Linda Koop, chair of the city council's Transportation and Environment Committee, and Gary Thomas, president of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, are having a mutual smooch-fest today at this afternoon's committee briefing, congratulating each other on what a terrific job DART did carrying passengers on the day of the Texas-OU game at Fair Park. Koop started off by saying that riding the train that day "was sort of another ride" for people, meaning it was a fun ride like the Ferris wheel or that ship that makes you go upside down.
See, this is the wonderful thing about City Hall. The actual event, as I remember it, was an unmitigated disaster. People missed half the game because DART's new green line was so screwed up. I remember people saying a whole lot of nasty things about DART.
But now that events have been transported to that wonderful realm of altered and improved reality that we call "City Hall," it turns out it was really a triumph. Thomas did concede that DART needs to find ways to "control the number of people getting on the trains."
You may remember that a DART spokesman, speaking a day afterward, blamed the Texas-OU debacle on passengers for not being smart enough about how to ride a train. Now Thomas adds another elaboration: In addition to being dumb, there are just too damned many of them.
Council member Carolyn Davis wants to know if there is a plan to install more rain shelters in her district. Thomas says, "Let me check into that."
This is really a swell place. Troubles just evaporate. Happy days are always here. Plus, I think I may really like this concept: eliminate crowding on trains by eliminating the passengers.
Sometimes I sit here and listen to this stuff, and I think, "Oh, Lord, any minute now the guys in the white suits with the butterfly nets are going to run here and grab all of them."
But not today. Today I am high on City Hall. And I have an idea for Davis. Why not try to eliminate rain?
