will run on the new track, and the Red and Blue on the existing track, then it doesn’t matter their proximity — they run to different destinations.
Ken, nothing suppresses ridership like lengthy trips and transfers. A Union Station alternative does both. Additionally, there is very little around the station. So anyone who now uses the two routes that would run on the new track will face the choice of a longer trip or a transfer to a streetcar or bus. Many choice riders will choose their cars. I fear that overall ridership could actually dip if Union Station is the chosen alternative.
Ken: It is out of concern for lengthy transfers that I advocate a giant transfer terminal near Union. Many low-income people, who have no choice but to use DART, make two transfers both morning and evening. Some arrive and depart into one transfer center and rely on light rail for transport to catch a bus at the other. They would benefit from closing downtown’s West and East transfer centers in favor of a mega-transfer center at the site of the former Reunion Arena. It could serve high-speed rail, Amtrak, Megabus, Greyhound, bus lines to Mexico, taxis, the streetcar, the Trinity River Express and the light rail trains.
Branden: Union Station is too far removed from the rest of the urban fabric downtown to be a quality transfer point. Transit service works better when it is point-to-point, not a hub-and-spoke model. With little to walk to from Union, transfers will become a must, therefore adding time and reducing ridership potential. The walkable West End Station is by far the most used station in the DART system and should be the central point. Moving it all to Union would be a disaster.
Ken: That West End is the most used station right now is entirely due to the transfer activity you dismiss. The Akard and St. Paul stations are situated in similar points of density. What they lack is the West End-Rosa Parks transfer feed. Were this relocated to the Reunion site, then Union would be the busiest station.
According to a Brookings Institution report released last week, Amtrak boardings at Union grew 482.9 percent from 1997 to 2012. Even without high-speed rail, activity is increasing at Union. The Oak Cliff Streetcar will add even more. We mustn’t allow the present to limit our future vision.

I don't want to speak for Ken, though he did express the same thoughts during the process. The format was restricting: we each got 5 responses, one after the other, at roughly 100 words per response.

There are a few supplementary points I would like to add.

Ken says that the line would parallel the current line. That is true to a point, but the lines aren't the access point, the stations are. Since he advocates for Union being the transfer point of the new line, by proxy, I am advocating that the West End Station/Transfer Center/Rosa Parks be the transfer point for the urban system.

Therefore, you can't say the the West End Station is parallel, since that's the transfer point. Akard Station @ Pacific and Akard Station @ Commerce are three blocks apart. However, since Main and Akard is the center of urban life in Dallas, that is actually a plus. This would become the second busiest station on the Green Line if the Commerce alignment were chosen, after West End.

After that, the stations drift further and further apart. St. Paul Station would be five blocks from a potential Harwood Station. Pearl Station would be over eight blocks away from a potential station on the Young alignment. It would be possible, but I don't think DART is planning a station for the Commerce option.

Second, Commerce isn't all built out. There is lots of potential for development near the West End Station on the north, south and west side. 

Akard doesn't have anything immediately available, but there is potential on small parcels to the east and south. That is also why it would be such a highly-used station, because it is built out with pedestrian-focused buildings. Finally, the Harwood Station would have almost the entire southeast to redevelop. 

The Young Street option would also have greater. In fact, it would have more than either Union Station alternative, since it runs close to the middle of downtown, unlike the Union options, which are on the very edge until at least Young Street.

However, I really dislike using development-potential as a selling point. Most Transit-Oriented-Development's in this country do not increase ridership in any large way. Modern development, spurred on by development codes and institutional controls, will always accommodate the car first. A look across the country sees this effect. From transit-pioneering Portland, to transit-heavy New York, new development, billed as TOD, is actual not pumping many riders into the system. What is doing that, is larger redevelopment of buildings and neighborhoods built before WWII. This also doesn't account for a lack of TOD guidelines from Dallas, which is why we see so many "TOD's" in Dallas do little for DART's ridership numbers.

So, development could occur all along a Union Station alternative, and very little to moderate, at best, ridership increases would be seen.

Commerce, on the other hand, already has a large collection of pre-WWII buildings, all ready to have a complimentary-transit component built.

Finally, as far as transfers go, I do not dismiss them. Even the 800 lbs. gorillas of transit systems require transfers. The key for them, and what we MUST do, is minimize them as well as their impacts. A West End Station transfer point is much more conducive for urban travel than Union.

I have said why, but I will try to do a better job of explaining. Within three blocks around West End Station is over 3 million square feet of office, 379 residences, two hotels, El Centro College and its 10,000 students, county offices and the retail/restaurant areas of the West End.

If you live, work, visit, eat or shop, you have a reason to be there. Yes, there is a lot of transfer activity, but it isn't the majority of trips. It may seem like it, since people transferring linger longer, but that station attracts a lot of activity.

Compare that to the East Transfer Center, where there is the Sheraton Hotel and a whole lotta nothing. Even the nearest rail station is a block, and a pedestrian-unfriendly one at that.

In many ways, that's what Union Station will be like if it were a transfer point. Yes, one day there could be high-speed rail, but does that mean we inconvenience everyday riders with a longer trip and more transfers.

With the West End, it is a possibility that the area is a final destination for riders. For the super, vast majority, Union won't be. For those where neither station is the destination, the West End provides the quickest route, as it runs through downtown, instead of around. 

Simply put, the West End is the quickest, most central point, and if transfers are the focus, then the West End makes sense, if the point is to minimize their adverse impacts.

