Good news on the DART front: By 2013, we could hop a train from downtown directly to DFW airport via Irving, according to a DART board vote reported in the DMN. No mention of how long the trip might take or how much it might cost.

In other DART news, some city officials also are pressuring the transit authority to bring its second downtown line directly to the new taxpayer-owned convention center hotel. The proposed route would also connect with City Hall and the Dallas Farmers Market, creating a more visible level of activity in the area and connecting the southern part of downtown with everything else.

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I’m not sure whether this plan helps or hurts the downtown trolley ideas currently being floated, although it would seem that building a DART line would cost significantly more than building a trolley line.

And that leads to the big negative of running DART in front of the convention center hotel: Several of the city-favored routes could cost an extra $300 million to 500 million more than other currently-under-consideration downtown routes. But hey, it’s just taxpayer money, right? Apparently there’s an endless supply of that these days for the right deals …