DART: Rail Capacity Issues

[Justin Terveen]

Madness. That's the one word that would sum up today's mass-exodus from Fair Park after the game. I've never seen DART shudder under the weight of it's own riders like I did today. People arrived in train after train for the first half of the day...but once the game let out and everyone tried to leave all at once, a scene of complete chaos began to take shape. I was trying to get downtown - Train? Not a chance. Buses? Nope. Full, or stuck in gridlock thanks to RXR cross-arms being closed for long periods of time, thanks to super slow trains, and even slower loading. Most started just walking back downtown... I saw: fights for cabs, cabs kicking people out (?), cabs wrecking, making illegal u-turns (heading back into dt with a fresh fare), resulting in a collision... Nucking Futs.

I just don't know if DART was ready for today....and if they were, it certainly didn't seem like it....and I'm sure I can find a few thousand people that would agree with me...

[palchik]

Theres just no way that a light rail system can accomodate 100,000 all at once, and all going to one place. No light rail system in the world would have been able to do that job.

[Speedbump Joey]

Ahhh the unfortunate growing pains.

[cowboyeagle05]

I would expect this kind of massive overload that's why I kinda think they should build a temporary station on the North side of the Cotton Bowl and run two stations to help spread the crowd from the same exit point. Then they could take some of the pressure off the Parry Avenue entrance. Alternate the trains leaving each station Fair Park station. Force Taxis to the RB Cullum entrances/exits. The extra track along the North side could be economical for temporary parking of trains when an event doesn't require the stations use. It would in their best interest to show that the Cotton Bowl can handle the overload at least the best they can compared to other stadiums.

Course DART will be forced to figure it out with bad press applying the pressure.

[Justin Terveen]

Well, I'm pretty sure I saw enough to scare people off come next year. And as far as another station, MLK is already right there by the second busiest entrance. I simply don't think they can get trains in and out quick enough. Mind you, this section of track is very slow and you have to allow for a certain amount of space in between traffic. There has been a noticeable increase in delays since the green line was introduced - even under normal operating conditions. Add 'em up and you have a very slow, frustrating experience that people did not enjoy.

[portyhead]

Madness. That's the one word that would sum up today's mass-exodus from Fair Park after the game. I've never seen DART shudder under the weight of it's own riders like I did today. People arrived in train after train for the first half of the day...but once the game let out and everyone tried to leave all at once, a scene of complete chaos began to take shape. I was trying to get downtown - Train? Not a chance. Buses? Nope. Full, or stuck in gridlock thanks to RXR cross-arms being closed for long periods of time, thanks to super slow trains, and even slower loading. Most started just walking back downtown... I saw: fights for cabs, cabs kicking people out (?), cabs wrecking, making illegal u-turns (heading back into dt with a fresh fare), resulting in a collision... Nucking Futs.

I just don't know if DART was ready for today....and if they were, it certainly didn't seem like it....and I'm sure I can find a few thousand people that would agree with me...

No pictures? This would have definitely been something to see :uhoh: I'm really interested on how they are planning to approach this next year.

[palchik]

They should have run every single train, Red, Blue, and Green to Fair Park, and anyone who wasnt going to Fair Park would have transfered at Deep Ellum Station. So lets say you were going to the zoo from Parker Road Station, you would ride the Red Line (headed to Fair Park) to Deep Ellum Station, get off and transfer to the southbound Red Line (coming from Fair Park) and head to the zoo. It would certainly inconvenience regular riders a bit, but for one day it may be worth it.

[jsoto3]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/transportation/stories/DN-cotton_18met.ART.Central.Edition1.4bc237b.html
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/transportation/stories/101709dnmetdartwoes.226936c54.html

I left Fair Park yesterday right after the game ended and it seemed most people were leaving at the same time. We were closest to MLK Station so we went there. Things seemed to be going fine until a train pulled up that was out of service. It just sat there for a good 5-10 minutes with people yelling to be let on. And then it rolled away empty, I guess to go back to the service yard. Why would DART pull trains out of service when the demand is the highest? Fortunately I did not see anything like what Justin saw. I must have made it out of there while everyone was still being relatively cordial.

[palchik]

Which way did the train roll out with the out out of service sign...toward Fair Park Station or away from it? If it was away from the Fair, it was probably to back up and get on the right track for the return trip to downtown, if it was toward the Fair, it was probably to allow an empty train to pick up an overflow load on the platform at Fair Park Station. If they had let all of you on at MLK, there would have been no room left for the already huge crowd at Fair Park Station....just too many people all around.

[MarkL2023]

I took DART to the game, but I had a friend pick me up after because the wait was just too long.

A DART employee told us that DART needed to start putting the trains headed for fair park "out of service" so that people would stop undermining the system and move one or a few stops up the route in order to board. This was maybe an hour after we left the game so they may have started doing that.

[staplesla]

Madness. That's the one word that would sum up today's mass-exodus from Fair Park after the game. I've never seen DART shudder under the weight of it's own riders like I did today. People arrived in train after train for the first half of the day...but once the game let out and everyone tried to leave all at once, a scene of complete chaos began to take shape. I was trying to get downtown - Train? Not a chance. Buses? Nope. Full, or stuck in gridlock thanks to RXR cross-arms being closed for long periods of time, thanks to super slow trains, and even slower loading. Most started just walking back downtown... I saw: fights for cabs, cabs kicking people out (?), cabs wrecking, making illegal u-turns (heading back into dt with a fresh fare), resulting in a collision... Nucking Futs.

I just don't know if DART was ready for today....and if they were, it certainly didn't seem like it....and I'm sure I can find a few thousand people that would agree with me...

I was right there with you. We made it on the train, but we were so jammed pack in the middle that when we reached our stop we couldn't push through the people to get off. Everyone was screaming "let me off." We finally got off two stops later, and rode the rail back down to our stop. I'll never do that again!

[mjblazin]

They should have run every single train, Red, Blue, and Green to Fair Park, and anyone who wasnt going to Fair Park would have transfered at Deep Ellum Station. So lets say you were going to the zoo from Parker Road Station, you would ride the Red Line (headed to Fair Park) to Deep Ellum Station, get off and transfer to the southbound Red Line (coming from Fair Park) and head to the zoo. It would certainly inconvenience regular riders a bit, but for one day it may be worth it.

That would have everyone in the system eventually on the platform at Deep Ellum, but unable to leave Deep Ellum because all the trains going by are full. How about the fans simply staying a little longer at the fair and its tradition that claim to so dearly love?

The smarter solution would have been to use huge numbers of buses, at the back end of the fair, going to one location, maybe the Cedars or Union Station to disperse the crowd. Don't take them downtown because they'd just add to the mess there. There the people could ride Blue, Red or TRE trains to get to their destinations. With schedule cutbacks on weekend, DART should have loads of available buses.

Mass transit is not a great tool for the mega-event. You'd think someone at DART would use some high school algebra and figure it ahead of time.

[Speedbump Joey]

That would have everyone in the system eventually on the platform at Deep Ellum, but unable to leave Deep Ellum because all the trains going by are full. How about the fans simply staying a little longer at the fair and its tradition that claim to so dearly love?

The smarter solution would have been to use huge numbers of buses, at the back end of the fair, going to one location, maybe the Cedars or Union Station to disperse the crowd. Don't take them downtown because they'd just add to the mess there. There the people could ride Blue, Red or TRE trains to get to their destinations. With schedule cutbacks on weekend, DART should have loads of available buses.

Mass transit is not a great tool for the mega-event. You'd think someone at DART would use some high school algebra and figure it ahead of time.

Great idea. To add on to what you have said, have bus lanes setup for those going on rail and heading South, North, or West. So those that are going to South Dallas ride shuttle buses, like you said to Cedars. Then have those on the TRE go to Union, and finally those Northbound passengers go to say, Mockingbird or another station that can help disperse the crowd.

But, then again, you would think people would understand that there is going to be a large crowd to begin with and think about hanging around for a bit. It just seems like everyone is in a huge hurry these days, enjoy the ride while it lasts.

[palchik]

That would have everyone in the system eventually on the platform at Deep Ellum, but unable to leave Deep Ellum because all the trains going by are full. How about the fans simply staying a little longer at the fair and its tradition that claim to so dearly love?

The smarter solution would have been to use huge numbers of buses, at the back end of the fair, going to one location, maybe the Cedars or Union Station to disperse the crowd. Don't take them downtown because they'd just add to the mess there. There the people could ride Blue, Red or TRE trains to get to their destinations. With schedule cutbacks on weekend, DART should have loads of available buses.

Mass transit is not a great tool for the mega-event. You'd think someone at DART would use some high school algebra and figure it ahead of time.


Mjblazin: What I'm suggesting is to split the Red and Blue lines up into 4 distinct routes for one day: Parker Road to MLK, DT Garland to MLK, Westmoreland to MLK and Ledbetter to MLK. if someone wanted to go from Parker Road to the zoo on a Red Line train heading to Fair Park, they would get off at Deep Ellum Station and catch a Red Line train headed to Westmoreland (which would be pretty empty for the first half of the day. It would be a bit more tight for the second half of the day, but there would be a lot more trains for Fair folks to use to get home. Also, this would eliminate trains crossing each others' paths at Bryan St. for one day. The only question is how many trains can the stretch of track between Deep Ellum and MLK accomodate per hour?

I think buses are a valid suggestion, but realistically, they would have just gotten stuck in tthe gridlock around Fair Park.

[mjblazin]

It would have only alleviated the problem in the AM and disrupted a lot of people headed to work on Saturday (the real AM travelers). It would made the afternoon chaos a little less chaotic by disrupting the entire system. The trains headed through Deep Ellum would not have been empty; they'd have been packed and non-football people would be stuck in Deep Ellum unless they walked to Fair Park Station.

The only people experiencing chaos were the people that left the game immediately. I rode the system Saturday afternoon; off the Green Line, it was fine. The backlog at Fair Park served a purpose and prevented Pearl Station from looking like the front of the embassy in Saigon 1975.

You provide something special for them like the buses. You don't contaminate the rest of the system.

[CasperITL]

You people are missing the point. Everyone knows it is light rail. But DART spent an entire year promoting it as the best way to get to the Fair and the best way to avoid parking problems. Over and over and over and over again. When they day came, they could not deliver.

Do you blame the customers of a hotel when the hotel overbooks the rooms? No. But DART and their fan bois do.

DART was ill prepared. They ran out of tickets in all their machines along the red line by 8am. The lack of vison to provide something as simple as tickets proves they lack the management to handle events of any size.

To be fair this is a broken issue that cannot be fixed. DART never designed the rail line to handle traffic. It cannot be fixed. The fix is to tear up the line and start over.

All the shuffling of trains as suggested above will not help. The problem is that DART payer cities bought a lemon of a transit system. It's not first or even second class. It is a third class system, for a second rate town that half bake fails everything they do!

[frankchitown]

Well on the bright side, there's sure to be less bitchy suburbanites with their loudmouth kids on the trains for next year's fair.

[Justin Terveen]

Here's to hoping. I'm just happy it's all over. I'll finally get my new station back!

Also, I agree that a large number of buses, properly placed, would have been a good thing.

In the short time I spent around the intersection, there were only two buses working service protection.

I saw one more that was inbound as I left the neighborhood.

[tamtagon]

You people are missing the point ... When they day came, they could not deliver.
...
DART was ill prepared.

Hello. You're reading the words, but you're not understanding them. That's what everyone has been saying.


Do you blame the customers of a hotel when the hotel overbooks the rooms? No. But DART and their fan bois do.

The lack of vison to provide something as simple as tickets proves they lack the management to handle events of any size.

It cannot be fixed. The fix is to tear up the line and start over.

It is a third class system, for a second rate town that half bake fails everything they do!

Give me a break.

[crazytony]

All the shuffling of trains as suggested above will not help. The problem is that DART payer cities bought a lemon of a transit system. It's not first or even second class. It is a third class system, for a second rate town that half bake fails everything they do!


You shouldn't take it so personally when your team loses. :Banana09:

[electricron]

The remodeled Cotton Bowl seats 93,000 fans. A DART SLRV, jammed to capacity, holds 150-200 passengers. DART was running two SLRV trains last Saturday, therefore each SLRV train had a capacity of 300-400 passengers. Let's assume each train held 350 passengers. Let's also assume DART had a train headways at Fair Park of 2 minutes, that's one train every two minutes for those who don't know what I mean by headway.
Basic Algebra >>>>
93,000 passengers / 350 passengers/train = 265.7 trains, which we should round up to 266 trains.
266 trains / 30 trains/hour = 8.86 hours. There's no way DART can carry everyone to the game.
Even if we shrink the headway to one minute, it's still take DART 4.43 hours to move 93,000 fans.

D.C. metro with third rail heavy rail (subway) also had signifiicant delays last January during Obama's inauguration.
So it's not just DART having problems moving many passengers in a short period of time.

The only way DART will be able to carry more passengers per train by next year is to adopt this India policy.
http://moronland.net/media/pictures/pic01950.jpg
Which isn't a good idea for electric powered trains with a overhead catenary. DART has 115 light rail vehicles, and another 48 or so on order that will not be built and arriving until after next year's State Fair. Assuming DART is allowed to operate three SLRV trains one day a year, here's some more math....

93,000 passengers / 525 passengers/train = 177.14 trains, rounding up to 178 trains.
178 trains / 30 trains/hour = 5.93 hours. At one minute headways, it'll take 2.96 hours to move 93,000 fans.

My recommendation for the future is for DART to address the reason for the delays, too many trains trying to run on the Green Line between Pearl and Fair Park/MLK. There were more trains than track control sections, and no where to place them after they unloaded their passengers.....Maybe DART should install some pocket tracks south of MLK station to park and pre-stage extra trains nearby. The maintenance yard is not that far away, but it still requires moving trains across tracks full of trains to get there, causing a small traffic jam. Pocket tracks is the way to go to get empty trains out of the way so other full trains can keep moving.

[CasperITL]

You shouldn't take it so personally when your team loses. :Banana09:

I have a BS from McCombs and an MBA from Cox.

[CasperITL]

My recommendation for the future is for DART to address the reason for the delays, too many trains trying to run on the Green Line between Pearl and Fair Park/MLK. There were more trains than track control sections, and no where to place them after they unloaded their passengers.....Maybe DART should install some pocket tracks south of MLK station to park and pre-stage extra trains nearby. The maintenance yard is not that far away, but it still requires moving trains across tracks full of trains to get there, causing a small traffic jam. Pocket tracks is the way to go to get empty trains out of the way so other full trains can keep moving.

They have plenty of room in the ROW for sidings. Tons of room. If you ever saw what it looked like prior to construction, there were often 3-4 sets of tracks next to each other in many areas.

I just want DART to fess up and admit they are not a serious mass transit outfit. Just come out and say it.

[Mballar]

I just want DART to fess up and admit they are not a serious mass transit outfit. Just come out and say it.
The number of awards DART has won over the past decade fly in the face of such a comment.

As for the overcrowding of trains on TX - OU Game day. . .Sooner Bumpkins, suburbanites, and others not familiar with riding mass transit, just got a valuable lesson on trip planning when riding DART, or any other transit system, for that matter. Just like one might wait until 6:00 - 6:30 p.m. before leaving work, in an effort to dodge rush hour traffic that puts highways over capacity, individuals should employ the same type of thinking when riding mass transit. If you're at the TX - OU game next year, and you ride the rail to Fair Park, you might want to wait a while before trying to leave when headed home.

[bshiker]

Mass transit, whether it be heavy or light rail, is not set up to move so many people at one time. DART's situation is not that different from other cities I have been in during large events. Take Washignton DC. Metro can run 8 car Metro trains, with frequency every couple of minutes, and people still have to (1) wait for 45 minutes or an hour or more after a major event, (2) miss trains because they are full coming from other stations, and (3) pack people in so people literally cannot move.

Putting in a massive number of buses and conditioning some people to dally so that trains don't get crammed is the only real solution. Light rail has a top end capacity, that cannot be increased.

[tamtagon]

Do you blame the customers of a hotel when the hotel overbooks the rooms? No. But DART and their fan bois do.

If 20,000 potential customers show up within three hours of each other at a hotel with 1,000 rooms, do you blame the hotel for not having built 21,000 rooms?

[tamtagon]

11:00 is way too early for that football game.

[electricron]

11:00 is way too early for that football game.

I completely agree with you. A 1 pm game start would be much better. But in today's economic environment, TV networks schedule the start times of games. ESPN (ABC) wanted to show two games nationally Saturday afternoon, which means having an early and late games. UT-OU was slotted into the early 11 am time slot.
A late 3 pm tine slot might have been too late, moving the too-crammed trains to after the game instead. I think the only way the State Fair could schedule a 1 pm start time is for that game not to be televised.

[gshelton91]

The solution seems like a simple one to me... one day a year you do a dedicated lane from fair Park along Grand Ave. to Lamar and up to Downtown and use buses--- The downtown core has the highest concentrations of hotel rooms and hence people coming for the game.