And yes, Amtrak bookings may have gone up, but the average is still less than 200 a day. 

Add that with the murky future of high speed rail in Texas, with funding completely unknown and TxDoT favoring a station at DFW. Did we make DFW a central transfer point in the DART system? No, because it doesn't make sense to do so. It is too far removed and Union is the same way on a micro scale. In essence, Union is to downtown Dallas what DFW is for the region. Yes, there are plans to make a transfer point at DFW on the Cotton Belt route, but it isn't the central point of the entire system.

For me, it always comes down to this: those who use the system multiple times a week should be the focus. As it stands now, Union isn't even the central transfer point of the DART system, by a long shot, not even in the top 5.  So why would it be forced to with the new line?

The last bit I have to offer is a case study from other cities. Foreign systems fit, but I will keep it in this country for simplicity's sake.

New York has two major transfer areas. Midtown/Times Square and Lower Manhattan, though they are a misnomer, because just about every station is a transfer to another line. Both of those spots are in the middle of urban bustle, not the edge like Union would be.

Washington D.C. has three major ones, all in the middle of the urban area. Their Union Station, the destination for every commuter and Amtrak rail line (including the only high speed rail line in this country), serves only one out of their five lines. The sixth, the under-construction Silver Line, won't serve Union either.

And in a system very similar to Dallas', with similar veins of thought and time in the planning process, San Francisco's BART system operates a lot like the current DART transit mall now. All of the transfer activity is under Market Street, the heart of the financial/downtown area. It is also where MUNI and the cable cars run. Instead of a transfer point, it creates a transfer corridor.

I have criticized DART for being a commuter system. The Commerce Street option would be a great step in swinging that pendulum a bit toward urban. The Young Street option would, though not as much. None of the other options would. In fact, it might even swing that pendulum more toward commuter.

Now, try putting that into 5 different 100 words bits.

Politics at Play in D2

Last Wednesday, DART hosted a public meeting on the progress of D2, the second downtown Dallas rail line. The planning effort faded when DART's finances were on shaky ground after the sales tax that funds the majority of the agency declined during the recession.

DART planners narrowed the alternatives a few years ago to four options (seen in this PDF on page 4). They all run on the surface through Victory Park, submerge in a tunnel just south of Woodall Rogers and have a station at Lamar and Pacific. From there, they take different routes before rejoining the current Green Line at Good-Latimer and Commerce.

B7 runs in a subway under Commerce, B4 surfaces after the West End and runs in the old Santa Fe ROW by the current Aloft Hotel and proceeds east in the median of Young. B4a runs in the same Santa Fe ROW, but underground with a subway stop at City Hall before resurfacing on Marilla Street headed out of downtown. The final alignment was B4b, which stayed in a subway to the Omni, made a roughly 300 degree turn to City Hall and then headed out of downtown as B4a.

Those four are still in the running, but thanks in large part to the Downtown 360 plan, DART was forced to look at Union Station, regardless of the fact that they already looked at in the preliminary rounds prior to the four finalists. I talked about that specific section in a 2011 post. Ironically enough, much of what will come when I dissect the "new" alignments has already been posted there.

The preferred alternative for many city officials now is the C3a option, here the line would run at-grade on the current ROW of the Green and Orange Line from Victory Station to Woodall Rogers, where it would submerge into a tunnel towards Union. It would turn east after Union and run in the subway under property owned by Belo. If Marilla were extended west, it would roughly run under it. It would proceed east under Marilla using the similar routing as B4a.

Described as the poor man's version of the previous alignment, C3 has a similar feel. It too would run in a subway from Victory, but instead of having a station underneath the current platforms, it would veer east at the northern part of Reunion Boulevard/Young Street, surface between Market and Lamar Streets and proceed east in the median of Young.

Finally, to appease concerns from First Presbyterian Church, planners are looking at elevating the entire portion of the B4 option, as well another option eliminating the station at Harwood Street. This was done to "protect" their garage. It could be a casualty of ROW requirements for any Young-running option. I don't think either of these option are viable. Elevated railways have disappeared across the country in urban areas for good reasons. Minus a few exceptions, the are basically extinct. And not having a station at Harwood Street would be a terrible idea. What good is the rail line in the neighborhood to increase coverage if there isn't a station for those there to ride?

For me, any favored alignment will depend heavily on ridership. For other folks, different factors could be economic development, geographic/neighborhood coverage, cost or owned properties. Neither of those reasons are better than the other, but is just a point-of-view.

If we are talking ridership, the Commerce Street option is my favored alignment. It is closest to the dense section of downtown. AT&T is one of the largest employers in the region, and it is right on the alignment. Visitors are also more likely to ride the system than any other demographic and there would be a station at the 428-room Adolphus Hotel and the 330-room Magnolia directly adjacent to it. Within a block or two sits the 125-room Joule (they are currently expanding) and 169-room Indigo (at the Harwood Station), while the old Grand hotel is being redeveloped. The vast majority of residential buildings are in the Main Street core, of which this line is directly adjacent. The majority of offices are above Commerce Street, with the exception of AT&T, which is directly adjacent to a station, and Dallas City Hall. Add in the fact that Commerce, despite being too wide with too many one-way traffic lanes, is relatively walkable, it adds to the viability of the transit line. Simply put, this alignment is the most urban of all of them. If riders feel comfortable walking, then they will. Of all the options, this one is the most urban with the most compatible land uses and urban design.

