Does Richardson Need Mass Transit?
Unfair Park's Jim Schutze is at it again, railing against rail congestion in downtown Dallas. He wants a reliever route built to take the load off the Pacific Avenue line before new lines to Mesquite and Irving start spilling more traffic into downtown Dallas. So far, so good. I'm with him. Then this:
"According to a contract signed with the city 18 years ago, DART should have begun building a second reliever route five years ago, preferably in a subway, for trains going through downtown. But because the city got slicked by the suburbs, the way it does in all so-called regional governance, DART spent its money instead building trains out to the boondocks, where nobody needs mass transit anyway."Boondocks?! Where nobody needs mass transit?! Besides being factually incorrect, Schutze's flippant dismissal of suburban voters is counterproductive to Schutze's mission to get support for a subway in downtown Dallas. Turn it into a fight between downtown and the suburbs (or escalate the fight if you think that's what it already is), and downtown will lose. After all, suburban rail passengers don't much care if downtown traffic is congested. Most get off downtown anyway. And they ride the rail to avoid traffic in the first place.
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