I would also look at scheduling a big concert following the game either at the cotton bowl stadium or at starplex to tray and suck up some of the fans and hold them for a few hours.

[RobertB]

Wow, the folks on the Dallas Observer blog are going absolutely nuts. "DART, you just lost a customer" was one quote. Hell-LO? They didn't have a chance of getting you as a customer in the first place!

From what I can tell -- it's all pretty disjointed -- DART looks bad because their first response was that people hadn't learned to ride the train yet. And then they followed up with an apology for saying something mean about people that hadn't learned to ride the train yet. In my opinion, the second apology was just dumb -- a lot of the problem clearly *was* the fact that most people in this neck o' the woods haven't ridden public transportation as a primary mode of transportation for about 50 years.

Maybe they should have thought a little harder before issuing the first reply, but apologizing for it later is silly. It's like when they apologized for the comma on their billboards that said "Don't Drive Yourself, Crazy"

[mjblazin]

I have a BS from McCombs and an MBA from Cox.

Then you were unhappy when my alma mater forced yours to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again in the most important football game played Saturday in Dallas area. By the way, rail transit worked fine for that mega event, handling the throngs with nary a blip.

[tamtagon]

Wow, the folks on the Dallas Observer blog are going absolutely nuts.

Comments to the Observer blogs are starting to get as bad as the ones at the DMN.

DART failed to recognize the obvious just as much as the people taking the train to Fair Park. Trying to put the blame on someone else is a natural response, and it's a pretty pointless exercise in itself, but it could certainly be worked out.

Adding to the suggestions of special game day buses and event day dedicated bus lanes, suburban train riders with tickets to the game could be encouraged to transfers from trains at Cedars, Mockingbird, CitiPlace and/or downtown stations to special DART buses that will take them inside Fair Park.

[Lakewooder]

Well on the bright side, there's sure to be less bitchy suburbanites with their loudmouth kids on the trains for next year's fair.

:cheers:

[Lakewooder]

Hell folks it's not that far to walk from Pearl Street or Deep Ellum stations. We are talking about the largest one-day attendance in 123 years.

If Moses had to lead this group they would still be making bricks out of straw and mud.

[CasperITL]

By the way, rail transit worked fine for that mega event, handling the throngs with nary a blip.


Yeah, because DART outsourced that to Buses By Bill.

[mjblazin]

Clearly DART recognized the real mega event on Saturday and took the appropriate preparations. For those poser mega events like TX-Austin/OU, the threshold for impact was too high and that event at Fair Park slipped under the bar.

[AeroD]

Clearly DART recognized the real mega event on Saturday and took the appropriate preparations. For those poser mega events like TX-Austin/OU, the threshold for impact was too high and that event at Fair Park slipped under the bar.

There is a strange providence that protects drunks, children, and the Navy.

Anyways, I would like to think that this event would only strengthen the idea of burying the second line underground. Stopping at red lights is a bit silly.

[RayM]

Anyways, I would like to think that this event would only strengthen the idea of burying the second line underground. Stopping at red lights is a bit silly.

I would like to think that this event would strengthen the idea of burying the FIRST line through downtown, but that's only wishful thinking.

[incrediculous]

I would like to think that this event would strengthen the idea of burying the FIRST line through downtown, but that's only wishful thinking.

Even the Green Line, as it runs through Deep Ellum and stops at Fair Park, should have been elevated or burried.

[RayM]

Even the Green Line, as it runs through Deep Ellum and stops at Fair Park, should have been elevated or burried.
I almost included that in my statement, because Good-Latimer and Parry can be borked (and were Saturday), but left it out for simplicity.

[CasperITL]

Even the Green Line, as it runs through Deep Ellum and stops at Fair Park, should have been elevated or burried.

City Councilman Max Goldblatt wanted to use Disney monorails instead of surface track. His idea would have cost less than what DART is doing now, haul more people, built faster etc. People mocked him. But he ended up being right.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/dalpub/08520/dpub-08520.html


He was nicknamed "Monorail Max" because of his very vocal attempt to bring the Disney Corporation to Dallas in order to build a monorail. He continually criticized DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) for being inefficient and antiquated. The monorail idea was shunned and laughed at by the city leaders. However, it may be that his futuristic approach was just "ahead of his time".



Disney could have built it very easily. At the time, DART said that the monorail would have been much more expensive. But after all the money DART wasted, all the cost overruns and additional bonds needed to finish projects, the monorail would have been cheaper.