Coming in a close second for me is the B4 Young alignment. It lacks the urban vibrancy of the Commerce alignment, and therefore will detract from potential ridership right there. It is also further away from the big drivers of transit ridership.

The first time around I was a bit more opposed, but because it splits the big employers of downtown (AT&T and Dallas City Hall) and it fits in with the fact that DART is a commuter system, I am a little less so now. That statement may confuse loyal readers, as I have railed against DART for designing a commuter system over an urban-style rail system (that's why I prefer the Commerce option), but that was before the streetcar became a serious option.

There were rumors at the time, but there has been concrete progress on the Oak Cliff line since and the momentum to connect it to MATA in Uptown is growing. The streetcar has the chance to be the true urban transportation system. It currently runs in the heart of Uptown. Though the first phase of the Oak Cliff portion isn't the greatest, the subsequent phases will run through the urban heart of Oak Cliff (I also have more faith that the folks running it "get" urban design, and therefore will produce a great product). So the DART rail system will function as the commuter system and the streetcar could function as the urban system, especially if the downtown portion is routed properly. As such, the Young option would be a good commuter line. Coupled with the Orange Line, the North Central corridor and the Northwest corridor from Bachman Station into downtown would reach both the current transit mall and the new line. With B4, it would split the difference, providing adequate coverage.

While I don't think it will produce as many riders as the Commerce subway would, the urban design, land-use and density just aren't there, it will do a decent job as a commuter option. Another big detractor for me is the lack of a quality pedestrian environment between Young Street and the walkable part of downtown. This would almost assuredly have to be addressed if this was the chosen alignment.

From here, there is a big drop off between second and third. The Commerce option is like getting a hundred dollar bill, the Young nine ten dollar bills. My third choice is like getting two $20's.

B4a is okay, but will lack for riders compared to the previous two. The only real draw is the City Hall Station, though even that is tempered by the possibility of closure after hours for security reasons. After that, there isn't much to attract any riders. The potential Farmers Market Station at roughly north of Canton and Ceasar Chavez is near some residential (though with huge suburban parking ratios) but that is it. The Farmers Market is actually several blocks to the south, on some of the most auto-dominated streets in downtown. The walk would be unfriendly and the current land-use and urban design won't help attract many riders.

Of the original four, B4b is my least favorite (maybe worth $15). I am glad to see that city officials are backing away from this option (though maybe not, since they are favoring a worse one). The Omni will not attract many riders to the rail system. As I chronicled in this post, across the country, regardless of the mode of rail, the airport stations carry a very small fraction of total system ridership. This was true in the bigger more traditional east coast cities, to the newer light rail systems similar to Dallas. This is likely that the regular everyday users aren't going to the airport and those using the airport aren't likely to take a load of luggage on a rail system. Those that do use the system are airport employees (and since airports are sprawled and decidedly low on the density scale,  they don't use it in any high proportion) and some business travelers. Most of the riders the Omni will attract is employees, and since there are greater concentrations of workers in other parts of downtown, it just doesn't make sense. It suffers from the same problems as the Marilla option, but will take way more time for riders to go from point A to B (reducing ridership) and cost a lot more to build.

Sadly, when adding either C3 option, nothing changes for me. Since their routing and station placements are so similar, the drawbacks are the same. If the other four were worth something, this feels like we have to pay something.

My biggest problem is directly tied to ridership. With most alternatives taking a near direct path through downtown with a central transfer point at Pacific and Lamar. That point is in the middle of downtown. And being direct, it will have no adverse effect on ridership. The C3's will avoid the heart of downtown. Having a central transfer point is great, but Union Station should not be it. Even if all the redevelopment talk materializes, most riders will still be destined for other parts of downtown. So picture yourself an Orange or Green Line rider, with a destination that is the most common, the center to northern part of downtown. From the north, they have to travel from Victory to Union, transfer at Union, then take a train up to at least the West End Station. Because either station is a subway, the transfer will take a bit more time, C3a will be directly under the current Union platform, C3 will be on the other side of the building. The trip length for most riders will be at least ten minutes longer than any other option, and likely closer to twenty. For captive riders, they will take it no matter what, but for most choice riders coming from outside of downtown it will be a deal breaker. Downtown doesn't need rail service on the outskirts. It needs it to be where it is most convenient for riders, not developers.

This is one of the critiques thrown at planners. They see Union as the location where Red, Blue, TRE and Amtrak trains meet, with a possibility of high-speed rail one day, and say that is where every other train line needs to be routed to make it multi-modal. West End works because there already is a great concentration of places to go for a great deal of people. It naturally morphed into a great transfer place because of what was already there. One can go in any direction and find places to go. The same can not be said for Union.

As an added bonus, I will critique a loyal readers proposal.

From Ken Duble in an e-mail:
My thought: rather than tunnel under Lamar and have two separate West End stations, why not tunnel underneath the Omni -- a shorter and less costly tunnel -- and use existing track between Union Station and the West End, as well as the existing station, then send the line north into the Victory area from there? Not only would this mean less track and less expenditure, but it would make Union a transit hub.

There's a something to this, but I don't think it is feasible. It keeps the West End as a hub but it doesn't solve the time problem of the C3 options. The core of downtown workers, residents and visitors is still above Jackson Street, and tunneling under the Omni ignores these key riders. It also doesn't relieve potential bottlenecks along the existing transit mall, which is a goal of the project.  I don't know his exact routing from the Omni out, but there is a horseshoe effect here, Omni, Union, West End. That means added time, which will have an added effect on ridership reduction.

