Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

electricron

Beyond station TOD partnerships or ground leases of CapMetro’s own land, is there a scope of TIF / TIRZ in Texas that can appropriately allow public investment to share in the property valuation that it increases around transit lines? Not within the Texas Transportation Code. The Texas laws allow i...

electricron

Pocket tracks aren't strictly necessary for turning a train - almost every station has crossover rails, so as long as there's a back up driver ready at the platform and next train isn't due for more than ~10 mins, it's possible to turn a train at the platform (plus the signaling/ATP will prevent a ...

electricron

As a reminder where DART has pocket tracks, there are just a few on the system. Green south at Lawnview, Green and Orange north at Bachman, Blue line north at LBJ/Skillman, Red line north at LBJ/Central, Red and Blue south just before spur to maintenance shops. There is also one just north of Victo...

electricron

Yes- when I say Parker Road, I mean the entire corridor. Regardless of whether the extra trains are meant to ease crowding, or just increase frequency, there's no benefit to running every single train *through* downtown when the rush-hour ridership patterns are so heavily weighted to the northern p...

electricron

Yes, thanks for sharing!! The elimination of 'beg buttons' seems to be a no-brainer for me. I've honestly never understood why we needed to have a button to begin with. Beg buttons for signal lights for pedestrians are located outside, usually exposed to the sun for most of the day. Covid-19 has a ...

electricron

I think the state is being derelict by not putting a billion dollars into the second downtown route. Every penny DART collects in sales taxes cycles through the State of Texas. The State in the next legislature could null DART's ability to collect any sales taxes. All it would take is a bill passin...

electricron

That's a good point. And it's not just the initial expense of purchasing the car, you also have maintenance, gas, insurance, etc. All true! The key point being that individuals pay 100% of the cost of owning, running, and maintaining the vehicle. I suggest public transit would be almost as expensiv...

electricron

DART does not invest money. DART spends money. Nothing it does has any expectation of achieving a profit. Example: DART is currently paying $30 million per year in interest on money it has borrowed for the silver line, which their own projections say will only generate $3 million per year in fares....

electricron

There's no ramp for the existing elevated Green Line platform though - the required ADA redundancy is provided by having two elevators (three if you count the one at the south end of the ped walkway over Belt Line). What is special about the Silver line that it needs a ramp connection in addition t...

electricron

The latest Silver Line briefing has some interesting nuggets on the design of the Downtown Carrolton station and how it will interchange with both the existing Green Line, as well as potential A-Train and "Frisco Line" commuter rail extensions... https://dart.org/about/board/boardagendas/...

electricron

Austin Metro has released a nearly $10 billion transit plan to include new Rapidbus routes and a subway through downtown. It is likely to be put to a vote in November. https://www.statesman.com/news/20200306/cap-metro-recommends-downtown-subway-system-in-multibillion-dollar-light-rail-system?utm_so...

electricron

By the time it's open, the two population centers will have grown by a combined one million residents. by the time the train is up and running, it will be time to double the service. Is there any hope the I-35 redo through Austin will give some room for HSR? There is not room for express-managed-ho...

electricron

Probably some on this forum have seen the area around Sears Tower where the city streets are all overpasses above ground level, with the buildings' underground service levels actually built in the open air at ground level. The development of Illinois Center, Lakeshore East and Millennium Park over ...

electricron

How about we just start by taking the "x" off the road where JFK was shot? That has always seemed to me like a pretty tactless tribute to a horrible event. A fools errand. Neither the city nor any museum paints those "x"s on the Elm Street. Vendors or hawkers do. As soon as the ...

electricron

Who owns the Dallas Morning News today? Some history per Wiki "Dealey Plaza was built on land donated by early Dallas philanthropist and businesswoman Sarah Horton Cockrell. It was the location of the first home built in Dallas, which also became the first courthouse and post office, the first ...

electricron

Not to mention the fact that, aside from the TODs that have been purposely built up around existing stations, the existing DART lines don't pass many neighborhoods that would be conducive to transit anyway. For example, the only exception I can think of on the Red Line, within the city proper, is K...

