When nobody’s happy but everyone can live with the outcome, that’s called a compromise.
For a while, it was unclear whether Dallas Area Rapid Transit would be able to reach that unhappy-but-acceptable medium in its bitter dispute with member cities. Last week, however, a plan to salvage the agency cleared a major hurdle, creating a path for DART to stay intact.
The plan is meant to address the key concerns unhappy cities have raised about DART’s funding, governance and service. On Thursday, the Regional Transportation Council voted to support the plan financially. We encourage local leaders to work together and with state officials to push it across the finish line.
Our newsroom colleague Lilly Kersh outlined the details of the plan. Among other elements, it includes sending money back to each member city and reforming DART’s board of directors so that Dallas would no longer control a majority, a measure the Dallas City Council recently voted to support.
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DART CEO Nadine Lee stressed that this arrangement is not sustainable for DART without finding new revenue sources and said it still presents trade-offs for the agency and its riders.
“It is a big hit,” she said. “There are trade-offs to this, and so everyone has to understand that, we’re giving something up right now to save our cities. But it comes at a cost.”
But successful withdrawal elections would mean a fractured, and ultimately broken, system. That would be a much worse long-term outcome for regionalism. Hopefully, it won’t come to that, at least not for the most part.
Plano, Irving, Addison, Farmers Branch, Highland Park and University Park have called elections allowing residents to decide whether to remain part of the transit agency.
University Park appears set on moving forward with its withdrawal election, Kersh reported. But leaders from Irving and Plano, truly vital cities in the system, have said they will consider canceling their elections if DART’s proposal moves forward. The mayors of Addison and Farmers Branch said they would ask their city councils to reconsider as well.
This outcome is not perfect for anyone, but it creates more space for DART, its member cities and the region at large to work toward a better future for transit.
DART Board Chair Randall Bryant deserves recognition for bringing us to this point in so little time. He assumed his leadership role only a day before member cities began talking about withdrawal elections.
The debate over DART’s future has been ugly, and it isn’t over. Even if this plan works, there are still many hurdles to clear and wrinkles to iron out. But for the first time in a while, we’re seeing the region come together and talk about transit in a serious way, and that’s a win.
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