Bottom line, there really is no way to serve Union without adding time and transfers for existing riders. I think if any Union Station alternative is chosen, there is a really good possibility that overall ridership of the existing Orange Line and maybe the Green could decline. I really believe the added time to take the rail system along with an unneeded transfer will really be a deal-breaker for some current riders.

I really hope the process will be able shake off the political pressure Dallas officials are putting on DART to get this route. They look at the rail line like a freeway exit, but it doesn't work that way. Also remember there are a great many riders who do not go downtown, but just pass through it, like from Plano or Richardson to Las Colinas. Adding an extra 20-40 minutes round trip will be a deal breaker. It already is time consuming, which has put off potential ridership gains, as seen in this post.

 These are one-and-done proposition. Once the lines are laid, that is it. Here's hoping it is done right. If not, DART will still rank at the bottom of U.S. rail systems per mile.

Incremental Improvements Add Up

Over the Christmas season, my family and I spent two weekends out of town. The first saw a return trip that is normally less than three hours take four hours, the majority of which was filled with a screaming two-month old. For the second trip, we wanted to avoid that outcome so we looked into the options. We settled on Megabus.

They are the Southwest Airlines of buses. They avoid high-cost terminals and are generally a very affordable option. We started our trip at DART's East Transfer Center (ETC). There was a big dust-up between the bus company and the city. They initially wanted to operate out of the parking lot just south of the ETC, but the City of Dallas had other ideas. They finally came to an agreement with DART to operate out of one of their facilities.

From that perspective, I love it. I have always thought the ETC, for many reasons, is heavily underutilized. This gives it a lot more uses. It also turns the ETC from a bus station a couple of blocks away from a rail station into a multi-modal transportation facility.

From DART's perspective, they will make a bit of extra revenue on the lease, but it should also have a slight increase in rail ridership and up the bus ridership by a rounding area. It also gives the ETC a more vibrant use in downtown.

For the rest of the stops we made, Megabus utilized gas station parking lots of the freeways they stopped in. You can definitely see the low-cost approach here. The only downside, as we experienced on the return trip, is when the bus is late, there is no way to know. Our bus was over an hour late and the staff at the Midland Exxon couldn't relay anything.

Overall, the traveling experience was enjoyable, and I'd recommend. As far as the urban impact, this is a positive for downtown. It adds an extra use to an under-performing downtown bus station, and creates more activity in a part of downtown that has none. I really think several small changes like this will have a positive step in downtown Dallas' transition into a bona fide  urban area.

DART Expands Again

Sticking with the DART theme, an article ran in the Dallas Morning News the day after the transit agency debuted a new station on the Blue Line and two on the Orange Line last week. I would have liked to put this up earlier, but honestly, the motivation is low for me on this particular news item. I just feel like a broken record and would just like to have a positive review for once.

In some ways, this new service is more of the same. Another commuter terminus to bring workers from the outlying areas into the central core. All are going to be commuter station with huge amount of parking spaces (Belt Line - 597, Rowlett - 750, North Lake - 194). I have hope that Rowlett can leverage something around their downtown and the rail stop, but that parking amount will be a huge buffer to cohesive development. If they can, I and other practicing urbanites may use this station sparingly as there are many other destinations that are bigger, better and/or closer to the true urban spaces in the region. Otherwise, there are three more stations added to a commuter system that are true to the rest of the commuter-based system. Bring in workers from the suburbs to the central core, and change the way captive riders use the system.

This isn't a shocking position to loyal readers who have followed this blog for a while, which is partly why the motivation for publishing this piece is low. But there are some quotes I want to pull from the article that really illustrate what I have been alluding to previously, which is the DART system has been increasing making the system harder to use by focusing on reducing redundancy and increasing transfers.

From the article:

At the opposite end of the platform, Gary Dudek was testing out the new rail line on his day off.

The airport employee's previous DART commute to work took at least 2 1/2 hours each way, he said: a bus, then another bus to one of DFW's remote lots, then a shuttle, then another shuttle.

Even worse, he said, the buses often stopped running before the end of his night shift, forcing him to walk part of the way back.

"Hopefully I don't have to walk nine miles home anymore," he said.

Let's play a quiz game. Is Gary Dudek a choice rider, one who has the option to use another mode of transport, like a car, to get to work, or is he a captive rider, one who has little or no other options to get to work?

Five hour daily commute, a fairly good chance of missing the last bus and multiple transfers. Nothing explicitly says one way or the other, but my intuition tells me he isn't doing that for fun. He's doing that because he has little choice.

Seriously though, as I mentioned in the last post, this is exactly the type of system DART is building. By cutting bus service, routing everything through a rail station and increasing the time between runs, DART is creating a user-unfriendly system.

I do understand, however, that DFW is a sprawling airport and the previous rail link was a true commuter rail with even longer headways than I am complaining about now. I also get that DART is facing a funding shortage.That said, somehow they were able to run the new 500 bus through the airport, with the bus meeting every Orange Line train at Belt Line Station. If they could do it now, they could have done it before the new rail line. A semi-express that began at the North Irving Transfer Station and ran to the airport and on to Centreport Station would have connected it. Obviously, they were able to find the funding for it now, but I wonder if they did it by cutting the inner city bus service, the one that will be used at a greater rate.

