The push by four Dallas-area suburbs to exit the multi-city partnership comes as state transportation officials have said the state needs more public transit, not less.
DALLAS — A suburban mutiny against North Texas’ largest public transit agency threatens to upend how tens of thousands of Texans get around in the state’s most populated urban area — at a time state transportation planners say the state needs more public transit.
A quartet of Dallas suburbs — Plano, Irving, Farmers Branch and Highland Park — plan to vote in May on whether to leave Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, following years of tensions between the suburbs and the North Texas region’s transit agency. Suburban officials complain that for how much they shell out to fund buses and light rail, their residents hardly use it. Among the four cities looking to pull out from DART, most kick in more sales tax dollars than they receive in bus service, rail and other forms of transit service, according to a consultant’s report last year.
“We have just been dissatisfied with the service, the safety and certainly the ridership that is woefully low,” Plano Mayor John Muns said in an interview. “We’re paying an extraordinary amount for the service that we’re getting back.”
Instead, the cities want their money back so they can try their hand at providing public transit the way they think may be more suitable for their communities. The main idea: ditching traditional buses in favor of taxpayer-funded ride-hailing services run by the cities themselves.
Source: Joshua Fechter, The Texas Tribune
Photo Credit: Voters in four Dallas suburbs are expected to vote on whether their cities should leave DART, the state’s largest public transit system. Johnathan Johnson for The Texas Tribune
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