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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Ep. 48: Dallas Area Transit Alliance
In this episode, we travel to Dallas to meet the passionate advocates behind the Dallas Area Transit Alliance (DATA), a grassroots organization committed to improving public transit. DATA President Conner Hulla and Vice President Tyler Wright join us to share the story of their movement's origins and their fight for better transit. We also dive into the ongoing battle over funding for DART where several North Texas cities have signaled their desire to reduce the amount of funding sent to the transit agency.
On this episode of Transit Tangents, we speak to transit advocates in Dallas who are speaking out about potential funding risks for DART, the region's transit agency. We'll hear directly from the Dallas Area Transit Alliance about what they're doing to safeguard the future of public transit in the greater Dallas area. Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis, I'm Chris and today we have the pleasure of being joined by Connor and Tyler, the president and vice president of DATA, which is the Dallas Area Transit Alliance. I kind of want to start off with just understanding the state of public transportation here in Dallas Right now. There's some questions on funding and I want to get folks up to speed on that. So I guess first we want to just do like a very broad overview of what DART and then kind of, how is it paid for? So if you want to start with, just what is DART, so DART, dallas Area Rapid Transit.
Speaker 3:They are a multi-jurisdictional transit agency covering 13 cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, dallas and some of its most significant suburbs. Dallas and some of its most significant suburbs. They are funded a combination of fair revenue and they have a dedicated sales tax. It's only 1% sales tax and having that dedicated revenue source is obviously very nice and we're very lucky to have it. The system is trying its best to serve suburban sprawl, but it does a good job, considering the circumstances.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think one thing to note is so it was actually voted on in, I think, 1982 by the member cities, 1983. So 1983, we can cut that one, but anywho. So it was voted in 1983 by the member cities. So the statute that protects the funding is pretty ironclad. So you know, if any cities had complaints and wanted to withdraw, they would take the debt they incurred relative to what they paid with them. And so you know, at one point we did have the largest light rail line in the country. I think LA eclipsed us a couple years back, but we still have one of the biggest because our cities are so sprawling.
Speaker 2:And DART has to serve all of them right. And just to give folks a general idea, I mean, how many light rail lines are there?
Speaker 3:uh, there's, there's four light rail lines, but they really it's not like your typical light rail. It kind of operates more like regional rail.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, and we looked it up today. I think it stretches over 90 miles of total service as well, so it's a really far reaching system and it seems to like I mean, it's a wide range of everything from.
Speaker 2:you know there's some decent transit oriented development. Further out there's also a lot of stations that are just a big parking lot and everything in between, basically. But as you said, where you see parking lot, you see potential.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot you can do with a service parking lot in the future. You, you see potential, I see potential. Yeah, there's a lot you can do with a service parking lot in the future. You never know what could go there. So, as of more recently, it seems like there have been some questions and issues as far as funding goes. Do you want to kind of explain a little bit about what those issues are at the moment?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I can open a little there. Connor knows quite a bit too, but I think what caught our attention at first is a bunch of cities, starting with Plano, one of the northern suburbs of Dallas. They passed a resolution that they supported cutting darts, funding their contribution by 25%. So if they get 1% of that sales tax, they want 25% of that back for their own purposes. They did this very suddenly, without really taking public comment, and it passed unanimously without discussion at the meeting. In the weeks following, five other member cities it's a total of six, right, connor? I think that passed the resolution. So five other member cities, some big, some small, passed it too. Same kind of thing. They just did it all of a sudden. Very similar language, no real public comment, engagement period. It was really alarming.
Speaker 3:They had the public comments before the meeting, like before they voted on it, but that's it. It's literally just popped up on the agenda. Then, five days later it was voted on and I mean I've seen zoning changes that have had a longer, more public outreach and deliberation, had a longer, more public outreach and deliberation. It's for such a major decision. Not all cities are as committed to it, though. Some cities just kind of sign the resolution. It's like, ah sure, why not 25% less? But we're not really going to push for it. But the city of Plano, they're really the ones pushing for this and they really want to see it happen. They want to see DART's budget cut by 25%. One thing to know when they cut the budget by 25%, it lowers everyone's contribution, not just their own. Everyone's got to pay the same amount. That's built into the law.
Speaker 5:And so, when they vote on this, what is the course of action? So, if the cities pass their own sort of propositions to do this, how does then, how does it then get back to dart to actually so become part of the policy for very fun story.
Speaker 3:So what the city's? One great thing about dart is that the board representation is proportional by the population of your city. So dallas, being the most popular city, has the most board representation, as it should be. And even though six out of the 13 member cities voted on this resolution, it's still like a pretty large minority of the DART service area because the biggest cities Dallas and Dallas, garland, richardson they are pro-DART and do not want to see the budget cut, so the city's resolutions are non-binding. They can say I support a resolution, I pass this resolution in favor of cutting DART's budget that doesn't cut the budget.
