Unless these people had the good fortune of living along the five or six blocks between this spot and the transfer station (in which case, it might be faster to walk than to wait for the bus), they were likely waiting on a bus that would take them to a spot where they could then wait, perhaps for another half hour, for another bus.Īnd even though they were sitting less than 50 meters from Davis Street, a major east-west thoroughfare - the old U.S. It travels a simple north-south route, towards the Cockrell Hill Transfer Station and then on to the Westmoreland light-rail station. Their bus, the 549, only comes every half hour.

Meanwhile, there was no telling how long these people - men and women, some who looked as young as 20 and others who were looked to be in their 50s or older, mostly black or Hispanic - had been waiting, or, more importantly, how much more time they would spend waiting at intersections like this one before they got to their destinations.Īctually, there was a way to estimate their wait time. I felt like a prince of capitalism, mounted in my oil-guzzling, carbon-emitting, foreign-made, bank-financed chariot of privilege which had managed to speed me from my office downtown to my afternoon appointment near this location out here on the fringes of Oak Cliff in a few minutes. I sat in my air-conditioned car waiting for the red light to turn and watched the scene. The bus stop sign was attached to a steel pole that had sunk so deeply into the relatively newly laid sod so that the sign stood barely four feet off the ground. The only indication of why so many people would have taken up residence on this perfectly manicured strip of lawn was a small rectangular yellow sign with the number 549 printed on its face. They also weren’t vagrants or homeless, though at a glance you might wonder. There wasn’t a pocket park or any other sort of urban amenity that might draw people to this random spot of grass bordered by a parking lot and a six-lane divided boulevard.

There were no benches or chairs, no source of shade. There was no clear reason for them to be there. Yesterday afternoon, I drove up Cockrell Hill Road near Davis Street and saw about a dozen or so people sitting in the grass by the side of the road.

Dart transit