Less DUIs & benefit to local industries predicted with Extended Rail Hours.
DALLAS - What do Chicago, LA, New York and Berlin have in common? The trains in those cities operate 24 hours a day, to the benefit of the residents and local economy. Even London is going 24/7 in 2015. So why does a big city like Dallas stop running the trains around midnight?
Public transportation is a good thing for a city. Rail connects its residents with essential destinations and services, more safely than commuting in cars and with less pollution. European cities have less drunk driving deaths and DUI arrests, which is attributed to their use of rail. With this in mind, let’s consider keeping the train running later at night. The costs of additional operating hours would be offset by increased ridership by graveyard shifters. Adding subscription based wifi for commuters could add revenue to the system. Improved hours for rail service would benefit the citizens of Dallas economically, helping our city better compete with other major metropolitan areas in America.
Rail connects riders to services and benefits night shift workers, non-drivers like the disabled & elderly.
The DART trains only run from 5 am till around midnight, even on weekends and holidays. Several bus routes and the A-Train connecting DART to Denton do not even run on Sundays. This means that often Denton students who take the train to Dallas to see concerts have to leave long before midnight, before the trains stop running. Many of these students get DUIs since the train is no longer an alternative. The gap in rail service from Saturday night till 5am Monday morning does not make our city safer.
This late night system stoppage leaves many people stranded. DART uses this time to do maintenance on tracks and cars, and has crews clean the train inside. Other systems in Europe and New York circulate the trains in service to keep everything maintenanced on a schedule without missing a beat. The show must go on, and thousands of Dallas residents have jobs that “require late-night or early-morning schedules. Many U.S. factories run around the clock with three full shifts. Americans are staying up later and getting up earlier…. More than 10 million people in this country are up at 3 a.m., and 7 million of them are working,” said a report from 7-11 on its late night demographic. For the disabled and elderly who do not drive, DART rail provides convenient access to essential services.
This means that expanding the hour of rail service will tap into a huge number of riders, theoretically increasing revenue for DART. However, the community safety benefits of public transit should also be discussed when considering the move to 24 hour service.
Studies show that rail transit is safer than car commuting in general. European cities with rail also report less drunk driving deaths.
Riding light rail is 30% safer than driving, based on the number of traffic fatalities per mile traveled in the US. Plus, people riding public transit are less likely to be victimized by crime than car drivers/passengers. It is true that users of both cars and trains experience crime, but they see it in different forms. Rail passengers may have a rare chance of property theft or assault, but car users frequently see more auto theft, road rage and vehicular assault.
MADD’s newsletter reported, “Europeans do have fewer alcohol-related traffic crashes, probably because they walk and take mass transit (such as the bus, train or subway) much more often than Americans.” In Texas, 1,338 drunk driving fatalities were reported in 2013 by NHTSA/FARS. Uber in partnership with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) estimates that every 52 minutes another person dies in a drunk driving crash. Uber also found that ride requests spiked in Pittsburgh after bars closed around 2am. Not only is riding rail safer than commuting during the day, but our city is safer when public transit options are available after bars close as a convenient alternative to dangerous drunk driving.
What type of riders are up at such a late hour? 7 million Americans are at work at 3am.
Honestly, the majority of the people who are awake late at night do so for work instead of play. Turns out these riders are often hard working people on the third shift who pay taxes and have careers in industries that help keep the city running like first responders and medical personnel to name a few. In fact, the parent corporation of 7-11 did the study quoted above and also listed some of the quite respectable careers with late shifts that would benefit from having extended hours for DART rail services.
Careers with night hours “range from police and firefighters, to hospital and manufacturing night-shift employees. They are parents with sick children and travelers who simply need a ride a back to their hotels. Factory workers, airport employees, office cleaning service crews, security guards, emergency hotline workers, people "on call", musicians, actors and other entertainers (are all graveyard shift careers).
We may be asleep, but they are not. They are earning their livelihood and need services through the night and (ways) to and from their place of work.” These extended hours will require a larger operation budget for DART but it will positively impact hard working people in need of a way around.
DART could increase revenue by adding subscription wifi and adding these 3rd shifters to rider counts.
DART can increase its revenues by both extending hours to include those 3rd shift workers, and by offering commuters subscription based wifi services. Offering wifi thoughout the rail system would increase safety by improving the ability to report crimes or suspicious activity. Berlin’s U-Bahn has mobile phone coverage throughout its tunnels. Seoul, Korea already offers underground wifi access to its passengers. Dallas could partner with a wifi equipment provider and recover the costs of improving the system in no time. With the size of the impact to our city, we have to consider budgeting for late night service.
Maybe
a test run could be done on holidays, during monthly Friday Late Night
events in the museums of the Arts District, and during the entire run of
the State Fair; all which bring lots of new riders into the system. How many lives would be saved from drunk driving accidents if DART
ran till 3 a.m. just on New Years Eve to see if it makes a difference statistically?
By running the trains later at night, it will make Dallas a safer place to live.
Over 103,000 riders take light rail in Dallas every weekday over 90 miles of track. The number of riders buying tickets would just increase if the hours were extended. By expanding hours we will make our city safer from drunk driving and give low income graveyard shifters a fair shake on the rails.
WORKS CITED:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Area_Rapid_Transit
http://corp.7-eleven.com/corp/open-around-the-clock
usa.streetblog.org/2014/12/19/heres-how-much-safer-transit-is-compared-to-diving/
http://Responsibility.org/get-the-facts/state-map/?state=texas
http://www.madd.org/media-center/press-releases/2015/new-report-from-madd-uber.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
www.madd.org/underage-drinking/the-power-of-parents/high-school-parents/highschool-toughquestions.html
https://newsroom.uber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/UberMADD-Report.pdf
http://msummerfieldimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/US-TX-000049-Edit.jpg
https://dartdallas.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/cedars-station-lrt-dallas-skyline-3.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment