Dallas is fascinating city for transit. There's a lot to see.
DART light rail
Impressively, Dallas has America's largest light rail system, as measured in miles of track. It has 90 miles of light rail, well ahead of the country's #2 city, Los Angeles, which has 70.
There's one on-street transitway through downtown, where all trains converge. Outside downtown most of the tracks seem to be along old freight rail rights-of-way. It's a very attractive system, easy to understand, with good coverage.
The down side: Whoa boy do train headways suck. Except at rush hour, it's 30 minutes between trains on most lines. From a service perspective if not a technology one, DART light rail is more like SEPTA regional rail than SEPTA trolleys.
The trains are all identical, except that some are longer than others. Some people criticize them for looking dated, a little too 1980s, but I think they're great. Definitely among the better looking light rail trains in America. Especially compared to other 1980s designs.
This is the DFW Airport station, which is brand new.
Many of the stations outside downtown use this archway design. I'm a big fan. It's effective, iconic, and affordable.
There's one subway station, not downtown.
TRE regional rail
There's one commuter rail line, going to Fort Worth. I didn't ride, but saw it at Union Station.
Union Station
Speaking of Union Station, here it is. The activity is all at the platforms out back. The station building itself doesn't seem to be used much, except as a ticket counter for 4 Amtrak trains per day.
Streetcars
Dallas has 2 streetcar lines, one of which begins at Union Station and uses modern vehicles, and the other of which connects Downtown to Uptown and uses vintage vehicles. The good news: Both lines are free to ride and have dedicated lanes for at least part of their run. The bad news: Like DART light rail, both streetcars only come every 30 minutes.
The modern one just opened, and is most notable for being able to run for about a mile without any connection to overhead wires.
Stations are simple.
The old one goes to Uptown, but it seems to be mostly a tourist operation. When we got on downtown, the tram sat at the station for 5 minutes while a volunteer told us about its history. That's nice and all, but it's not great for getting somewhere.
The stops are even simpler.
Except for the final stop in Uptown, where there's a turn-around.
Not all the trams are the same. I guess they run whatever they can get.
Buses:
I know nothing of the bus system. Here's a standard city bus.
There's a central city circulator line called the d-link that comes every 15 minutes.
Bike stuff:
Dallas has 2 nascent bikeshare systems, neither of them large enough to really use except as a niche.
There's a b-cycle system, using the same bikes as bikeshare operations in Denver, Salt Lake City, and a lot of other cities, except it has only 1 station. It's more of a park rental thing than a city transportation thing.
There's also a downtown Zagster "system." Zagster bikes have a self-contained lock, so unlike the more common b-cycle or bixi bikeshare systems you don't need to always drop them off at a station. But with only 1 hub station and only a few bikes, Dallas' version isn't really a legit bikeshare network. It's better than the b-cycle version though, since at least it's downtown.
For bike lanes, Dallas is definitely behind a lot of cities. I didn't see much. But I did see at least one protected bikeway, one buffered bike lane, and one little instance of green paint.
The DART light rail stations all have these unusual plastic bike covers. They're nice, but it's interesting that there's never more than a couple of them.
In conclusion, Dallas is fascinating because it has a lot of stuff. Lots of modes are present, and the infrastructure is impressive. But operations are not a strong point for any of the modes. There's great stuff, but it's less convenient to use than it should be.
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