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Linking to the article requires a sign-in for this Dallas Morning News-owned rag, so I put in the whole article.

Not to be confused with the "whole story", which you won't find in a Belo paper.

Here's a major waste of taxpayer money, coming up for approval in a minor local election cycle, where they're hoping the voter turn-out will be limited to those working for government, and the expansion thereof.

Naw, the Denton-Dallas commuter rail line is a good idea. It will provide an option for many to bypass congestion. Of course it won't relieve congestion, but Denton County and DFW are growing so fast that there are no amount of roads that would adequately decrease congestion. However that doesn't mean stop building roads, as some of the rail advocates would have it. I-35 does need expansion, and expansion is already in the pipeline. The interior tollway lanes are coming to I-35 and most other Texas freeway upgrades regardless of whether a commuterrail service is started. HOV is also coming.

Some of the other NIMBY arguments given in this article by rail opponents(working from home and avoiding peak traffic hours as much as possible) are the same impractical ones thrown out by liberal anti-growth groups. And do you know how expensive it is to make a freeway multi-level? Tolling alone wouldn't cover the enormous expense of such, and the same NIMBY's will turn out to fight it tooth and nail. This sounds like the typical 'throw out every possible argument and see what sticks' strategy.

Most of the rail ROW is already owned, so startup of commuter rail would not be that expensive. Plus it is only rail now, no buses running through area neighborhoods. As I mentioned to you before, just look at the Trinity Rail Express that runs between Dallas and Ft. Worth. It is commuter rail(unlike DART) and is what DCTA is proposing. Much cheaper than DART's light-rail, and considered one of the most successful transit new-starts in the country. TRE has exceeded ridership projections and is heavily used, more successful than many commuter rail lines in the east that have been around for more than a century. So the myth that commuter rail won't work in Texas has been shown to be just that, a myth. Of course you can't put rail, and especially the more expensive light-rail, everywhere. But this DCTA proposal makes sense, the I-35 commute is a mess, and only going to get much worse(DFW is second only to LA in net migration numbers, this area is adding 1.5 million people each decade. By 2025 we are going to be as large as Chicago is right now.

BTW, this article is hardly Front Page news, with little national implications.