DART: doomed to failure

Poor Dallas Area Rapid Transit! The worst pun of the day (Monday) is how the public is throwing its light-rail passenger system “under the bus,” which is kinda funny since the bus people also operate a train schedule.
And not every well. It came to a head last Saturday when tens of thousands of fans tried to use the DART trains (and save a couple of bucks parking) to get back and forth from Fair Park and the Cotton Bowl for the annual Texas-Oklahoma football game.
First, people who operate buses should never oversee trains. Current DART people still haven’t got the hang of it and the board needs complete overhaul. But having said that, it was ridiculous for anyone to expect a light rail system to handle ALL those wishing to attend the Fair … and the game. Even in major cities with long history of light rail/subway/elevated systems who transport athletic event crowds (Boston, NYC, Washington, Chicago), it doesn’t happen quickly.
Sometimes it DOES take hours to clear out HUGE crowds (and remember, the Cotton Bowl holds twice as many people as venues like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park...). When my wife went to Washington, D.C. for the big women’s rally a few years ago, it took her many hours to leave the mall via its Metro system because you can only run so many people in so many passenger cars at a time – and do it safely!
DART, with just 80 cars, was doomed to failure from the start; it did its best to handle the overflow…and its best simply wasn’t adequate.
Besides, those DART riders would have been just as stuck in traffic, causing even MORE of a traffic delay in the Mixmaster and around Fair Park area (and would have been subject to the near-criminal method of parking at Fair Park).
In Atlanta, when the Braves play at Turner Field, you ride MARTA to an area called Underground Atlanta and (on the same MARTA ticket), get transferred to a shuttle bus which takes you directly to Turner Field. These shuttles run every minute or so and that’s ALL they do ... before the start of the game and afterwards.
Shuttle buses COULD have taken a large portion of the Green Line passengers to Fair Park on this instance and relieved much of the stress on the system. Certainly, there were more than 80 buses in the DART system, right?
DART should have had ALL Green Line users go to the West End Transit Center and the Green Line could have been initiated THERE! As it was, no Red or Blue Line users (coming from Plano, Richardosn, or Garland), trying to transfer at Pearl Street (the first place to get the Green Line but the line stop in downtown from Victory Station), could have gotten to the Green Line; ALL those trains were at (or beyond) capacity – a transit line design flaw for which DART must take blame.
At the West End Center, shuttle buses could have EASILY been dispatched. In fact, said buses COULD have been run from ALL DART transit centers, going directly to Fair Park and bypassing downtown altogether.
IF someone at DART had actually thought about it, or actually STUDIED other cities and their methods, all this hand-wringing could have been avoided. Now and in the future!
ALL IT TOOK WAS A LITTLE FORETHOUGHT AND PLANNING!!!!!!!!
As it happened, it was a doomed mission and the negative publicity will cost DART more than it could have ever gained … which is really sad for the city of Dallas as a whole.
P.S. – DART is its own entity; it is NOT run by the city of Dallas and does not have anything to do with its employees, who are becoming scapegoats for those who do not understand how this city operates. Since ignorance is often bliss, these must be very happy people.

A moment of silence for this sports icon!

Rest In Peace - Captain Lou Albano. A lonely nation lifts its eyes to you.

It's still noble to get the Nobel

In my mind, perhaps THE most undeserving Best Actor Oscar EVER present was in 1970 when John Wayne received the honor for his "performance" in "True Grit." It was a lifetime achievement award to be exact; that movie wasn't The Duke's 20th best performance (hell, his last movie, "The Shootist" was a better acting job and he should have won for his work in "The Searchers" or "The Quiet Man.").
But there was Big John, beaming with pride at his good fortune. Perhaps Wayne was the most surprised man in the room.
President Barack Obama was awoken - not to here that Ozzie Guillen had been fired as White Sox manager (THAT would have made Obama happy) or bin Laden had been captured (doubly happy) - but to be told that HE had been named Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2009. I guarantee you he was the most surprised man in America with the announcement.
Now, when you get such a prize, you do NOT say, "No thanks; I'm not deserving." You smile and prepare a good speech in a classy tuxedo for Oslo.
While people can debate Obama's merits to have gotten the honor, note that it was NOT an American decision; it was an international choice. No one campaigned for it or even contemplated his selection prior to the disclosure. The man has only been on the job for nine months which IS a reason for not choosing him but also not enough time to REALLY get many things accomplished. Since policy moves as slow as molasses in Maine in January, these things do not happen overnight.
Anyway, you cannot unring the bell; you move forward. All this nastiness from conservatives and Republicans and those who bitch about everything Obama says, does or thinks is sour grapes in my book. Nice that an American got the prize and let's just move on.
In fact, a timeout needs to be called on BOTH sides to let all this shit being spewed to settle and disappear.
At least until the World Series is over. Huh, guys?

U2 tickets for sale

Due to a problem in mobility, I must try to sell my seats for Monday's U2 concert at Cowboys Stadium.
If you want to go (seats are high up, but you WILL be there), I am selling them for face value plus a $30 parking pass CLOSE to the Death Star.
Contact me ASAP at chuckbloom@hotmail.com and we can do this.
I don't want them to go to waste. SO HURRY!