From turmoil, DART takes shape - Dallas Area Rapid Transit - includes related articles

Railway Age, Sept, 1994 by William D. Middleton

It has been a turbulent 11 years since voters in Dallas and 13 of its neighboring suburban cities went to the polls to approve a grand regional plan for transit, a new one-cent sales tax to pay for the $8.7 billion program, and the formation of a new agency, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), to carry it out. At the heart of that regional plan was a light rail transit system that was supposed to begin running its first trains in 1988, and that would reach a total of 147 miles by the year 2010.

Since then, almost nothing has happened the way DART's original 1983 Final Service Plan said that it would. The agency and its plans have been the subject of almost unending political turmoil, some communities have seceded from the district while others have joined, anti financial realities and constraints have forced two major reappraisals of DART's ambitious rail plan that have brought successive setbacks to both the scope of the planned system and its construction schedule.

Things began to turn around for DART in 1989, when its board of directors approved a new, slimmed-down service plan based upon pay-as-you-go financing. Construction finally got started late in 1990. Work is now well advanced on most segments of a 20-mile, $841 million light rail starter system, the initial phase of a 67-mile regional system. Work should begin soon to complete the first phase of a planned regional/commuter rail system that is now part of the regional plan. Dallas area commuters can now look forward to riding the first rail diesel car commuter trains between Dallas and Irving before the end of 1995. The first segment of the light rail starter line should begin carrying passengers in June 1996, with the full 20-mile starter line expected to be in service by May 1997.

* A turbulent history. The original regional plan approved by voters in August 1983 was developed by an interim transit agency established in 1981. The principal element of the plan was a 13-route, 83-station, 147-mile rail system, with 3.4 miles of downtown subway. It was to be completed in stages by 2010 at a projected cost (in 1982 dollars) of $8.7 billion. In addition to the rail system, the service plan called for early action to improve the region's bus system, and HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes on the circumferential Interstate 635 freeway. The City of Dallas and 13 other communities voted to join the DART district, while the City of Cockrell Hill joined three months later, giving DART a 900-square-mile service area with a population of 1.5 million that was projected to grow to 2.5 million by 2000.

DART first moved quickly to improve bus service to the region. In only two years, the bus fleet was nearly doubled to almost 1,000 vehicles, and a new network of suburban express services was added. Bus ridership increased by a third.

DART moved almost as rapidly to implement the rail program. By early 1985, the DART staff and general engineering consultants needed to carry out the program were in place. Before the end of the year, a draft rail vehicle specification was out for industry review, and award of the first construction contracts was anticipated during 1986. At this time, the DART rail system was seen as a "pre-metro" system, falling somewhere between conventional light rail and metro technology, that could readily be upgraded to full metro capacity when necessary.

The first bump in the road came late in 1985, when a financial feasibility review found that the system plan would have to be scaled back to match the funds likely to be available from the new sales tax. By mid-1986, DART had a new plan that called for a 22-mile, five-line first phase system that would be open by 1994, growing by two additional phases to a 2010 system 92 miles long. As a further money-saving move, a more conventional light rail technology replaced the earlier pre-metro concept.

Even this downsized plan would have required the issue of $1 billion in revenue bonds to finance construction, with future DART sales tax revenues pledged to repay the loans. In June 1988, Dallas area voters turned down this long-term financing measure. Once again, DART had to revise its plans, this time on the basis of a pay-as-you-go plan that could be developed within available sales tax revenues, plus any federal funding component.

To make matters worse in the wake of the failed financing plan, disgruntled city councils in nine of DART's member cities scheduled withdrawal elections over the next year.

By the end of 1989, however. things were beginning to look up. With extensive community input, DART staff drafted a new system plan that was approved by the DART board in June 1989. With the new plan in place, voters in five of the largest suburban cities approved their continued participation in DART, and two other cities canceled their withdrawal vote Only two, Flower Mound and Coppell, voted to withdraw.

DART's new system plan now called for the construction of a 67-mile light rail system over a 20-year period, with work to begin first on a 20-mile starter system and an 18-mile commuter rail line that would operate over existing tracks linking downtown Dallas, Irving, and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The original plan's HOV program for buses, carpools, and vanpools was expanded to 37 miles of lanes. Other major components of the plan included the development of special transit "circulator" systems at seven major employment and activity centers in the region, and improved bus services. Funding for the $2.4 billion (1989 dollars), 20-year program was to come largely from sales tax revenues, with substantial additional funding from operating revenues and federal funds. DART, at last, was ready to build.