TRANSPORTATION Light Rail: A Catalyst for Change

SUE Bauman’s MOTHER, who’s in her late 60s, hasn’t been to downtown Dallas in 17 years. Navigating the streets, figuring out parking-it’s all too much. But when DART opens its rail service from near NorthPark to downtown in December, Mrs. Bauman and her bridge club plan to ride the train downtown, where they’ll shop at Neiman Marcus and have lunch at the Zodiac Room, something they used to do all die time.

’’It’s like rediscovering an old friend,” says Bauman, vice president of marketing and communications for DART. “I think the train opens up a whole potential and a new vitality to the inner core of the city. It makes it more glamorous, more vibrant.”

For decades Dallas has been known as a driver’s city-hence some of the enduring skepticism about DARTs rail system. But apparently people who love their cars and would never catch a bus like trains. “Trains are predictable and easy to ride,” Bauman says. Not to mention just plain fun.

Especially DART’s new electric train cars: They are air-conditioned, clean and quiet, with stations that are well-lighted and attractively designed. “It’s a lot nicer than people thought it was going to be,” says Doug Allen, DART assistant vice president for planning. “Ttains give downtown a mote human scale.”

Allen and other DART executives are euphoric about the reception the city has given light rail. “All the battles and wars at DART have been about trains,” Allen says. But most of that resistance melted once Dallas saw what light rail was really like. People jammed the trains on the opening weekend in June. The Knox-Henderson neighborhood, which had successfully lobbied against putting a DART station in its back yard, changed its mind and asked to be put back in the loop. But more significantly, since the first leg of Dallas light rail began operating from downtown Dallas to Oak Cliff, ridership on the train has exceeded DART’s expectations by 25 percent. Attendance at the Dallas Zoo, a station on the Red Line, is up.

A lot of the extra ridership now is coming from the noon crowd, so-called “discretionary” riders who are hopping on at lunchtime. A $1 ticket makes it possible to go to The Palm or Lombardi’s in the West End to eat and get back to the office without the hassle of getting the car and paying for valet parking.

But during a train ride on one hot summer afternoon, those riding one DART car seemed to be a mix of discretionary and necessity riders: lawyers coming back from lunch, a pack of Mary Kay conventioneers returning to their hotel, a tourist with his young son heading to the Sixth Floor Museum, and a resident of Oak Cliff visiting a municipal court building. A woman who works for a government agency said she had started taking the train to her job on the late shift. She returns home after dark but says she’s not worried about safety downtown because police and transit cops on bicycles are very visible.

For areas downtown where the train does not go, riders still can jump aboard the DART Hop-A-Bus and the “Dallasite” bus that stops at hotels, Neiman Marcus, the Arcs District, the West End, the Convention Center and, at certain times of day, die Farmers Market, Old City Park and Deep Ellum. The fare is $1.

But the real excitement, of course, is the train, which has the potential to change the downtown climate in a way buses cannot. The Central Dallas Association is working on a policy to encourage vendors to frequent the rail station malls in an effort to increase foot traffic and get people out of the tunnels and skyways that drain downtown of street vitality. To help conventioneers and tourists, the Hyatt Regency is putting a pamphlet on how to ride the train in every room. In December, with the opening of the rail line along Central Expressway to Park Lane, those convention-goers will be able to take the train to shop at NorthPark.

Also opening in December is the commuter rail line from downtown through the Medical Center to South Irving. Spring 1997 will see the extension of light rail south to Ledbetter in South Dallas, A line to the Fair Park area is slated to open as part of DART’s Phase 11, which will be constructed from 2003 to 2008. In 1999, commuter rail will link downtown Dallas and downtown Fort Worth. In five or six years, the rail line will reach into Richardson and Piano, making it possible for a family in Piano to catch the train in the morning to visit the Dallas Zoo or the Fort Worth Stockyards, then hit the West End for dinner without worrying about their car. Even more “reverse commuters” will live downtown-near die museums and restaurants-and work at Texas Instruments in Richatdson or Las Colinas. Executives and middle managers who work downtown can read the paper on the train, then have their kids or spouse ride down and join them for lunch.

“The train opens up a whole new way of thinking,” says Allen. “It makes the region more livable.” He believes developers, already beginning to put their money into housing in the inner core with Uptown and Gaston Yard, will be encouraged to make even bigger investments in the city rather than the suburbs.

“Downtown Dallas shouldn’t be competing with Mesquite or Garland,” Allen says. “We should be working together to compete with Atlanta.”