Riding The Trinity Railway Express From Fort Worth To Dallas With Gail Galtex

I have not taken the ride on the rails to Dallas on the Trinity Railway Express, also known as TRE.

I have ridden a TRE train in Dallas though. From a parking lot east of the State Fair of Texas to an entry gate to the State Fair.

I live very close to the Richland Hills Station of the TRE. I don't know why I've never hopped on board.

And then this morning I got email from a young lady I will call Gail Galtex which leads me to think I might not enjoy riding the TRE to Dallas.

Below is what Gail Galtex had to say about the TRE....

Your question got me thinking about Dallas and the TRE.

We used to go there a lot on the TRE train. We were members of the Dallas Museum or Art, and would go there for the day, visit the Nasher, take the DART to Uptown to a pizza place we like, go to the State Fair, sometimes meet friends @ Union Station, and come home before the last train.

That was when a 2-zone day pass on the TRE was $5 a person. Now it is $10 bucks a person, or $20 for us to ride the train to Dallas for the day. Now we'd be better off driving, especially if we can park for free.

We take the TRE to the airport (Centerpoint stop) at least once a month when we travel. It now costs $14 round trip for both Mike and I to ride to the airport. We leave our apartment and roll our bags nine blocks to the ITC train station on Jones (there is no bus from where we live) and there is no park and ride there either. Even the park and rides along the train route won't let you park overnight. The price of the train has doubled since 2007, and sometimes on short trips we now drive and park in the DFW remote south lot ($8 a day) for up to 4 days because it is more convenient and doesn't cost that much more. The train is a no-brainer if we are gone for a week or a month because we don't want to pay to park the car that long.

Don't get me wrong. I love the TRE -- it is one of the coolest things around here because it is a real train. But there are some major problems.

The price has gotten too high for occasional users like us, probably for commuters too. And to make matters worse, they rarely check tickets. Even if they do, they don't enforce the fines. As a result, the trains are often loaded with homeless and questionable characters who don't smell too good.

The train doesn't run on Sundays, which means we can't travel in or out of DFW on this day. The last train from downtown Dallas back to FW is now @ 9:20pm. So people who go to games/concerts probably can't take the train now. The last train from Centerport to FW is at 9.48pm, so we can't fly back into DFW much past 7:30ish and expect to catch a train back home if there are flight delays. And if we miss the 8:48 train back home, we have to wait on the platform with our bags for another hour until 9:48. ONE train per hour in the evenings.

Since we've moved here, the TRE has added an extra rail line and doubled prices, but the service schedule and hours have not improved. And they still don't run on Sundays. I don't mind paying double, or even more -- if they give us something back in return. I would even go to Dallas more.

Even with all the problems, Dallas and FW are light years ahead of Austin in public transit. Austin is a complete joke and traffic is horrible. You'd think a city as progressive as Austin could get something like this right, but they are way behind.

Thanks for listening to my rant of the day. :-)

Gail Galtex