DART and city must collaborate on Bishop Arts streetcar

Boosting ridership of the Dallas Streetcar should not be a blame game.If you head down to Bishop Avenue in north Oak Cliff on a Saturday night, you’ll see crowds of people spilling out of bars and restaurants. But even in a walkable entertainment district like this, the streets are jammed up with parked cars and Uber fares skyrocket at peak times.

The Dallas Streetcar could be the way out of this car congestion and surge pricing, but it’s two streets over on Zang Boulevard. And walking a few blocks on cracked sidewalks with poor lighting to catch a streetcar that drops you off in a quiet corner of downtown is a nonstarter for many Dallasites.At Dallas City Hall, conversations about the streetcar oscillate between optimistic expansion plans and criticism of DART because of the relatively low ridership and unreliable service.

The fare for a streetcar ride is $1. Some council members have suggested raising the fare to $3. Others have mentioned funding the city’s portion of operations through a tax-increment funding district in Bishop Arts like was done a few years ago.Raising the fare may have the adverse effect of reducing ridership and there needs to be a broader strategy beyond finding a different pot of money to fund the streetcar.

Patrick Kennedy, a DART board member, said that since the Oak Cliff transit authority dissolved, the streetcar hasn’t had a dedicated champion. “It just hasn’t been at the top of anyone’s list,” he said. The City Council should set up a joint task force of DART and city staff to execute a short term plan to boost ridership. If they can’t work together now, it will make it harder for visionary streetcar projects like the Central Link to Uptown or the potential line to the Dallas Zoo being successful.. Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper.

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