The initial line of the Oak Cliff Streetcar, 1.6 miles across the Houston Street Viaduct from Union Station to Colorado at Beckley, is expected to open this coming spring.
Plans currently call for service between 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday. That doesn’t do much to encourage tourism, but it is in line with the federal grant that paid for most of the line’s construction. The grant was intended for projects to move workers from downtown to Oak Cliff’s largest employer, Methodist Dallas Medical Center.
In the meantime, DART’s free D-Link shuttle between downtown and Oak Cliff, which does run nights and Saturdays, is funded only through November 2015. D-Link is costing about $2.6 million to run for two years, but it has very high ridership. As many as 1,000 people ride the D-Link every weekday. Seems it would be difficult for DART to just shut the thing down with that many passengers relying on it. But that is the plan.
City of Dallas senior transportation planner Keith Mannoy told City Council in December that plans call for stopping D-Link service to Oak Cliff in November 2015. A new bus route is expected to be created from the streetcar line’s end to other points in our neighborhood to patch things up.
But considering the streetcar’s limited schedule, we expect some unhappy passengers.
