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What kind of Population Density do you need for Commuter rail?
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Other than Mark's brief mention of Trinity Rail nothing is said of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As a "retiree" from seven years of service on the Board of Directors of Dallas Area Rapid Transit I believe I can speak with some authority on mass transit. People said that mass transit would not work in Texas. The only way to get a commuter out of his pickup (Texas Cadillac) is to pry his dead fingers off the steering wheel. Today Dallas has 44 miles of highly successful light rail in operations with another 20 or so under design and construction. We, in conjunction with the Fort Worth Transit Authority, The T, operate the Trinity Railway Express between the namesake cities. The first thing is to forget the rivalry between the cities and work for a common good. We have made our systems as seamless as possible. Buy a premium day pass on either system and you have unlimited use of both systems plus the jointly owned Trinity Railway Express. The same type of ticket machines are used on both systems to eliminate customer confusion. A few points on building a system: <br /> <br />Do your homework in getting the local government and business behind you. Do the potential ridership studies to determine transit patterns. Show to stake holders how the system will benefit them. Jump through the hoops set up by the feds to get their funding. Build lines to the poorer sections of town. These are the people who are transit dependent and will be high volume users. <br /> <br />Board member sshould look at the whole picture instead of the parochial interests of the city that appointed them. More than once I went against the city of Dallas's wishes when I considered it to be in the best interests of the agency or the region. Although the city council occasionally grumbled they never fired me. <br /> <br />Acquire your right of way. Buying a 100 foot wide strip through any urban area is out of the question. Look at redundant rail lines to buy from the railroads and work with rerouting the railroad trains to other lines to free up the right of way. DART owns over 250 miles of rail lines by acquiring them this way. Until we need them for light rail we lease them out to short line operators and in some cases have a freight track along with the two light rail lines on the corridor. <br /> <br />Consider that the redundant rail lines you purchase are junk value. Usually the line that had 2-3 local freights per week are Class 1 or Excepted category. Plan on complete removal and installing quality iron. Bridges usually will be replaced. Due to rust or deteorating concrete structures they must be replaced. Our Trinity Railway Express is the exception. The corridor was bought by the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth from Rock Island's bankruptcy court for $34 million for use as a future commuter line. Several years later when DART and The T were operational the cities transferred their ownseship to the tranist agencies. The line is used by three railroads (UP, BNSF, and a short line) in addition to TRE and is in relatively good shape. Numerous upgrades have been done, though. On essentially a single track rail line we have pumped up to 55 commuter trains and 30 freight trains per day through it. <br /> <br />Passengers want a safe transit system. Make the line operate in a physically safe manner and keep the customers safe from the muggers. Patrol parking lots to prevent damage to your customer's cars. Set up a transit police department and make their presence seen. Undercover officiers are a great deterrent. <br /> <br />Make your stations attractive destinations. A well built station with art work, tile, etc will make it pleasing to your customers. The customer will be proud of it and take care of it. If you build a cheap station the customer will not have any pride of it and it will go to H - - - soon. We have local artists submit ideas for the station estetics and have ofer 20 distinct stations artisitcally. <br /> <br />Keep the system clean. Do a walk through the train at the end of each run to remove trash. Clean stations daily. Keep landscaping groomed. Remove any graffitti as soon as it appears. The operator of our first train of the day will report any graffitti and it will be gone by noon. <br /> <br />Work with local merchants on joint marketing. Make the system into a entertainment venue in addition to a commuting medium. Check with any transit agency or APTA on their marketing programs. Since transit agencies do not compete with each other there is no reason to hold back information. <br /> <br />Provide free parking at surburban stations and keep fares low. The idea is to make the transit system financially more attractive to the customer than driving his own car. There is not a transit system in the world that pays its own way through the fare box. Do not even consider trying to do this. All you will do is to drive customers away especially the transit dependant customers who need your services to get to work. DART's fairbox recovery rate is about 18% of operating expense, which is about average. Even New York, with its huge volume of users only gets about 63% fairbox recovery. At a single ride and premium day pass fare of $1.25 and $4.50, respectively DART and The T is the best bargain in town. <br /> <br />Develop an attractive fare structure. Offer discounts to seniors and handicapped customers. Offer monthly and annual passes. Work with employers to subsidize passes as an employee benefit. Include a pass with convention registration packets. <br /> <br />Develop a guaranteed source of funding. This can be a sales tax or advalorum tax source or an annual stipend if owned aby another government entity. DART has a 1% sales tax funding. <br /> <br />Be prepared for high capital cost of the system. DART's light rail system cost about $44 million per line mile which included rail, catenary, signaling, mainteneance facility, stations, and rolling stock. <br /> <br />Remember-no one said building a transit center would be fun or cheap! <br /> <br />
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