Irving demands light-rail
Photo by Jason Joyce
Light-rail will be another option for North Lake students when the Dallas Area Rapid
Transit system completes a station on the college’s campus, originally slated for 2011.
When Dallas Area Rapid Transit announced recently that expansion of a light-rail line through Irving would be delayed due to unexpected increases in construction costs, reaction from residents was immediate and strident.
Headlines from stories in The Dallas Morning News (such as “We’ll work to hit 2011 light-rail deadline, DART tells angry Irving”) vividly depict the tensions between local residents and DART officials.
In early December, DART revealed that the $900 million originally budgeted for Irving’s ‘orange’ line would not cover construction costs. Revised estimates released by DART doubled the original cost, totaling a little over $1.8 billion.
Why the increase?
“It’s really the global construction market place,” said Morgan Lyons, manager of media relations for DART. “The costs of cement, steel and other materials have gone up.”
The increase in costs has left DART struggling to fill big gaps.
But recent cries of outrage from Irving residents appear to have affected DART’s decisions about the rail project.
According to a Dec. 13 article in The Dallas Morning News, DART officials have opted against delaying the Irving light-rail line and will seek the additional funding from outside sources.
While DART has spent recent weeks reassuring city leaders that rail expansion won’t see a delay from original time tables, the furor over the situation has delayed certain aspects of the project, according to North Lake College officials.
Christa Slejko, North Lake’s vice president of business services, said that while the light-rail expansion is eagerly anticipated, DART has yet to provide details such as architects’ concepts for the proposed station scheduled for placement on campus.
“We would have expected to be in the middle of [reviewing station designs and traffic-fl ow issues] now, if it hadn’t been for the situation,” Slejko said