AMA wrote:
To begin, the system was built on the top of former freight railroad right of ways instead of being designed to serve areas of density that require such service. It's not a city metro, which is what Dallas needs. It's a commuter system that serves the suburbs. Not to mention too many stops along the line making the time, added with the sheer size of the system, that much more inefficient. That kind of system should be heavy like the TexRail. Not light rail. Light rail is perfect as a city metro system. But alas, the system is incredibly inefficient and poorly designed.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) gets you around Dallas, Texas, and
12 surrounding cities with modern public transit services and customer facilities tailored to make your trip fast, comfortable and economical. Our extensive network of DART Light Rail, Trinity Railway Express commuter rail, bus routes and paratransit services moves more than 220,000 passengers per day across our 700-square-mile service area.
In 1983, DART initially tried to pass a bonding referendum to fund building a metro style system, not a single city of the 13 cities, including Dallas, passed it.
FYI: No bonding authority = no money for capital projects = no trains.
It was not until 1988, and DART switching the trains to a light rail system, before cities passed a bonding referendum to fund building trains.
All remaining 13 member cities passed it.
Bonding authority = money = trains.
Yes, the history is all there at Wiki.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Area_Rapid_Transit
And guess what, the latest 2020 census data is out.
Dallas 1,304,379
Plano 285,537
Irving 236,546
Garland 236,366
Carrolton 143,718
Richardson 119,469
Rowlett 69,765
Farmers Branch 63,420
University Park 25,278
Addison 18,113
Glenn Heights 14,772
Highland Park 8,959
Cockrell Hill 4,088
Sime math follows:
Population of suburban member cities subtotal = 1,226,031
Population of all member cities = 2,530,410
Suburban cities = 48.45%
Dallas = 51.55%
With almost half of the citizens living in suburban cities actually paying local taxes to build your transit system, you better be building a transit system that actually services them.
There are valid reasons why DART built transit all the way out to its suburbs.
Here are the two largest reasons: Politics and Money
Before the formation of DART in 1983, the Dallas Bus Transit System serviced only Dallas. No suburbs had public transit. Suburbs joining DART doubled the size of DART.
So the question you should be asking is, do you want trains at all or not? Because if DART stuck to your favorite metro style train system, there would be no trains at all because there would have been no money to build it.
Even to this date, the citizens of North Dallas and the City Council of Dallas would prefer that DART continue to build light rail lines. They are still smarting and objecting to FLIRT DMUs on the Silver Line (ex-Cotton Belt). In fact, it would have been far easier for DART to get the political support to build light rail vs regional rail on the Siler Line.
Past and present decisions on what to build where are not made in a vacuum. There is plenty of history available if you take the time to research it.
The Dallas city council prefers light rail, the suburbs city councils prefer light rail, the citizens of Dallas prefer light rail, the citizens of all the suburbs prefer light rail, just about everyone but a few posters on this web site prefers light rail, yet they continue to post other rail solutions are what is needed or will be better. Who do they think they are?