Transit Ironman: July 2026 Travel Log

Follow along our all day journey across the region by transit!

Last Saturday we travelled all day across the region using public transit in what we’re calling transit ironman. The intent in planning a transit ironman is to use as many different modes, locations, and transit agencies as possible in one day with minimal downtime and just see what happens. Will the Dallas streetcar be running? Will we find the Grapevine visitors shuttle? Will GoZone let us book a ride? Who knows! But I’ll point out some things I found interesting along the way.

A dozen of us start off from CityLine taking the 11:13am red line south towards Union Station. The ride is fine, but there are plenty of bumps here and there as the train shows its age. (Dear DART board or staff, please stop pushing back the new train RFP deadline, thank you)

On your right, just North of Walnut Hill Station, you’ll find a vacant building that will be turned into 75 affordable housing units. Just south of the station you’ll see redevelopment on the east side of The Hill which will contain 387 units with some ground floor being retail and others being townhouse layouts. These new developments should help boost ridership at this stop in the long-run.

We arrive at EBJ union and have about 15 minutes of downtime before the Dallas Streetcar leaves. Inside are vending machines, bathrooms, old maps, and passengers waiting for Amtrak’s Texas Eagle route. The Texas Eagle is a long route going all the way from LA to Chicago with many stops in between. You can take it from here to Austin or San Antonio, but due to potential freight trains blocking the path, a bus like RedCoach (or Vonlane if you’re feeling ritzy) would likely get you there in less time on average.

While Dallas has the Texas Eagle, Fort Worth’s Union Station gets both the Texas Eagle and the Heartland Flyer. The Heartland Flyer is a much shorter route that goes just between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City. A fun trip for a long weekend, and one that I hope sticks around. Last session the Texas Legislature cut the $3.5M a year from the budget, leaving just Oklahoma’s half. NCTCOG funded it for a year in the interim but without Texas’s support it’s set to be discontinued at the end of August despite increasing ridership. (contact your state reps)

The streetcar is here, let’s climb aboard.

The Dallas streetcar is owned by Dallas and operated by DART. It was built in 2015 and has the same pros and cons as many US streetcars of the 2010s. It was primarily built to incentivize development around the stations, which it did successfully, but where it falls short is actual mobility. The ride is bumpy and noisy, the speed is slower than nearby bus routes, and it has frequent maintenance problems due to the extra moving parts with its retractable trolley pole. There have been discussions about extending the streetcar in a myriad of directions, regardless of what they pick I hope they work to make it successful as both transportation and a development asset.

While walking the half mile from Bishop Arts Station to Jefferson Blvd I notice all the old and the new. This part of Oak Cliff is in flux with lots of new development, beautiful old buildings, and unmaintained ones.

Eventually we arrive to our bus stop: Jefferson @ Zang - W - NS. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s labeled like that, here’s how you read it:

• The bus runs on Jefferson

• The stop is near the intersection with Zang

• The bus is running West

• The stop is on the Near-Side (NS) of the intersection (instead of Far-Side or Mid-Block)

Jefferson Boulevard is a cool commercial street with a Latin flare that looks like a classic US main street, likely because it was. Before 1903 Oak Cliff used to be its own city, which probably explains why it feels a little different than the rest of Dallas.

This urban street slowly transforms into what looks like a rural road as we get towards Cockrell Hill. But don’t be deceived, the tiny 0.5 sq mi Cockrell Hill has a population density of 6.5k, making it the 2nd densest city in the region just behind University Park.

The Cockrell Hill Transfer Center is located right next to a strip mall that has an El Rancho Supermercado and other retail. While it lacks in walkability in terms of connected wide sidewalks, it makes up for it by having so much close by, one of the main parts of walkability I see missed in city discussions. The $5 fresh elote cart next to the supermercado brings this location up to 5/5 stars.

We aboard bus 25 and zig zag North until Downtown Irving. For a long time Irving seemed to have neglected its downtown in favor of Las Colinas or its other newer neighborhoods, but the last couple of years they’ve made some nice improvements. New sidewalks, lighting, and landscaping make the walk a little more pleasant. Hopefully it encourages more development within a short walk of the train station.

The fast and uneventful 13 minutes between Irving and CentrePort made me think about the name CentrePort itself. I recently learned that Inland Port got its name because a group of people actually wanted to make the Trinity River a barge canal and put a port there. Was CentrePort similarly named due to being located by the river in the center of Dallas and Fort Worth? If you know the answer, please tell me in the comments!

TRE Link, AKA bus 31, goes from CentrePort to the front of DFW terminal D, but a flier onboard let us know that next week it’ll instead go to the lower level of Terminal B. All trips showed up as cancelled in GoPass but the bus was there waiting for us and departed roughly on time. Maybe something was misconfigured with the upcoming schedule update.

With a layover of 50 minutes we have a brief reprieve, but not as long as you’d think because we have no idea where along Terminal D the Grapevine visitors shuttle will arrive! I walk all the way end-to-end on the ground floor and don’t see anything that says Grapevine on it, uh oh. We check the website and it says Hyatt Regency, which I think is upstairs, so we head on up and talk to the receptionist. She says it arrives on this floor, but we still can’t find a sign that says where to wait. I start walking from end-to-end again but there it is! (there is no bus stop for it)

The bus shuttle is maroon merlot with the back chopped off and replaced with a curved section to make it look cute. It does look cute, but the condensation from the barely working roof AC dripping on me makes it lose some points. That said, it was free and came roughly on schedule, so I can’t complain too much.

