What light rail can and can't do

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009 Comments   (0) Print Share Share Reprints
A

Have more to add? News tip? Tell us

By BUD KENNEDY

kennedy We see now what light-rail trolleys can do.

And also what they can’t do.

Tarrant County should be jealous of Dallas’ new Green Line rail service to Fair Park. Almost 15 years after Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s first run, Fort Worth and Arlington are no closer than ever to light-rail trolley or streetcar service.

The Green Line turned into a gold mine for Dallas and the State Fair. It carried as many as 20,000 riders a day directly to the fair’s front door and home again for $4 to $7 round-trip, cheaper than parking and faster than sitting in Dallas’ notorious freeway traffic.

It was a complete success. Happy guests arrived with every Green Line trip.

That is, until Saturday.

When many of the 96,000 Texas and Oklahoma college football fans tried to jam aboard light-rail trolley "trains" that can hold only 200 riders per trip, the system ground to a near-stop.

Some fans didn’t make it to the 11 a.m. game until halftime.

After the game, customers stood in line for an outbound train until 9 p.m.

Lesson: Commuter trains and trolleys are a great way to commute to work or to downtown, or even to a festival.

But they’re not such a good way to move thousands of people in time for kickoff or home after a game.

DART officials have been apologizing for promoting the Green Line for game travel when they barely had enough service to handle a typical Saturday Fair crowd.

In one of those no-kidding moments, DART spokesman Morgan Lyons said: "We didn’t have a good feel for how many people would want to ride."

DART officials planned to move 16,000 fans to Fair Park on 80 trains beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, he said. But lots of fans didn’t set out by 8 a.m.

Traffic and mechanical problems set the trains even farther behind.

For Tarrant County fans, the problem was simple math: Each full-size Trinity Railway Express train arrived at Victory Station loaded with 1,500 fans.

That meant those fans alone needed four or five smaller DART light-rail trains to get to Fair Park.

"It turned into a stackup," Lyons said.

In Fort Worth and Arlington, we’ve talked about trains to Texas Motor Speedway and Cowboys Stadium.

But if you’re moving 90,000 people, it doesn’t help much to fill a 200-seat light-rail train.

Spokeswoman Joan Hunter of The T, the Tarrant County transit agency, defended big-event service.

"Rail is an excellent way to transport crowds, and we do it all the time," she said, calling Saturday the "perfect storm."

"We found out that a lot of people needed to start earlier and check the schedule," she said.

We needed to start earlier building more trains.

Looking for comments?

Join the discussion

The Star-Telegram is pleased to provide this opportunity for you to share your thoughts and observations about news topics. We enjoy lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask that you refrain from using profanity, racist or hate speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising or external links or including remarks that are off topic. To post comments, you must be a registered user of Star-Telegram.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.