With SAFETEA:LU signed and an engineer in the driver's seat, DART is moving full steam ahead on its rail system.

I passed my time on the plane down to Dallas wondering if I should envy Gary Thomas or not … and hoping he would help me figure that out.

After all, the guy scored his first general managing role at one of the industry's most successful and, well, envied systems in America.

On the other hand, he did so a month, a week and a day before the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001 — the day that stopped the country and, very nearly, transit as a whole in their literal and figurative tracks.

On the other other hand, Thomas did come aboard with a virtually ideal background for the job he was undertaking, even at the point he had undertaken it: degrees in architecture and civil engineering and a career path that led him to serve as program manager for the DART General Engineering Consultants with the Lockwood, Andrew and Newnam firm; then as senior vice president of project management for the transit agency itself. In that role, he helmed the design and construction of virtually all of DART's major capital projects, taking the lead on everything from right-of-way acquisition, to signaling and communications systems for the light rail system, to the design and construction of its stations and rail cars.

In effect, the man literally knew the system from the ground up.

On the other hand, Thomas is proudly an engineer to the marrow, and from the conversations I've had in the past two years, what happens in the wide world of transit management doesn't always make for the most orderly of days. Thomas laughs at the idea as we settle in at a seafood restaurant that would be as much at home on the Delaware shore as it is in the eclectic blend of shops and eateries of DART's trendy Mockingbird Station.

"I really enjoy Dallas," he says, in the soft-spoken, easy-going, native-Texan drawl that can make us vowel-squaaaashing, nasally-gifted Midwesterners green with envy. "I certainly enjoy DART and feel like DART is a big part of me. Having seen it grow and having been such an instrumental part in this growth, right now being where I am is the greatest deal for me. But if you'd told me 10 years ago – really 15 years ago – that'd I'd be where I am now, I'd have never believed that you told me that. It is a very coincidental situation.