[jtk1519]

Wow, that is such a poorly written article. To suggest that DART's flaw is building roughly along freeway corridors instead of to dense areas ignores the reality that Dallas' densest areas ARE mostly along freeway corridors. That's just how the city grew. And as a result, the system now hits (or soon will) a vast majority of the densest areas in Dallas and it's closest suburbs including the Cedars area, Deep Ellum, Fair Park, the Medical/Market Center, the Asian Trade District, Cityplace/West Village, Mockingbird Station, the High Five area, the Telcom Corridor, Downtown Plano, Las Colinas, etc. Those are some of the densest areas outside of downtown and they are all served (or soon to be served) by DART light rail. As for the Love Field station, DART wanted to build a tunnel to Love Field, but the FTA shot it down and threatened the $700 million in federal funds DART was receiving to build the Green line so the tunnel plan was scrapped and future plans are likely for a people mover to connect the station to the terminal.

The biggest areas not served in my mind is the correctly mentioned Uptown area and the LBJ corridor. In fact, I was at the Addison Transit Center just yesterday staring at the system map think how badass it would be to have an East-West line running from the LBJ/Skillman Blue line station through the Forest Lane Red line station to the Galleria, Brookhaven College, etc. before ending at the Farmer's Branch Green line station. I want to say that in TxDot's plans for the new LBJ freeway is actually room and ability to bury a transit line, but the money just isn't there. Would be cool though.

As for Uptown though, I think the area would be better served by an expansion of the M-line streetcar and maybe a couple of other modern street car lines. Same for Knox/Henderson and lower Greenville. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the Knox/Henderson subway station finished and I still believe it will happen someday, but that area would be better served by a streetcar or two rather than LRT.

And finally, the Green line isn't bringing huge development right now because of the economy... duh. Still, there are ambitious plans for the area around the downtown Carrollton station, the new Parkland hospital and everything that goes along with that is being built close enough to spit on the Medical Center station (shared with the Orange line) and we've already seen TOD development along the Green line around the Baylor station area. On top of that, there are billions of dollars worth of developments planned or under construction along the Orange line through Las Colinas. That goes along with TONS of TOD and near transit developments built along the Red/Blue line from Cedars all the way up to downtown Plano.

Look, I'm not saying the system is perfect, but it is doing what it was designed to do. It was built to be a hybrid commuter system that would get people to and from the suburbs to major residential and workforce centers and for the most part, it does exactly that. But this is just the start of an overall transit system that has only been building for 14 years and will take decades to really build out in a way that serves the entire city and connects to a regional transit system. The light rail system will be done with the Orange line. In the coming decades, expect to see a lot more streetcar lines to fill in the gaps between the LRT lines and stations. We can expect a subway line or two in the downtown area with numerous stations. All that to be combined with more commuter rail connecting the Metroplex. The Green line may symbolize the start to wrapping up the dream for the DART light rail system, but that was just step one in a much bigger multi-modal dream that will take decades to complete.