{"id":27875,"date":"2025-10-30T15:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/27875\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T15:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:06:06","slug":"dallas-transit-service-finishing-the-year-with-more-troubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/27875\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas Transit Service Finishing The Year With More Troubles"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a tough year for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit service (DART). Although the service spent the summer\u00a0altering its budget in a months-long hearing<\/a>\u00a0series mired in controversy to reach a truce with a handful of dissatisfied member cities, it was not enough<\/a>, and the battle for member cities to reduce their contributions or end deals with DART completely has begun again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city of Plano announced that it would call a special session this week to discuss adding a ballot measure to allow voters to decide whether the city should sever its ties with DART in the May election. Highland Park and Farmers Branch are also holding special sessions to discuss their dealings with the service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, the City of Plano has worked to hold DART accountable for the hundreds of millions of tax dollars contributed by our residents,\u201d reads the release from the city announcing the special session. \u201c\u2026 Despite Plano\u2019s repeated efforts to address this imbalance, DART has maintained that it requires every dollar it receives\u2026 Given these circumstances, city leaders believe it is time to ask residents directly: should DART continue to operate in the City of Plano?\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement from Plano is not entirely unexpected. Years ago, the city indicated that it would vote to leave DART if it could, and the city\u2019s House Rep., Matt Shaheen, has filed legislation that would allow the city to significantly reduce its contributions to the service several times. Plano is one of the largest contributors among all member cities, and if it were to withdraw, not only would services end and millions of dollars in infrastructure investment be wasted, but DART\u2019s total yearly budget would decrease by millions, impacting the entire system and every rider.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, there is a financial impact to DART as a whole,\u201d DART CEO Nadine Lee said at a press conference on Tuesday. \u201cWe obviously would be very concerned about the impact it would have across our entire network of services for our riders, and so the thing to remember is that the riders will be impacted by any action that is going to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee was joined by the brand new chair of the DART Board of Directors, Randall Bryant, who may be having the worst first week on the job of anyone in history. Bryant\u2019s induction ceremony was the night before Plano made their announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, [I am] 24 hours into this new role of mine, and I said here last night, I asked for unity, I asked for a way to expand new cities, I asked for a solution, and this was not the news that I thought I\u2019d hear today,\u201d he said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The move comes just days after the grand opening of the DART Silver Line<\/a>, which runs directly from Plano to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a project that took years to build and faced several delays. It was one of the few wins for the service this year. If Plano and other cities decide to withdraw from DART, that line, and all other services, would halt completely and immediately, according to Lee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the timing is extraordinarily unfortunate,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we had a lot of really positive feelings about DART, coming out with the Silver Line opening. I think it\u2019s just really heartbreaking. I\u2019m really heartbroken, mostly for the riders, because I think the riders who are impacted, I don\u2019t believe, have a voice in this right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rider Rights<\/p>\n

Tyler Wright is a public transportation fanatic. The vice president of the Dallas Area Transit Alliance often rides the bus to work in Plano, usually several times a week. He enjoys the ride, but more so, he needs it as part of a single-vehicle household. There are countless other people like him who dart in and out of the 13-member cities via public transportation. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s those people, people who live outside of the cities wanting to leave but rely on DART to get into them, that Lee says will be most impacted, and it\u2019s those people who don\u2019t have a choice in the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an Addison resident,\u201d said Wright. \u201cSo I can\u2019t vote. I have no way to officially make my voice heard outside of council meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wright has been following the Plano secession conversation since it began, watching the last session on the edge of his seat as Shaheen\u2019s bill to reduce contributions made it farther than it ever had before. By now, Wright has little expectation for Plano and its elected officials, and thinks the city has been plotting for a while and will continue to do so until it gets what it wants.<\/p>\n

\u201cValid measures like this or considerations to pull out of a mass transit system probably take months of internal conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is disappointing from Plano.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their press release, Plano affirmed their commitment to providing a \u201cmicrotransit solution\u201d within city limits if constituents elected to leave DART. But Wright says the interconnectedness of DART is the crux of its value.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe need for transit is there regardless of our feelings for DART,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how they\u2019ll meet that need for people who work in Plano but live outside of Plano. I don\u2019t know how they\u2019ll meet that need for paratransit users,<\/a> or seniors or people who need healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s All About The Money <\/p>\n

In their release, Plano cited an inequitable return on service for their contributions, a conclusion drawn from a well-circulated third-party financial audit analyzing the 2023 fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report found that Plano paid more than $109.6 million but received only $44.6 million in return for services. Compared to Dallas, which contributed $407.8 million, the total service offerings received were $690.5 million. The press release also noted more than $800,000 in executive bonuses as a reason for their desire to leave. However, Lee says the financial audit is misleading and that DART\u2019s budget is easily accessible online.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt pretty much takes us an entire year to prepare our budget for the next year,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do it in a very transparent way\u2026 We had a very extensive community engagement process this past year, particularly because of the potential impacts to our service based on our current budget revenues. And so I believe that those accusations are unfounded, and I think we are quite transparent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a tough year for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit service (DART). Although the service spent the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,918,160,293],"class_list":{"0":"post-27875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-plano","13":"tag-texas-legislature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}