This to me is DART's greatest shortcoming in planning. It is almost as if they view the bus as a second option, rather than using it for what it is best tailored for. In a true transit system, each component is chosen because it is best for its service. There is no one size fits all approach. The places that have tried a hybrid commuter-urban system have seem underwhelming results. DART is no different. The troubling thing is that they either haven't noticed or don't seem to care. I know there is some political pressure on the agency, particularly in connecting to the airport. But there has to be some balance between that and serving the riders and right now there isn't. I see only a system that is being designed to get commuters in and then out.

The last quote I bring forth:

"I don't want to complain," said Alex Flores, a waiter at Mattito's Tex Mex. "I'm only going to ride it another week. Then my car gets fixed and I don't have to ride a train anymore."

Alright, captive or choice rider?

Were I in his shoes, I think I would make the same choice. It just isn't convenient. This sentiment is exactly why DART will continue to be one of the least ridden rail systems on a per mile basis in the country. They are currently 21st out of 34 operating systems, which also contain services like Kenosha's 2-mile streetcar, Little Rocks 2.5-mile streetcar and Tampa's 2.3-mile streetcar. Discounting these tourist oriented streetcar systems, Dallas ranks 21st out of 31 light rail systems in passengers per mile.

DART brags about being the largest light rail system in North America. Overall, that's good enough for the seventh most ridden light rail system in the U.S., per the American Public Transportation Association. For example, Boston, with the most ridden light rail system, has three times the riders on 1/3 the tracks miles. Using a peer Sun Belt city, Houston has 1/2 the rail ridership on 1/10th the rail miles. I doubt the addition of the three new stations will add that much to the ridership numbers, but it will add to the miles, further dragging down the per mile boardings.

In fact, DART's highest per mile boardings occured when the starter system was finished and it primarily served the urban area, albeit not perfectly. But since then, the system has been built further and further out, and even when they expanded in the urban area, the Green Line did so sub-optimally. If the City of Dallas gets its way, the second downtown rail line will be more of the same.

Let me leave you with a thought. Read though this again, particularly Gary Dudek and Alex Flores contributions. As a society, do we really love our cars? Or do we, as I continue to contend, love what is convenient?

DART's December Service Change

Sorry to disappoint those who were looking forward to the topics I previewed in the last post, but I overlooked one, and this has me steaming.

In this post at the beginning of the year, I mentioned the bus changes DART wanted to implement. I was struck by the fact that they are making the bus service a highly ineffective and inefficient system, especially when the rail system is a commuter-designed system rather than the urban one that serves and carries more riders.

Well, I flipped through the latest service change pamphlet they produce before every change and it appears that every one of the planners recommendations made it to the finish line. Bottomline: Bus cuts are funding the rail system. DART is cutting service from the workhorse that carries the bulk of their riders in favor of a less ridden alternative.

I'm trying to contain myself, but I am just disgusted. DART has a local reputation among the population for user unfriendliness and these cuts do nothing to dispel that notion. Two close-in, urban neighborhoods are no longer connected by one route. To get to a point on Oak Lawn from downtown Dallas will require a transfer to another route or a long walk. Sadly, most of the urban core is now functioning this way.

DART has designed an urban transit system that requires multiple transfers. Transfers kill ridership. They have increased headways. Longer wait times kill ridership. Adding to the appalling news, more and more urban routes require a transfer to the commuter-designed rail system, which then almost always requires another transfer. It is not inconceivable that an urban resident will need to ride 3-5 routes to get where they are going within five miles of their start. DART generally does a good job of minimizing transfer times, but it is near impossible for every route to connect seamlessly with every other route. And even when they do work, and the time is less than five minutes, after a few transfers, the wait time still adds up. If it takes 30-60 minutes by streetcar/rail/bus/bus, or 10 by car, which will be the preferred choice? Add the fact that most trips have a return and the time wasted is amplified.

Results aside, I think the thing that gets me the most is the feeling that the public meetings were a sham. Planners came in with one goal and only one goal, likely dictated from above, and that was to save money. There was nothing else that mattered. At several meetings, groups and groups of riders protested a select few service changes. In the end, every one of them were cut. They did the public meetings in correspondence with federal law, but when your goal is to cut expenses, what happens at these meetings are inconsequential. They are only supposed to take the comments into account, not act upon them.

I get frustrated because to many of the general public, planners are insulated from them. And this is why. In the end, it feels all the time given up for these meetings to make their voice heard was pointless. It feels like a dog and pony show, only to comply with the law, not be heard.

I have always believed that planning is best done from the bottom up. Part of my frustration with this is that this was the exact opposite. And THAT'S why the taste in my mouth is bitter. I firmly believe there was a solution that was reachable where both sides would have agreed, even if they didn't endorse, to a solution. This reeks of my way and only my way.I despise insulated decisions.

Lastly, this is where right-wingers and libertarians share frustrations with the public sector (though no one on the DART Board is elected). Because less than a quarter of DART's revenue is generated by fares, even if they see a huge ridership loss, the budget won't be affected by anything more than a blip.

Here, however, I won't fault DART. Because we choose to fund their operations with a sales tax, which is the most economically cyclical way of all funding, when times get tough, regardless of demand, service has to be cut. Due to the circumstances, these cuts are anti-urban and anti-urban-development. However, given that constraint, there was a better way to cut costs than to ax routes and lower ridership.