This route takes a short detour through the Target parking lot before dropping us right next to the Grapevine / Main Street TEXRail Station.

Grapevine, officially known as The Christmas Capital of Texas, is a great destination that we now have easy access to with the Silver Line. During the month of December they shut down their main street to cars, dress up the area with lights, and tons of people come flooding in. Cities in the region should take note on how they make good use of their rail station through walkable, transit-oriented development.

TEXRail going East has a very tight connection with the Silver Line at DFW North Station. This connection gets even tighter because TEXRail is often slightly late due to single-track sections along their route. In order to make this connection it’s best to be in the back of TEXRail so you can do a quick jog across the tracks and catch the east-bound Silver Line just as it’s leaving. Typically the operators will wait for you, but if they don’t see you, or if TEXRail is extra late, you’ll be sitting in the middle of nowhere for an hour.

The Silver Line is ringing its bells and waiting for us so we jog over and get inside. The doors shut and it departs immediately.

It’s slow around the bend to get away from the airport, but picks up speed for the rest of the route. The Silver Line is smooth but not the most scenic route, due to miles and miles of walls. Some of the walls are necessary for noise reasons, these are simply called noise walls. The majority of the walls however were requested by city officials and residents along the route. Because they’re not required for noise they’re generously called “betterment” walls.

We arrive at Downtown Carrollton with time to spare and it’s even happy hour, so we hit up Twisted Root burger. Afterwards we take one stop up on the green line to Trinity Mills Station. The area around Trinity Mills Station has plans for development to make it more of a place to call home and to visit. So far they’ve completed an apartment complex and a park, but the commercial portion will come in future phases.

In addition to Carrollton’s big plans for Trinity Mills, DCTA (Denton County Transit Authority) has big plans for the A-train:

1. Straighten some sections so they can go faster

2. Extend to Downtown Carrollton so it can connect with the Silver Line

3. A new station in Corinth (pending Corinth’s decision)

The extension and new station will take a little over 5 years, so hopefully when they’re done the Downtown Carrollton’s new Master Plan will also be fully underway, making the area a true destination.

If you’ve ever ridden TEXRail or Silver Line, the A-train will be familiar to you as it also uses Stadler vehicles. It opened in 2011 and while the interior is slightly more dated than its younger siblings, it’s still well kept and a pleasant ride.

Phew, we finally made it to MedPark around 5PM. I plan to take GoZone to and from Buccee’s and be back in time for the 7PM train.

GoZone is DCTA’s on-demand service that’s run by Via, similar to several other cities that recently started using them like Plano, Irving, and Addison. Unlike DART’s GoLink, it uses a separate app with a separate payment system, so sadly my $9 regional day pass doesn’t count. I download the app, put in my credit card info, and try to book a trip… sorry no rides available, please try again. After trying several times every couple minutes it eventually gives me the option to book. I ask around to see if anyone else got in, but when I look back at my phone that ride is no longer available…

We decide to split up into two groups, half of us will walk the mile, and half will keep trying GoZone. After trying for a bit longer we all get in, mostly. Six of us fill up one of the vans but one of us was left stranded waiting on another van to come.

But that’s not the end of the fun just yet! When routing to Buccee’s it changes the address to the hotel on the opposite side of the highway with the warning “no safe stopping place could be found at that address”. It’s already booked so I just tell the driver what happened and ask him if he would take us to Buccee’s. He kindly obliged and we arrived after a very short drive. The order of arrival was GoZone van #1 → walkers → GoZone van #2.

There are no tables and chairs here, so I’ll just pace around outside eating my delicious $7 pulled pork sandwich.

Now for the final challenge of the day: using GoZone to make the 7PM A-train while rounding up our group of excited Buccee’s shoppers. I open the GoZone app and try to book a trip back, on the positive side I didn’t have to press retry 20 times, on the negative side it tells me to walk across I35E to the hotel to get picked up. I assume they use a rally points system where there are different stops that the service will go to. That’s fine, but they should make those points visible on the screen rather than just swapping your route as you book.

The app gives me the option to call up the driver, so I do that and tell him the situation and ask if he can pick us up at Buccee’s. He says he’ll remember my name and pick me up here, but he has several other trips and he likely won’t be able to arrive for at least 30 minutes. Yikes, we’ll miss the train. I tell him thank you but I’ll have to cancel, then we start walking. A few in the group wanted to try it anyways so they booked the GoZone and walked across the highway to get to the pickup point.

I didn’t take a picture here so streetview will have to do

Unfortunately the area around the crossing is under construction, so there’s no crossing signals and only partial sidewalks. Luckily we’re in a big group so it’s easier to make ourselves visible to the person driving the truck planning on turning right into our path. Other than the highway crossing and a few stickers stuck to my shoe, the warm evening walk wasn’t so bad. We arrive first and wait for the A-train, 5-10 minutes later our GoZone friends arrive. Luckily the A-train graced us with its presence fashionably late, so everyone got home on time.

Thanks for reading! This is a little different than what we normally do, so let us know what you think. Was it a good read, do you want to join in next time, or do you have any obscure transit modes we should try next?