Downtown Dallas could have an embarrassment of riches on its hands, if it figures out how to make plans for a Downtown streetcar coordinate well with a new Downtown light rail route.
"When the Dallas City Council's transportation committee gets a glimpse of potential routes for a streetcar extension today, that may not be the only downtown transit project in play," according to an article by Brandon Formby.
In addition to the Dallas Streetcar, the city and Dallas Area Rapid Transit are also working on a downtown light rail line called D2.
Where the city and DART decide to put one line will obviously affect the location of the other. The council and DART last year chose their preferred route for D2. But after DART said that path may not be feasible, the council last week began coalescing around an idea that residents and landowners have been pushing for months: Make D2 a subway.
As if the politics of simultaneously planning two transit routes of distinct technology and infrastructure weren't challenging enough, there's another potential entanglement point: the financing. Both projects "would partially rely on a federal source of funding called a core capacity grant," and "they could conceivably be competing against each other," explains Formby.
FULL STORY: Two downtown Dallas transit projects getting intertwined geographically and financially
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