For me, Houston would be a better model. Because their rail line and expansions are more cohesive with the urban environment, they would feel less shock from route cuts and transfers into the rail system. The rail system is actually an urban one, and therefore many of the transfers work because the rail line will get them to the rider's final destination or will be the starting point.

Within the next year, a story will appear in the paper that will discuss the further eroding of DART's ridership. In it, DART officials will point to the down economy (fewer jobs mean fewer riders), lower sales tax collections and suburban job growth as reasons. Now on will mention they keep cutting routes and those that remain have fewer buses running on those routes.  

Unless more of an effort is put forth, I fear Dallas will always be known as a car city, and it will have little to do with the resident's true transportation preferences.

Orange Line Critique

On the week anniversary of its opening, I shall discuss the first phase of the Orange Line, and sadly, like a lot of what DART has done lately, I was hopeful, but ultimately underwhelmed.
Before I get into the meat of it, I first want to issue a caution to everyone that this is an incomplete line. 4.5 miles and three stations were added a week ago and another 2+ miles and two stations are set for December. The last phase will see the addition of DFW Airport, which may or may not be the centerpiece of the line or rail network.

Here's the split where the Green Line heads north and the Orange Line turns west.

DART's main hope for ridership growth will be congestion on the freeways where it runs next to and over, in this case I-35E. This is the bridge over the freeway and the trains are amazingly slow for running in their own grade-seperated space.

The University of Dallas Station, which technically isn't next to the University of Dallas. To get there, passengers, presumably students or faculty, have to take the walkway in the picture above.

Las Colinas Urban Station is the best of the three, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. Here, we are looking west to northwest.
I like the treatment given to the tracks of the Lake Carolyn Parkway segment. They used materials similar to the transit mall in downtown Dallas.However, unlike downtown, there is only the one station, so it is less functional than downtown and more about aesthetics.
I wish there were another station or two, but unlike the Las Colinas Boulevard section of the urban center, the Lake Carolyn section is not as developed, so the other parts of the Las Colinas transit mall just aren't cost effective for their own station. That will put more of the onus on the localized transit system, which I will mention briefly in a moment.
I'm not sure that a more developed southern Lake Carolyn Parkway would even make a difference. There are several deferred stations along the Orange Line which DART says will be built if certain conditions are met for ridership goals. One is for a South Las Colinas Station, but it would be outside the Lake Carolyn/Las Colinas circle. For me, bare minimum, a station should go on the Las Colinas transit mall north of Las Colinas Blvd/Colorado Dr.
Las Colinas is one of the few places in DFW outside of the two main cities urban core that has potential to be a good urban neighborhood. The area's transit should reflect that.

Before moving on, take a close look at the right edge of the picture. Note the divider between the station and street. I'll touch on that in a few pictures down.

At the southern edge of the station, a nice park entrance was added that easily takes passengers down to the edge of Lake Carolyn. From here, you can walk the "shoreline" of most of the man-made lake. This connection is a nice little touch.

The view of Las Colinas Station from the edge of the promenade.

Here's one of the more intriguing parts of this station, the connection to the Las Colinas People Mover.

Here's my big problem with this connection. The first pictures shows what should be the passenger entrance to the connection. It even has a gate that leads to a stairway and elevators to the elevated station. But you can't take that, apparently, as it says only authorized people are allowed and points the way passengers should go.

I credited the Parkway's look, with a more streetcar look, rather than the commuter rail look that much of the rail system has. However, as is typical of DART specifically and American systems in general, the tracks are supposed to be off limits to anything but the trains. Look closely at the picture above, aside from the sign that points passengers to cross the street, there is no indication that people should avoid the street-sidewalk-looking tracks. This looks like an extension of the platform. I suspect that many people will walk next to the tracks, after making sure no train is coming of course.

I'm sure there has to be a reason that gate is not for the general public, but I just don't know what it is.

Remember earlier I noted the divider between the station and the street? Here's why. In downtown Dallas, people can easily cross between either side of the station, regardless of whether it is a center-platform station, like Pearl (Arts District) Station or side-platform like St. Paul. It technically is against DART policy to cross the tracks anywhere but at a crosswalk, but it happens all the time, and collisions are low.

Here, they designed the unauthorized crossing of the tracks out and passengers can only get to the center-platform Las Colinas Urban Center Station at the ends of the platform. Problem is when the bus transfers don't work, as is the case with these riders, there is an added frustration. In this picture, the train is literally behind me, but I knew, and you can tell these guys did too by their lackadaisical walk, that they wouldn't be able to go all the way to the end and then u-turn around and get to the train on time. There were two people ahead who tried and ran. They didn't make it.

Had the design been better, they would have made it. But the divider at the station only stops passengers from crossing easily. Obviously it isn't a problem at Pearl, but I guess in Las Colinas, DART figures the passengers can't handle it.
Also, this raises the question about how DART planners handled the transfers. This was taken on day two of the new line. Shouldn't nearly every transfer meet a train where passengers don't have to wait? Every bus that stops here doesn't meet another transfer point as important as this one. With as many buses and a train line that meet here, this is the part where you coordinate transfer times, and work out from there. Only the TRE station near downtown Irving is near as important. But light rail has a greater frequency and capacity and therefore should get the nod as Irving's most important transit point.

If you squint in the distance, you'll see the name sake of the Irving Convention Center Station, the current terminus of the line.

Surrounding this station is...literally prairie. I guess that means there is a lot of development potential, but virtually no ridership right now.