electricron

The only possible usage of space over the DNT that I see would be some future HSR (or hyperloop) extension to the North. Obviously, that wouldn't be for the next 30 years or more... But when considering a Northern route out of the city, it kinda makes sense. I would assume such a system would have ...

electricron

The North Texas Tollway south of LBJ follows the route the Cotton Belt used to get to Union Station in Dallas. The ONCOR transmission line was built within the railroad right-of-way. When the Tollway replaced the railroad tracks, ONCOR rebuilt the transmission line using taller metal poles replacing...

electricron

Thank you Overdog for helping answer my question. I figured the arrangement at Cityline/Bush would be pretty much like this.Screenshot_20200115-134414_Drive.jpg 12th Street looks a little different than I would imagine. Looks like they won't have a combined Silver and Red/Orange station there. Hard...

electricron

I assume you worked on the engineering design aspect, not the transit planning aspect, but do you know any specific reasons that station was added to the plans in the first place? Transferring at Bush instead of 12th Street would only add something like five or 10 minutes to a Parker-Shiloh trip, a...

electricron

Technologically, it isn't a bad idea for the company that built the trains be the one to provide maintenance. And I wouldn't call it experimental like the streetcar; the FLIRT and the smaller but similar GTW (what the A-Train uses) are used all over Europe, over 1500 trainsets sold in total. Number...

electricron

I apparently missed the news that the First Responder Bowl moved out of the Cotton Bowl Stadium, after the City just last year agreed to large subsidies to keep the game at the Cotton Bowl. (It's being played at the Geral J Ford Stadium on SMU's campus this year. At least the 9 or 10,000 people won...

electricron

DART is Light Rail and while I generally support a below-grade option I prefer it with the right tech and DART isn't ready to change its operation around different technology yet. The one thing I constantly explain to transplants is why DART isn't like some of the bigger city transits they are used...

electricron

Only 3 underground stations?? What's even the point Is there a must have need for more? Have you priced the costs to build and maintain a subway station? Since the very first alternate proposals with the EIS planning process, the subway build has always had fewer stations than a surface build. Yet,...

electricron

If Texas Central breaks ground next year, I would place it very high on future impacts to the Dallas economy for decades to come. But I'll readily admit, it will not be open for business in 2020.

electricron

The word tunnel doesn't appear anywhere in the article nor in the TxDOT meeting powerpoint. Hopefully going forward they will mention it. Or I figure they will just keep throwing bad options at us until we get tired and give up TXDOT has not built a single tunnel ever! All tunnels within the state ...

electricron

Interesting tidbit from the latest DART board presentation on D2. The plan for light rail lines downtown from 1988...... It had to take you time to find such an old map, thanks of the effort. But it is a planner's map before those little and large pesky details get in the way. There were probably o...

electricron

October numbers are now available. They are now up 27% over the first full month of regular service: February 2019 ridership: 32,998 March 2019: 39,093 April 2019: 33,589 May 2019: 35,878 June 2019: 39,154 July 2019: 41,818 August 2019: 42,637 September 2019: 43,757 October 2019: 41,943 Monthly num...

electricron

The not-very-ambitious projection was 9,000 daily by the end of year one - at least 4-5 times the number they appear likely to achieve. When seeking FTA funding, FWTA projected back in 2015 the following: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/TX_Ft_Worth_TEX_Rail_Profile-FINAL.pd...

electricron

I wonder how much of this LED light addition is an ADA-related thing, and how much of it is a I'm-too-distracted-by-my-phone-to-watch-for-the-train thing. I've seen video or pics of inlaid LED strips on sidewalks in other cities (maybe outside the US? Can't remember) that light up red or green so t...

electricron

Thanks for the data!, mine were more back of a napkin calculations, That being said, it's always great to see input from members who have access to more qualified information Is there any info on the load capacity of Silver Line trains? since they are obviously not going to be SLRV's DART's Silver ...

electricron

Prior to the Texas OU fiasco I posted the numbers here. Unfortunately that post was lost in the site crash. But the bottom line was that if you dedicated every piece of rolling stock that DART owned at the time to serving that one event, filled every car to theoretical capacity, and ran them throug...

