DART awards contract for airport LRT line

With Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in its sights, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) has awarded a design-build contract for a 5.2-mile extension of the Orange Line from the future Belt Line Station to the airport's Terminal A. DART said Tuesday a joint venture of Kiewit, Stacy and Witbeck, Reyes, Parsons (KSWRP) was selected by the DART Board of Directors to complete the $149.7 million project known as Irving-3 (I-3). 

Construction should begin early next year and the I-3 section is scheduled to open on December 15, 2014. DFW Airport is building the Terminal A station.  

The first two sections of the Orange Line, Bachman Station to Las Colinas Convention Center and then on to Belt Line Station at SH 161 and Belt Line on DFW Airport property, will debut earlier, on July 30, 2012 and December 3, 2012, respectively. Those two sections are also being built by the KSWRP joint venture, DART said.

The project will be funded locally, but because of its multimodal nature (airport service, light rail transit, and buses), DART is pursuing $130 million in federal funds under the TIGER III program which are aimed at multi-modal transportation projects. Receiving the federal funds could free up local dollars for other agency projects.

“So many people and agencies worked to bring I-3 forward,” DART President Gary Thomas said. “We have benefitted from the great support of the City of Irving and the tremendous cooperation of DFW Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Transportation Administration. We are ready to get to work.”