DART Escalator Modernization: Engineering Below Dallas | KONE

When KONE learned about the opportunity to modernize escalators for Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), it wasn’t just another modernization. It was a full-circle moment.

These weren’t just any units. They were the last O&K escalators produced by KONE in Coal Valley, Illinois, units we helped install decades earlier. That history, paired with a deep understanding of the original project, offered something rare: an opportunity to leverage both legacy and innovation.

In July 2025, KONE began modernizing six escalators, including four units with a 67-foot rise and two with a 38-foot rise, serving the DART light rail Cityplace/Uptown Station. However, modernizing an escalator is never simply about replacing equipment. At Cityplace/Uptown Station, it meant solving an engineering and logistics challenge 150 feet below one of Dallas’ busiest highways.

Engineering for the Environment

This project represents an important engineering milestone: the first use of the internal drive in an escalator modernization. This innovation, together with other design elements, helped the high-rise units meet applicable APTA step-load requirements.

But designing the equipment is only part of the challenge. At Cityplace/Uptown Station, logistics influenced nearly every aspect of the modernization strategy.

Everything traveling into and out of the jobsite must move by a 20-foot service train from the station platform level. Material storage and dumpsters are located approximately a 20-minute train ride away, and crews have a maximum of just five hours of track access each night to move materials.

Once materials arrive, another challenge begins: equipment must be moved up approximately 100 feet of stairs to reach the work area. This project has been heavily engineered around the site’s fixed conditions because, when the jobsite cannot be changed, the product must change.

That philosophy captures what makes the project exceptional. Instead of expecting the environment to accommodate a standard solution, KONE engineered the solution around the realities of the site.

One Project. One KONE.

The project’s story started approximately three years before onsite modernization began, and the opportunity quickly transitioned into extensive preliminary design as KONE teams worked through the engineering and logistical requirements.

That early preparation played an important role in developing an approach designed around the station’s operational needs. Onsite work is being conducted in phases to help limit disruption while Cityplace/Uptown Station remains open.

Throughout the process, three priorities have remained constant: product capability, a strong customer relationship, and confidence in KONE’s onsite execution expertise.

Achieving those goals has required collaboration well beyond a single sales, engineering, or installation team. It has been a collaborative effort involving the necessary teams from the beginning, from local and national sales and operations teams to U.S. and global engineering and procurement teams.

That collaboration became more than an internal advantage and helped strengthen the customer relationship.

Designed for the Site. Engineered for the Challenge.

The Cityplace/Uptown project demonstrates what complex modernization can require: deep technical expertise, extensive preparation, creative problem-solving, and coordination across disciplines.

From engineering a highly customized escalator solution to navigating narrow nightly work windows and extraordinary material-handling constraints, the project shows the value of designing modernization around the realities customers face.

Sometimes the environment cannot change. That’s when the solution has to.