electricron

Am I really the only one who seems to think an above ground train through Victory Park is a bad idea? I just can't see this working well. I really hope I'm wrong. Maybe there's something I don't understand that hasn't been explained to me yet? The land under Victory Park is fill, made up of small a...

electricron

Glad to see this moving along but still painfull that it will only take you to the perimeter of Houston and not directly downtown. I wonder if there is any chance that there could be a future extension from the perimeter to downtown. I'm sure if it was the other way around, there would many promine...

electricron

By neglecting the inner city mobility, the transit agencies (TXDoT being the biggest perpetrator) fail to serve both populations, commuters and city dwellers. Overlooking inner city mobility is just as bad for the suburban commuter as it would be to omit suburban neighborhood connecting streets for...

electricron

Also, DART isn't ever happy with focusing on Dallas. Having NTCOG take over a commuter line would leave DART confused on what its job is. They only know how to chase the suburban office worker. Plus DARTs current trains are commuter trains. They focus primarily on getting suburbanites into Downtown...

electricron

Come on guys and gals, this thread is suppose to be about Trinity Metro’s TexRail - not DART’s Orange Line.

electricron

Money Questions Pop Up in Dallas’ Bond-Funded Plan to Add a 50-Mile Trail Loop https://assets.dmagstatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screen-Shot-2019-02-12-at-11.13.34-AM1-677x451.png https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2019/02/money-questions-pop-up-in-dallas-bond-funded-plan-to-add-a-50-mile...

electricron

So, after the Silver Line is built, what, do you feel, is the next step for DART? This is why I struggle with the Silver Line because it just seems like a short sighted expansion. I get that people live in the suburbs and they all want rail, I'm just not sure how to feasibly provide it to them. Per...

electricron

Southwest dropping nonstop flights from Dallas Love Field to OKC, San Francisco and Jacksonville https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2019/08/16/southwest-dropping-nonstop-flights-dallas-love-field-okc-san-francisco-jacksonville One or two stop flights are likely between Love Fiel...

electricron

The same could be said for DART itself... It's fare structure essentially benefits long distance commuters the most, while penalizing the short haul. For example, commuting from cityline to Victory Park would cost the same as commuting from Pearl Arts station to Victory Park. As such, you end up di...

electricron

Our million-dollar bus doesn't add up. We did the math https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/07/22/million-dollar-bus-doesnt-add-math The busses are overpriced and we should have done better... but this article is very poorly researched and written. It goes on to factor 'upkeep' of the...

electricron

Sorry, double post.

electricron

It's also a matter of cost of living. Land on the outskirts is cheaper. So long as the city, county and state builds and widens the highway and adds the utility lines, this will continue. Which it will. Other large metropolitan areas in the USA have geological obstacles for outward growth spreads, ...

electricron

cowboyeagle05 wrote:All I remember about the original route is when the Mayor decreed it needed to go by the City Owned Hotel and everyone pointed out how that was a no go but he insisted.

Thankfully, DART is controlled by its own board of directors and not by the mayor of Dallas.

electricron

The fell crane in East Dallas over the weekend was located just two or three blocks away from DART’s Deep Ellum or St. Paul stations. Whether or not this neighborhood would be redeveloping because of DART could be argumentative, but not the mixed used, transit friendly development being built. It ma...

electricron

I can't be the only person that finds it a bit ridiculous that DART's headquarters downtown, right next to akard station, has a private underground parking garage ( https://maps.app.goo.gl/EtZWogQ5mySt5quv5 ). I get it's likely there due to parking minimums; but not only is the irony palpable, it a...

electricron

itsjrd1964 wrote:That auto-cottect, it's a killer....

Whether it is auto-correct or auto-cottect, it also slays me too.

electricron

Redblock wrote:DART has ordered 8 FLIRT Emus from Stadler.
https://www.dart.org/news/news.asp?ID=1402

They will be DMUs, not EMUs.

electricron

^I do not disagree with you, electricron, not in the least. The trains from downtown Plano to Dallas may always be more local than express, only raising the importance of an additional passenger train route from Frisco built to handle local and express trains. How many times do I have to state that...

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