More info on Light Rail to DFW Airport

[psukhu]

More info on DART's LRT to DFW:

http://www.dart.org/NWPublicMeeting12104.ppt

[CTroyMathis]

April update:
http://www.dart.org/NWPublicMeeting42804.pdf

23 page *.pdf file
route alternatives,

[bloodandpopcorn]

wow -- this is truely going to be impressive!

I hope that they decide here to go with the more expensive Central route. It's tremendously important to have direct, quick access at both DFW and Love Field. We want visitors to have the shortest route possible from DFW to the CBD (and to Los Collinas and the rest of the DART system). I wish that DART would court some private donations for this, because that central allignment would be so perfect. It would cut off up to five minutes (depending on which of hte other alignments you look at) and would really give the region a good look. The train would come up and then you'd be in an urbanized Los Collinas, then you'd keep on going (conceivably from TOD to TOD) until you hit Victory and then your in the CBD! It would prove to be a very impressive route to visitors, I think...

It's within $100 million of most of the other allignments' costs. I wish that DART had the funding to just buck it up and go for it. Oh well, it's more important to get direct tunnel access to Love Field, anyway. This is going to be in DFW any way it happens, now its just a matter of finding the most impressive way to do it for our visitors.

If it ends up being one of the surface routes, though, I think a massvie campaign needs to be done to add trees and landscaping on all of those ugly open praries that the train will pass (and that we must pass now by car) so that visitors are impressed by the green. And it will help to clean our air, somewhat.

[RobertB]

I know I'm a couple of months late replying, but I only just found this forum, so bear with me.

I've just pored over the .pdf file, and I really like the south-to-south route. True, it doesn't do much for SH 114, but can light rail really do that much in the short term to alleviate congestion? Is US 75 that much better for the Red Line? Long term, the whole concept of building freeways to nowhere needs to be rejected... but in the meantime, we need to make due with what we have. The south-to-south route looks a lot like the Red Line in Oak Cliff -- a great way to get folks in the neighborhoods off the roads in the first place.

Besides, I don't think the top two alternatives are mutually exclusive. If you build the south-to-south route first, you can always go back and add the north leg later! You could even have a big loop at the end of the line, which should give DART extra scheduling flexibility. Run clockwise in the mornings and counter-clockwise in the evenings, and alternate trains through middays and weekends.

I don't see much downside in building the south-to-south route, and then basing the next step on how the community reacts to its impact.

[rantanamo]

Welcome to the forum. Considering how packed the red trains are going to Plano and back in the evenings I'd say Central is damned lucky that DART is there. You'd have probably everyone on each of those packed trains probably driving themselves. OUCH.

And I never read this before for some reason, but why does Irving support the route they do? Seems they want DART to basically 'skip' town and not create any TOD.