electricron wrote:DART studied tunneling under Love Field to get to its terminal and place a station there., but during the EIS process it was nixed for some logical reasons by the FTA. When a project is partially funded by the Federal government, you are allowing it to dictate how a project proceeds.
DART is studying the D2 project to day with an EIS hoping for Federal funding with it as well. Let's hope that EIS fairs better than the Green Line when it comes to tunneling. Let's hope the Federal government doesn't find any reasons to nix any tunneling.
Sadly the only reason there isn't a subway station at Love Field right now is exactly because of the way the FTA under the Bush administration insisted (stupidly) on including the costs for it in a federal funding proposal for the
entire green line
despite Dallas, DART, and NCTCOG offering to fund that particular portion of the line. Far from any rational or logical reason IMO.
You're right that we're under the whims of the feds when they allocate money but my understanding was that this grant was awarded to improve transit mobility and that, again, this addition to the airport was not to be funded by any federal but rather local dollars. Thus the rejection seemed to deliberately disregard a sincere effort by Dallas and other agencies to improve their transit network both for residents and those visiting the city alike.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/transportation/2014/10/12/airport-dart-station-is-one-direct-connection-dallas-love-field-doesnt-have"DART was seeking federal approval of and funding for the project at the time. Agency officials were worried that they couldn’t afford to build the Love Field station and expand farther into the suburbs. The extra cost for the tunnel was $160 million.
Rather than tack that on to what DART was seeking from the federal government, the agency, the city and NCTCOG pooled money for that portion of the project.
...
The Federal Transit Administration still nixed the idea. They told area leaders that even if local money covered the cost of the tunnel, the expense had to be factored into a formula that looks at cost-effectiveness of federally funded projects. The maximum cost per passenger federal authorities would cover was $25. With the tunnel, the Green Line would cost $25.61 per passenger. Without it, that amount fell to $21.59."
As you can probably tell I'm still not over this
It just seems so shortsighted and even cruel to deny the city such a key connection, especially when they raised the funds and didn't ask for more federal money. One can only wonder if the same result would've occurred under another administration with even just a slightly more favorable view toward transit.
In any case it's a big shame and hopefully this major mistake of the past is not repeated in some other fashion moving forward. ...and who knows, maybe in a few decades they'll even decide to revisit this tunnel and finally build it once and for all, same with Knox/Henderson