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Travel Notes & Stories

Transit in Dallas

In late October 2000 I had a chance to visit The Big “D” on business. I was working a swing shift so I had a chance to do some transit riding and photography during the day. The weather was being Oregon like, overcast and light rain.

Dallas is fast becoming a transit Mecca in the south central US. This is hard to believe with the high dependence on cars in this area of the country. DART Light Rail first opened in 1996. The first segment has proven popular. There are two lines, the Red and Blue. They operate together through downtown and separate on the south end of town. A good portion of the system is grade separated, especially on the north end. There is a “subway” portion under US-75 between Mockingbird and just north of Pearl St. Stations. There is one station in the subway, CityPlace, which opened in 12/2000. The system does not use signal pre-emption at traffic lights, which causes many slow downs on the system, but otherwise the system is great to ride. The unique yellow paint scheme keeps the cars in view.

There are two extensions under construction to the north towards Plano (Red Line) and Garland (Blue Line) Texas. There are also plans for an entirely new line that runs more or less east west, joining the original alignment downtown. This route will go to Carrolton and North Irving (possibly to Dallas Fort Worth Airport) in the west and Pleasant Grove to the east.

On McKinney Ave there is another older trolley service in operation. The McKinney Ave. Transit Authority operates antique trolley cars on this historic line. When the line was (re) opened the original streetcar tracks were unearthed under the pavement for the trolley cars. Currently the rails are being replaced so there is very limited service on the line. The line is to be extended on either end into the West End area to the south and to the CityPlace station in the north. They operate a Birney, an original Dallas Stone & Webster car, an Aussie W-2 and have other cars under restoration.

Dallas also maintains a commuter rail system, the Trinity Railway Express. It started out using RDC’s operating between Dallas Union Station and South Irving. In September 2000 the line was extended to Richland Hills, just short of Fort Worth. The line should be extended into Fort Worth in 2001. There is a stop near Dallas Forth Worth Airport at Centerport. Shuttle buses take passengers to the terminals. There are plans to extend a branch line into the terminals. The RDC’s now share the line with tri-level cars patterned after the Toronto GO cars (Also used in many other cities in the US and Canada). They operate push/pull style.

I did have an opportunity to photograph one train at Centerport before catching my flight back home. The 3-car train was scheduled to end its trip from Dallas here. The train appeared to be coming in HOT. It actually stopped past the station platforms and had to back up in order to allow passengers to disembark safely.

Finally there was a trip to nearby Fort Worth to visit the Tandy Subway. This line was originally opened by a department store to connect the basement of the store with acres of parking by the Trinity River. Ex-Washington DC PCC’s were obtained, converted to high platform and re-stylized. The subway itself is only about 1000 feet in length. The entire line is about 1 mile long with 5 stops, 4 in the parking lot.

Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack) converted the store into an office building, but retained the “subway”. They “modernized” the cars one more time. This time they put boxy shells on the cars. The cars have no semblance to a PCC except for the trucks. I did notice that one of the foot pedals still had the St. Louis logo on it however. The line is still popular with the parking lots very crowded during the weekdays, it may help that parking and the trolley ride are both free.. The basement of the Tandy Center retains a shopping mall, which brings in more than just the office workers. There are 6 cars still on the property, with 2 Chicago ‘L’ PCC cars in storage, my guess for parts.

I wanted to take some photographs of the cars at the subway portal. The cars had been running about every 5 minutes. 10 minutes went by, no car. A maintenance truck however flew by and the worker ran into the substation for the line. I guessed re-setting a breaker. Later security went around to the stations telling passengers the trolleys were not operating. I went to investigate. At the far end of the line the cars change ends. There are simple ropes inside the cars to swap the poles. Well it looked like somebody forgot to do that. The leading pole was up and ripped down the wire, breaking the pole off of the springs in the process. This is why it is important to swap the poles!


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