Streetcars are an Engine Behind Uptown Dallas’ Success

Streetcar number 143, not currently in service, is on display at the streetcar barn around 2004 and advertises new Uptown construction.

Some sixty years ago, a drama of public transportation played out in the streets Dallas, Texas. For much of its history, a variety of urban railroad and transit companies had operated streetcars along the city’s most populated thoroughfares. By the middle of the twentieth century, though, pressure from the automobile industry to free up road lanes and curbside parking spaces and a general trend away from pubic transportation forced the Dallas Terminal & Railway to remove the last of its streetcars from service in 1956.  Many other large American cities played host to the same story.

Most of the de-commissioned DT&R streetcars were out up for sale and scattered across the United States. A few remained in the Dallas area in the possession of private collectors, and many miles of the tracks operated by DT&R and the companies that had preceeded it remained in place even though operations had ceased.  In the 1980s, after paved-over tracks along Mckinney Avenue in Uptown Dallas were uncovered during street repairs, a small but dedicated group of individuals managed to purchase several of the streetcars, return them to operational condition, and replace the streetcar tracks where required. They began offering public rides as the  McKinney Avenue Transit Authority. The M-Line or MATA (not to be confused with the Memphis Area Transit Authority, which utilizes the same acronym and also operates antique trolleys) soon boasted a total of six operational streetcars. Three, numbers 186, 636, and 754,  were part of the original Dallas streetcar system  The rest, 122, 369, and 7169, were brought in from as far away as Australia and Portugal.

For the first decade of its existence, MATA operated primarily as a museum. It grappled the same basic challenge as many tourist railroads and streetcar operators: Bringing people in to ride. That may sound flippant when stated so obviously, as every type of business has to woo their customer’s interest before accepting their business, but operating transportation museums are geographically distant from major centers of population and first must convince potential riders that the experience they offer is worth the long trip to the place where it begins. In the mid 90s, though, the MATA began to transform, and by 2015, it is no longer just a museum. It has become a vital part of the public transportation system in its own right.

A bit more history is required to give appropriate context, because the story of how the MATA became what it is today is as much about the museum’s decisions as it is the urban environment around the streetcar tracks changing.

For much of its existence, the Uptown neighborhoods had been a low-income area.  The root of area’s economic and social isolation can be surmised from its vernacular nicknames, Little Mexico and Freedman’s Town.

Uptown suffered high crime rates and a crumbling infrastructure almost until the close of the twentieth century. In the late nineties, the neighborhood’s fortunes turned when a group of investors purchased substantial tracts of property and rebuilt them into a densely populated, walkable community. By 2005, just in time for the wave of new residents that relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area during the Recession, the character of Uptown had been turned on its head.

Expanded public transportation venues became an essential part of coping with several hundreds of thousands of people added in less than a decade. The Dallas Area Rapid Transit initiated service on two light-rail lines in 1996 and expanded to four routes between 2009-2012. There are now 3 commuter rail systems serving the various cities surrounding the Dallas area, with a fourth currently in the beginning stages of construction.  The various routes offer connections to two Amtrak departure points and DFW and Love Field airports.  Light rail service still isn’t sufficient. There are fewer routes bisecting Dallas-Fort Worth on a east-to-west axis, and road traffic could be much relieved with a route paralleling I-635. Despite the gaps, there are many neighborhoods that have been tangibly improved by the presence of light rail routes.

Uptown is one of those microcosms.  After the light rail appeared, the MATA expanded twice to connect to the stations and now consists of more than forty stops. Halt the streetcars and the light rail service, and the character of the neighborhood would change significantly.  Imagining this presents a chicken-and-egg question: Would Uptown have become the vibrant area that it is, if not for the existing presence of the MATA’s streetcar service?  There is a strong case to be made that the answer is no.

The benefits that the MATA brought to Uptown were obvious as soon as operations began, before the wave of new construction began. Residents began to use the streetcars to shorten walks to area businesses or to their jobs, and, when they opened, to connect to DART’s City Place and St. Paul stations. Tourists and pleasure riders coming in to the area the also gave local Uptown businesses an economic boost, especially after the streetcars were retrofitted with air conditioners.

The MATA routes became so effective at closing the gaps in the public transportation system and bringing income into the area that in 2002 DART and the Uptown Improvement District began to jointly subsidize the MATA’s operations. The Museum’s operators offset their remaining costs selling advertising space on the streetcars’ sides and ceilings and stopped charging fares. It’s hard to imagine Uptown retaining its intended character as a vibrant, European-style community if the streetcars did not exist and forced a good portion of the people in the area into their automobiles.

The upshot of this is that the MATA has managed to do something that may transportation museums dream of, but few actually accomplish: They have not just preserved their equipment, but kept it serving the exact same function as it did in its original role. This isn’t a practical standard for most museums to live up to, since so many factors playing in to the Uptown neighborhood’s transformation were entirely beyond the MATA’s sphere of influence, but there’s still a vital lesson to be gleaned from their history. Transportation museums should not overlook the value of being offering a practical service to the community around them, in whatever way they are able to provide it.