[shaun3000]

I’ve heard maintenance costs for the concrete monorail track is very high.

[Double Wide]

I’ve heard maintenance costs for the concrete monorail track is very high.

ya, it has to be perfectly smooth so one chip and you have to go in and shut down the line to re seal that part. Im glad monorails are only stuck in Disney. That shit looks retarded.

[trolleygirl]

I just want DART to fess up and admit they are not a serious mass transit outfit. Just come out and say it.

So many people seem to forget that this is Texas. And of the mass transit options we have available in the State of Texas, DART is the best one. We're coming close to wrapping up the first decade of the 21st century and "modern" DART is a few decades behind other cities. But it's the most modern we have in this state.

I blame RL Thornton. He was the genius who- like every other leader in Dallas past and present had no vision of his of his own, but rather relied on watching what other, bigger, better, more modern cities were doing and copied them- said that Dallas would never be a modern city as long as we remain tied to an antiquated electric rail system.

You realize we dug up the old streetcar tracks on Parry Avenue 10 years ago and it wasn't in anticipation on the Green Line.

[trolleygirl]

But he ended up being right.

How exactly did he "end up being right"? Right about what? That at-grade crossings are a pain-in-the-ass for cars? That subways are expensive? Or that monorail was cheap? Or cheaper?

It was real easy for Max to criticize DART for being inefficient when we've only had light rail on Dallas for 10 years. Still, I don't get how people can say that DART was antiquated 20 years ago when it was, and still is, the most modern transit system in the Southwest!

All the critics conveniently forget that DART has to also answer to its suburban payers who get far less out of DART than Dallas.

But, I suppose with all things being equal, if we had a couple billion bucks to spend to design exactly what we wanted- a perfect line with all the cars we needed and no worries about what the suburbs wanted and no hiccups when 100,000 idiots deluge the line- and this what we got, yeah, I'd join you with the pitchforks and torches down at 1401 Pacific.

[gshelton91]

no one blamed the people who when to the cattle barrens ball up north for not being aware of the rain before they went.

Fact is we put on a big event paid two teams to show up told everyone to come get on the train and then fumbled the ball. DART should have been ready for a worst case event. Any other major gathering would have that it is expected. And this is not the first time this has happened --- remember that 4th of July event we put on at the convention center a few years ago... everyone took DART -- then left at the same time after the fireworks. Any other business would have done a post event analysis and developed a future plan to handle the problem.

When that game let out i would have had every DART bus I had stationed all around the fair ready to get people out ASAP

[electricron]

Why do I always have to bring up numbers?


When that game let out i would have had every DART bus I had stationed all around the fair ready to get people out ASAP

DART has a fleet of around 740 buses. Assuming each bus can carry 40 passengers, using all of the buses DART can only carry 29,600 football fans. Let me remind you that the Cotton Bowl capacity is 93,000 fans. To carry 93,000 fans, at 40 passengers per bus, DART would need a fleet of 2325 buses, approximately three times more than they have. In reality DART would have to have more because not everyone is going to Fair Park and regular schedule routes are expected to be in service too. By the way, where could DART park 740 buses near Fair Park, much less 2325 buses?

I don't blame DART designing and operating a transit system for normal daily operations, plus a margin of 25 percent more capacity. The idea that DART should be able to handle 300% more capacity for single day events without delays is being unrealistic. Even in New York City, it takes hours to carry 1 million New Year's revelers away from Times Square, which has FIVE subway station levels underneath.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square_–_42nd_Street_(New_York_City_Subway)
IRT 42nd Street Shuttle, 20 feet below street
IND Eighth Avenue Line (one block west), 30 feet
IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line, 40 feet
BMT Broadway Line, 50 feet
IRT Flushing Line, 60 feet

After new Phase II and III construction projects have been completed, then DART should look at increasing the capacity of rail corridors already built. Adding passing sidings at stations for through trains, lengthening station platforms for longer trains, replacing at grade tracks with grade separated tracks, etc. But that's far into the future, DART will not complete the schedule Phase III projects until the 2030 timeframe.

[Justin Terveen]

So there. Ha!

[Justin Terveen]

Then, going by this logic, there is simply no way for DART to carry all of these people at once....and shouldn't endorse otherwise. Period. Right?

[Justin Terveen]

Not at once, but in a reasonable period of time...