(The following story by Jeff Mosier appeared on The Dallas Morning News website on June 25, 2010.)
DALLAS — Steep insurance costs finally ended plans to bring Super Bowl Sunday rail service to Arlington. But strikes against the train option had been piling up for a while.
Host committee officials acknowledged this week they wouldn’t try to use the Union Pacific tracks in Arlington to bring fans to Super Bowl XLV. That was a particularly ambitious idea since Arlington doesn’t have rail service and is the nation’s largest city without mass transit.
Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said this week there would be more available parking than expected near the stadium. Much of Cowboys parking will be used for tents and other facilities for groups ranging from the media to halftime performers.
Morris said plans to bus people to and from large nearby lots, such as Hurricane Harbor and Six Flags Over Texas, could ease the parking burden. Also, more people tend to go to a Super Bowl using taxis, limousines and buses, which means fewer parking spaces are required than during a regular game.
“There is some pressure off the rail,” Morris said.
Rail service is still planned, but Morris said he probably won’t need to transport 10,000 people as he previously expected. Local organizers want to use the CentrePort/DFW Airport Station on the Trinity Railway Express line and then have buses take passengers the last eight miles to the stadium. That rail service isn’t usually open Sundays.
Morris said there also were safety concerns about his plan to bring commuter trains onto the Union Pacific tracks. He said organizers would not have been allowed to “practice” on that line before running trains on Super Bowl Sunday.
“There’s less risk,” he said about using the familiar TRE tracks.
The lone benefit of creating a temporary station near Arlington City Hall was the one-mile shuttle trip to a stadium parking lot.
However, Morris said he learned recently that their planned drop-off point in Lot 15 – the closest to downtown Arlington – wouldn’t be available. That change would have lengthened the shuttle trips between the downtown rail station and the drop-off site, which made that option less beneficial.
He said that at a certain point, the shorter shuttle ride didn’t offset everything else that needed to happen.
Concert tickets
Tickets for the last of three Super Bowl XLV host committee concerts go on sale to the general public Saturday. The timing seems to be especially good, thanks to all the publicity that headliner Tim McGraw is getting these days.
The Nashville Rising flood relief concert that he and wife Faith Hill organized was held this week and packed with pop, country and Hollywood stars. That received national attention.
And two weeks ago, he landed on the cover of People, which proclaimed him “Country’s Hottest Guy.”
Tickets for the Sept. 10 “XLV Countdown Live From Cowboys Stadium” will be available through Ticketmaster at 10 a.m. Saturday. Most tickets cost $25, and the show also features video tributes to the Dallas Cowboys with a live score by a 90-piece orchestra and the national anthem performed by pianist and classical music icon Van Cliburn.
Tennis talk
On the other side of the timing issue, Cowboys officials probably wish they had their big tennis match back on the schedule. The Cowboys Tennis Classic was announced at the end of May and then abruptly postponed this month.
The event would have included a match between Andy Roddick and John Isner. This week at Wimbledon, Isner made news by winning the longest tennis match in history at more than 11 hours.