Here's the sidewalk that leads from the station to...literally nowhere. I guess Irving ran out of bond money when they built their convention center to actually build a sidewalk along Lake Carolyn Parkway.

I take it back, apparently someone or something uses this sidewalk. My two-year old excitedly pointed out two different areas where feces was on the brand new sidewalk.

Here is the northern edge of the station, effectively cordoned off by Northwest Highway. There's somewhat of a controversy. Right now, there is a big parking lot on the other side of the highway that DART used to use as the bus transfer center before moving the buses to the Urban Center Station. They built a tunnel under the highway similar to the U-Dallas Station. However, passengers are complaining it is too long and distant from the station. I didn't see the tunnel when I was there, though I wasn't looking for it. However, that may indicate just how inconvenient that is for passengers (I wasn't looking for the U-Dallas tunnel either, but saw it). Come December, commuters can use the North Lake and Belt Line Stations, which will further reduce this station as a viable one along the new route.

The last picture is just a promise of the line moving on to somewhere else. From here it will veer west and southwest to North Lake Station and eventually on to the airport.

Before I hit the negative, I want to point out what may be the biggest strength of the Orange Line, ironically it is something that could have been done without building a new rail line.

With the opening of the Irving segment, the line now goes all the way to LBJ/Central during all hours, effectively giving that section of the rail system half the headway. Since this is the most ridden part of the DART system, that should help both existing riders and encourage new ones.

Unlike one of my major critiques of the Green Line this one wasn't built in an old freight rail right-of-way. In the past, that meant that the land use really wasn't suitable in most places for an urban rail system. Las Colinas is a bit different. I expect that the Urban Center Station will be the most used when the entire line is complete, partly for this reason. That's also why I wish there were a station near Colorado Dr.

However, similar to the freight critiques, a lot of the line was shoehorned where space was available. The area from east of I-35 to almost Loop 12 is unusable for any type of station. For urban design, the ideal situation is a fewer distance between stations. The Orange Line violates that. However, I can overlook it because there really wasn't a better alternative in the current system to get to Las Colinas, which I believe is important.

My other big concern is that there are many sections on the line where the train just seems to crawl along. It was during one of these stretches where I wondered who added the rapid to DART's name, or which engineer forgot that part when the line was designed.

The last station before the Orange and the Green Line split is Bachman Station. According to this timetable, it takes eight minutes to go from Bachman to U-Dallas Station, another six minutes to get to the Urban Center Station and from there to the Convention Center Station is a manageable three minutes. The distance from Bachman to the end is 4.5 miles. Yet it takes 17 minutes to go the distance. And that's without transfers to get to the final destination. That's an average of a little more than 16 miles an hour. WHAT!!!

16 miles an hour!!!  For three stations in 4.5 miles!!!! Much of it grade-seperated!!!!! That has got to be better.

To go from West End Station in downtown Dallas to Irving Convention Center Station requires 36 minutes on the Orange Line. The 202 bus that was replaced by the Orange Line took 31 minutes to go from West End to the North Irving Transit Center. Yes, the Orange Line has to makie stops the express bus didn't, but the Orange Line also doesn't operate in traffic like the bus did.

Sometimes I wonder how much DART actually understands about transit and its system and how much is public relations. In the Metro Section of Tuesday's Dallas Morning News, a story ran about the Orange Line's opening. The authors discuss some riders who say the trip is longer on the train than it was on the bus.
Then comes this from the spokesman:

Morgan Lyons, DART's spokesman, said the train does add time to some commutes. But, he said, there's a logical reason with a potential benefit.

"It simply makes more stops along the way," he said of the many stations between Las Colinas and and downtown Dallas. "It provides new destinations, new access to people."

I don't disagree with the last part as it stands on its own, but it is not the reason it takes longer. It takes longer because the train takes eight minutes to go two miles. Then it takes another six minutes to go less than two miles. That is just unacceptable.

The bridge linking the U-Dallas Station to the rest of the system should be no different than the subway tunnel linking Mockingbird Station with downtown Dallas. Each is their own separate ROW. It is completely grade separated. It shouldn't take even five minutes to run that stretch. But sadly for Orange Line riders, their bridge won't see the 65 mph the trains do in that segment.

Much of the ROW between the U-Dallas Station and the Urban Center Station is within a freeway ROW, and therefore grade-separated. Another two minutes should be taken off from there. I don't mind the slower pace along the Lake Carolyn Parkway section when taken on its own. But added with the creep of the rest of the line, it just feels like a knife twist.

I think the thing that grinds my gears the most is that this wasn't a cheap rail line. With the money spent, we should do better than 16 mph average.

In fact, I could extrapolate that out to say with the amount spent, we should do better than what the Orange Line brings right now.

Orange Line and the Airport Connection

The first three stations of the Irving section of the Orange Line opened today and unlike Belo Gardens, I don't need to wait for it to be open a while to discuss it. Sadly, due to family commitments during the Saturday celebration and opening day today, the wait for my critique, which will be similar to that of the Green Line, will have to wait a few more days.

However, prompted by a discussion on Unfair Park, I want to discuss the anticipations of the DFW Airport Station's impact on Orange Line ridership. I want to temper what I think are unrealistic expectations.

The first evidence I want to introduce is from other transit systems.

