Sunday, February 23, 1997

Dallas drivers forsake cars to stuff trains

By MELISSA WILLIAMS

Associated Press

DALLAS - Trench-coated commuters crowd the platform, willing the southbound train to nose into view. As riders settle into their seats, they unfold stashed newspapers or hunker down in headphones for the ride into the city.

A common sight in New York City, maybe. But it's still a relatively new scenario in Dallas, where 500,000 cars typically choke the roads during rush hour.

The trains are running full on Dallas Area Rapid Transit's new southbound light-rail line heading downtown. The first week after fares were charged on the new line, the entire system's paid ridership beat projections by 22 percent, and some trains were standing room only.

Officials of the Southwest's first light-rail line are basking in the moment. Even skeptics are taking another look at whether die-hard Texas drivers can be persuaded to ride the rails.

"There were people who said no one would ever ride that train," DART spokeswoman Andrea Parks said. "It's really a very pleasant surprise."

"It is such a personal relief for all the employees," said DART chief financial officer Christopher Poinsatte. "Used to be, you would go to church or somewhere and say 'I work at DART.' People would look away and go 'Ohhh.' Now they say, 'Really? I was on the train last week and it was great!' "

Other Texas cities are watching Dallas' effort to handle the crush. Austin's Capital Metro, which has considered rail transit for more than a decade, is demonstrating a commuter rail system with diesel trains on existing railroad tracks.

Dallas' newest line runs 5 miles north of downtown. Unlike two rail lines that began rolling last year from downtown to South Dallas and suburban Irving, the new Park Lane line penetrates middle-class to affluent areas whose largely white inhabitants either can afford downtown parking or have employers who pay for it.

Persuading them to take mass transit means selling them on noneconomic factors like convenience, safety and reliability. DART officials say that's why every 76-seat, squeaky-clean train has at least one transit police officer and why stations boast hand-set bricks and tiles, fancy metalwork, and murals and poetry produced by neighborhood artists.

The extra $50,000 spent per station on art is largely offset by reduced costs of cleanup for vandalism and graffiti, DART president and executive director Roger Snoble said.

Commuter Bill Sheehan, 68, a state district judge, said he likes the DART train better than New York's subway or the Metro in Washington D.C. Unlike such heavy-rail systems, DART's light-rail vehicles are powered by overhead electrical lines.

"It's shorter, cleaner and they're on time," said Sheehan, who used to spend up to 45 minutes driving to work. "It's 22 minutes from my door to the courthouse door."

Avoiding congested Central Expressway motivated Scott Northcutt, a 33-year-old investment banker.

"The only reason I agreed to transfer downtown was because the train was starting," Northcutt said. "Otherwise they never could have gotten me to do it."

Other riders are taking the train back and forth during lunchtime or on the weekend, when it's proving surprisingly popular for destinations like the Dallas Zoo and the West End restaurant-entertainment district.

Riders pay $1 via vending machines for a ticket good for 90 minutes. DART absorbs $2.84, the remainder of the ride's actual cost. Trains run every 10 minutes during rush hours and every 20 minutes at other times from 5 a.m. to midnight.

After fare collection began Jan. 20 on the north line, some 30,400 weekday riders boarded DART trains, up from the expected 25,000. The first Saturday saw 22,000 riders, and 14,400 rode Sunday.

The healthy numbers were sweet relief for DART, an agency with a hard-earned reputation for overpromising and underdelivering.

It began in 1983, when voters in Dallas and 15 suburbs approved a 1-cent sales tax to finance a $5.5 billion plan for a regional bus and rail network. Officials promised the first trains would start running in 1987 on what would eventually be 147 miles of line.

The next 14 years saw charges of racist hiring practices, resignations of top officials, infighting among member suburbs and bitter disputes about where the lines would run.

The plan seemed permanently derailed in 1988, when voters rejected a plan to sell $1 billion in bonds for initial rail construction.

Chastened DART officials came back with a smaller system paid for with short-term financing instead of long-term bonds. The 20-mile starter system - with 17 miles now open - has a price tag of $860 million, or $43 million per mile. About $160 million is federal grant money, with the remainder coming from the $2.4 billion DART has collected since 1984.

Critics point out that other light-rail systems have been built for less. St. Louis' 3-year-old, 18-mile MetroLink system cost $348 million, and a 22-mile system in Baltimore that opened in 1992 cost $364 million.

Executive director Snoble said such comparisons are unfair because St. Louis, for example, gave the transit authority a tunnel, bridge and miles of right-of-way, while DART paid for everything.

Current plans call for the starter system to be finished this spring and 53 total miles of light rail in place by 2010. That will link up with 37 miles of diesel-powered commuter rail, with average daily ridership on the complete system at 70,500 per day by 2010.

Those figures don't impress longtime rail opponent Jerry Bartos, an engineer who served on the Dallas city council in 1987-93. He contends rail is inefficient for the sprawling Dallas area, and that hundreds of freeway miles could have been built instead.

"In the long haul, it's not going to make a dent in the mobility needs of the region, and you're paying an awful lot of money for it," Bartos said.

Others believe intangible benefits will help justify the investment. A regional hope is that rail will bring significant business to downtown Dallas, whose 33 percent office vacancy rate ranks first among large U.S. cities.

A major success came last fall when Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Fort Lauderdale into a Dallas high-rise. Light rail was part of the reason, the company said, spurring optimism that a turnaround was at hand.

But last month, Fina Inc. announced it would vacate its Dallas office in favor of the northern suburbs. The current offices are next-door to the north rail line. But company officials said they preferred a campus-style setting.

City leaders say light rail will make it easier to replace Fina. And DART backers say there's nothing like an up-and-running system to persuade doubters that rail is real in Dallas.