Second Dallas downtown subway ditched

The USD 1.7bn project to build a downtown light rail relief line in subway in Dallas, Texas, has been taken out of DART’s long-term plan for financial reasons. 

 

Aimed at doubling the system’s capacity by creating a second line through the central area, the project has been worked on since 1990, and a final alignment with a new station under Pacific Park was chosen in February 2022, with design work 30% complete. With ridership still only 68% of pre-pandemic levels, the imperative to relieve the single surface through the Bryan Street transit mall is no longer so strong, helped by the extension of platforms on the Red and Blue lines to accommodate three-car trains. 

 

Patrick Kennedy, a DART board member, said, ‘Taking it off the 20-year financial plan does not mean it is dead. It can be added back at any time. The big issue is that it takes up a lot of space on the financial plan, therefore you cannot do anything else. This change frees up over USD 1bn in debt capacity that has never been spent. Removing the project from the financial plan allows DART to spend on other projects such as new trains, upgrading the signal system, additional security, cleanliness and other operational services aimed at improving reliability’. 

 

DART is a four line 93-mile (149.7km) standard-gauge light rail system with the first lines opened in 1996. It is worked by 163 Kinki Sharyo LRVs. Dallas is the second Texan city to drop a downtown subway from its plans; Austin did so earlier this year. In addition DART light rail, Dallas has a 2.45-mile (4km) modern tramline owned by the city and dating from 2015, and worked by four Brookville low-floor cars. The city’s transit mix also includes a 4.6-mile (7.4km) heritage tramway operated by the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority since 1989 using restored trams dating from 1913-1951.