I noticed the M-Line Trolley for the first time when I was driving through the Dallas uptown a month back. Drove from Arlington about 25 miles and entered the McKinny Aveneue area and suddenly the car started shivering.
And on a first sight, I thought, I am driving on rail way track. There was a perfectly embedded railway trolley line through the center of the road and I just got over it. I was confused on how to drive if a trolley comes my way.
The M-Line's air-conditioned and heated restored vintage trolleys normally 365 days a year, providing safe, clean, reliable, and convenient public transportation free of charge in Dallas' vibrant Uptown Neighborhood.
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| I loved the way the trolley lane is integrated to the road system. A pure result of vision, plan and execution. |
There comes a trolley from a lane from the left, merged on to my side of the road and noticed how the other fellow travelers are treating that trolley. I was amazed to the fact that the trolley had all the freedom on the road. I was just behind it for a 1.5 mile distance and there was a couple of trolley stops in between.
The trolley stops and all the traffic behind the trolley waits patiently until it continued its journey. No honking, no shouting, no hurry - trolley took it's own sweet time to manage the passengers on it's way. Amazing!
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| I had a tough time understanding my current location from the trolley map. My suggestion would be that they have to keep a notification message like 'Hey, you are right here'. That will help! |
So last week, I wanted to hop on one trolley and experience the ride through the Dallas uptown. There are 28 stops for the trolley, connecting between the West Village to Deck Park.
Initially, I had the plan to take the ride from the station 1 to station 28, but as I had other plans, cut short that to 10 stops.
You know whats the best part about this trolley - The ride is absolutely FREE!
I didn't click any pictures inside. The interior looks almost similar to the Arlington trolley. It was temperature controlled and modified vintage bus.
The ride was awesome and I was so happy to see the excitement of the kids inside the trolley.
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| The trolley driver in white shirt, black shorts and golden lined black cap. A nice human being. |
I appreciate the patience of the trolley driver, dressed up in glowing white uniform and a rich golden cap. He had all the patience in the world to get down at each and every trolley stop and see off/welcome the travelers. That needs some humanity to do it.
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| Identify the trolley stops with this signage. |
There were kids with me in the trolley, went crazy about the trolley driver. In their sight, he is the person who controlled that amazing vehicle. The kids wanted to try out his cap, when they got down. So he took the cap and placed on the kids head and they posed for the photos. And this happens with all the traffic patiently waiting for the trolley to move on. Appreciate the mindset of the Dallas people a lot.
To know more about M-Line Trolley history you can visit http://www.mata.org/home.html
An Amazing Experience...