New York's MTA is a national transit leader, with a total ridership over eight million for its metro system and almost 1 million for its commuter rail network, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Airtrain is a separate line connecting the airport to the metro system. There are two transfer stations connecting this line to the rest of the system, Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue-JFK Airport  Station and Howard Beach-JFK Airport Station. The first sees 17,500 daily riders and the second had less than 3,000 daily trips, though the link is from 2009. All told, the roughly 20,000 trips at the airport connection stations (these aren't necessarily airport bound) are only a fraction of a percent of system riders.

Note, that the New York link is to a New York Times multimedia map that shows average daily ridership for every station in the system in 2009. I'm going to make a point later and will use that as a reference point.

Chicago's L carries over 700,000 passenger trips on its heavy rails, and over 300,000 on it commuter system, Metra. The O'Hare Station has about 10,000 rides and the Midway Station sees about 9,000. That's less than two percent of system ridership.

Boston's MBTA, which carries over 500,000 trips on its metro system, almost 250,000 on its light rail system and roughly 130,000 on its commuter rail, sees only 7,000 from its airport connection. That's only .7% of total rail ridership. If we add the Silver Line's airport stop, which is technically an upgraded bus route, round up and don't include its ridership to the system's total, it still only accounts for only 1.1% of the system total.

San Francisco and Oakland's BART system opened an extension to San Francisco International Airport in 2003. Ridership for that four-station segment is 35,000, which includes a connection to the Caltrain commuter line. The station itself sees 5,400 boardings daily. Out of a 380,000 total passenger trips, the airport station accounts for just 1.4 percent of the system.

Even using a system more similar to Dallas doesn't yield any measurable increase in passengers by connecting the system to an airport.

Portland's Max light rail network has as many lines as Dallas, less miles but more stations. The average daily ridership sits right near 125,000. The airport station adds 2,600 to the system, or two percent.

Seattle doesn't publish individual station numbers for its Link light rail system. But the airport station opened in July 2009, with the airport station opening at the end of that year. For the first two quarters, the system didn't have an airport connection and the systems ridership was 14,500 and 18,200. After the airport station opened, ridership for the four quarters of 2010 was 19,500, 24,500, 26,600 and 24,700. Minus a brief up between the first and second quarter, the trend is consistent. As for the "big" increase, it isn't that noticeable compared to a typical station or line opening. Light rail lines will always trend up, even if no new stations are built. Anything around a 50 percent increase would indicate that airport station was different compared to other stations.

There isn't any airport connection in this country that adds a significant amount of riders to the regional rail system. And I am unaware of any system in the world that does, though I would cede I don't know them as well as I do America's.

There are several well established systems that do not have an airport connection. That in-and-of-itself may be proof that airports don't pump up ridership numbers.

So what does? Looking back at that New York map, the higher-ridden stations are those with the greatest density of jobs and residences. As I have said before, for a transit system to be successful, it needs to take people from where they are, to where they want to go in a convenient manner.

Airports and rail systems just aren't that convenient for most people. Passengers, unless they are light packers or on a day trip, just aren't likely to carry luggage from the terminal to the train. Add the fact that two-thirds of DFW Airport's passengers are transferring to another plane, it may not have as many passengers to send to any transportation system, despite the airport consistently being one of the busier airports in the country.

Workers are also unlikely to take the train, because even though there may be a large number of employees within its grounds, it is highly undense and spread out. So unless they work almost directly near the station, they will be highly unlikely to be train commuters.

In fact, I do believe the Orange Line will be the only terminus station that isn't the highest ridden of its own lines outlying stations. That will most likely be Belt Line Station, which isn't far from both the Bush Turnpike and Highway 114. It has all the makings off a highly used commuter station. And similar to what I discussed previously, this is a perfect location for a commuter station.

While these can be useful for the region, airport-to-rail transit doesn't have a huge amount of people using it. Maybe DFW and DART will be different, but I see no reason why it would.

DART is a little more optimistic. In it's Final Environmental Impact Statement for the DFW Station, they predict a daily ridership of 11,200 by 2030, of which 10,500 are airport bound. The others are transfers. I just don't see it. Maybe I am wrong, but I just don't see DART bucking the trend that every other American transit system follows.

Managing Transit within Individual Fiefdoms

Almost a year ago today, I discussed how some area suburbs were trying to increase transit options in their municipalities that do not currently have service.

In March, Mesquite opened an express route from their downtown connecting to the Lawnview Station on the Green Line.

However, Allen and McKinney have seen nothing concrete from their efforts yet. Monday's Metro section in the Dallas Morning News contained a story about why there has been a delay for those northern suburbs.

The short version is one of my concerns about this piecemeal approach. DART has inhibitions about approving a program that pumps non-service-area riders into the first station of the Red Line, forcing others further in to stand on the Downtown-Dallas-bound trains. Those others are also more likely to reside in a DART service area city and therefore are also more likely to pay the sales tax. As it stands, DART will receive nothing from the two suburbs.

Sadly, in the current system (political, not infrastructural), the only solution I see is an increase in capacity. But again, that has costs associated and who pays what will be at the heart of this matter.

As I mentioned in the previous post, this is one of the many drawbacks with a transit system's service area being decided by individual cities and paid for with their sales tax allocations. Until a fundamental change totally re-designs the way we fund, operate and administer transit service in the region, this will be more common as the region grows outward. More and more outlying suburbs will try to find a way to keep their sales tax and still fund transit and the current payers will look out for their interests first.

In the end, it is the residents who will have the drawbacks.