Nearing substantial completion of a decades-long effort to link downtown Dallas with outlying suburbs, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and City Council officials have begun looking into long-discussed rail transit upgrades within the city's core itself.
A Dallas City Council committee is cautiously advancing a $1 billion plan, which includes linking the Oak Cliff streetcar line, set to open next year, with the heritage McKinney Avenue streetcar via a downtown link. Such a move would add Dallas to the small but growing list of U.S. cities combining LRT and streetcar options.
As well, a second portion of the plan includes building a second DART light rail transit (LRT) route, dubbed "D2," through downtown to relieve the bottleneck of downtown congestion and improve LRT flexibility. D2 was first proposed in 2007.
“We have to create additional capacity in downtown Dallas and we think it's important to use multiple approaches to accomplish that goal,” a DART spokesman told Railway Age Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014. “By being flexible we can keep moving forward and meet the demand for expanded service.”
DART has not yet selected a specific D2 route, of which at least four options are being floated at present; each option would include short stretches of tunnel construction.
DART and others are publicly linking the proposals to larger plans for high speed rail service linking Dallas and Houston, but some observers believe HSR offers convenient political cover for the local projects which can survive on their own merits.
Work continues on outlying reaches of the DART LRT network. Last August, DART formally opened its Orange Line Light Rail Transit extension to its new northwestern terminus at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, roughly four months ahead of schedule.