Second DART Line Downtown

DART at a crossroads

Jim Schutze nails it again. Whether he's reporting on the Trinity Tollroad or the downtown convention center hotel or, in this case, DART, he offers an insight that you just don't get from The Dallas Morning News, the mayor, or, in the words of Schutze, "the tiny group of business people who make decisions about downtown Dallas."

In this case, he gets his insight from John C. Tatum Jr., a downtown developer from way back who has a vision of downtown as the region's biggest "transit-oriented development." But only if Dallas avoids bottlenecks and facilitates riders transferring between lines.

The most likely route for a second downtown DART line diverts away from the Pacific Avenue route of the existing line, taking it way to the south in order to go past the proposed convention center hotel. Like most people, I was inclined to favor that route. If we're going to build a hotel, it only makes sense to have light rail access. But Tatum explains persuasively why such a route, although friendly to the convention center hotel, is likely to be the worst possible route to foster transit-oriented development downtown.

Why? Because two separated lines guarantees a bottleneck where they cross, where congestion is sure to result, where the experience of transferring between lines is bound to be unpleasant. Instead, Tatum proposes running the second line down Elm Street (or, rather, under Elm Street), with multiple connections to the Pacific Avenue line like rungs on a ladder. This creates multiple intersections, all just an escalator ride away. It also expands the zone of maximum development potential along a spine the length of downtown, instead of at a single intersecting point.

The downside? It isolates the the convention center. And the mayor, the city council, the newspaper, the business people who make decisions about downtown, all have much invested in that hotel. DART is being used to help make the hotel successful, rather than using the hotel and DART together to make downtown successful.

This may not have been Jim Schutze's insight, but maybe it takes someone like him, with no personal financial interest in DART, the hotel, or real estate tracts on the far southwest side of downtown, to talk to someone like John Tatum and recognize his vision as being what's in the best interest of Dallas as a whole.