Speaker 3:So the DART board has to approve the actual budget changes and they don't have the votes. Yeah, they don't have the votes.
Speaker 5:So they're not even really close, and so this leads us back to cities like Plano and others going to the state house to try to go above the dark board right.
Speaker 3:The way I like to say it is that their idea wasn't popular enough, so they came crying to the state legislator.
Speaker 2:And the state legislature here in Texas not necessarily friendly to public transportation? Yeah, not necessarily.
Speaker 5:It has a strong history of preemptinging cities and pre-empting agencies.
Speaker 3:We hope that that changes.
Speaker 2:But you know, I'm curious like what is the case that and we were talking a little bit about this before but what is the case that Plano is making of like why they're not, why they feel like they're paying too?
Speaker 4:much. So there's a lot of you know operational considerations in DART since they're so wide reaching. So Plano is, I believe, the second biggest by population and by sales tax revenue in the DART system Still way far behind Dallas, but they contribute. I think one study said 120 million thereabouts, so a fair bit. Their operational spend was, which is just you know what it takes to pay for the bus routes. All that sort of stuff was around $40 million for like fiscal year 2023. So they see that difference and they're like what's going on? We're not getting our money's worth. However, conor will get into a couple other reasons, but to start off, you know we're building the Silver Line, we not. What dart is is building the silver line through there, and so that's a lot of capital watch.
Speaker 5:The some other episodes. The silver line is, uh, the new rail line that goes for that goes from uh dfw airport all the way to plano exactly.
Speaker 3:So I believe plano gets a couple stops along that line all the capital allocation and service allocation of cost is all the billions of dollars start is. Spending on the silver line is not accounted for in this study because the asset doesn't count towards our contribution until it's built, and so they'll also tell you ridership is lower, but they'll point to the 2019 levels.
Speaker 4:And, as we were talking, host spam bank.
Speaker 3:They're lying. They're saying it's declining right now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they're saying it's declining, which is insane. It's obviously not, and so they're not really using. They're kind of acting in bad faith here.
Speaker 2:We're going to jump right back into this episode in just a second, but first, if you have not liked this video or subscribed, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. Also, leave a comment. We love reading them.
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Speaker 2:And if you want to support the show, we now have a Patreon launch. You get lots of additional benefits for being a member on Patreon. All the information for that is in the description, but without further ado, let's jump back into the episode. I'd say it's also probably sure it's easy to make the argument that like, okay, maybe less people who live in Plano are using it than people who live in Dallas. However, it costs a whole lot more money to serve Plano, which is significantly outside. I mean, we rode on the train to Plano today. Uh, so the cost to get all the way out there is higher, while they might have less ridership, or you know some of the other points they're making right, but like they're getting way more benefit out of it than Dallas is going to Plano, if that makes sense not only that, but if you look at Dart's future plans, they call for frequency upgrades on to Plano's bus routes.
Speaker 3:They just opened a new bus route in Plano and then they're going to have the new train line going through it.
Speaker 2:So it's not like they're not investing in Plano they are investing a lot in yeah, and again, we saw, we saw some of the construction today. We saw the investment today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:And one of the arguments that we doing research on this topic. One of the arguments that we did come across was Plano stated that Dallas contributes about 48% of the total budget for DART and Dallas gets about 68-ish percent of the total service for that and they feel like that's not an equitable use of funds. However, Dallas, being a massive city, really is the economic driver and the hub of this region, so it does make a lot of sense that those funds and those services are concentrated. Yeah, people got to get to Dallas.
Speaker 3:That's where the jobs are.
Speaker 4:That's where the museums are, you know so, and people spend money, and I actually even know some people who live south of Plano and commute up, so you know people still go to Plano from Dallas too. There's a lot of. I think somebody did kind of an unofficial like ridership at the station. Plano gets, you know, thousands of people at their stations every single day.
Speaker 3:You know DART is on the right track. They got this plan called Tier 2, and what it does is it makes the rush hour schedule the all-day schedule, recognizing that peak travel period for commuters is not as significant anymore. So it just makes the rush hour schedule the all-day schedule and it takes their highest-perform frequency bus routes that get a lot of ridership and has them run 15 minutes all day, every day, which is such a big step for us, and that's what Dart is trying to do. Any attempt to cut their budget not only threatens that, but would make service worse than what it is today.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think the big thing is you. You know we're not just like chills, right, we know there's work to be done in Dallas public transit, but we also recognize, right, this minute none of that will happen if this legislation passes right. So we want to protect this funding and then we want to work with everybody to start thinking about other improvements. We can do so coming up. You know we're paying close attention to what's going on at the state legislature. We might plan a trip down there with the group Come on down, come on down to Austin, we'll be there.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, maybe you can help us testify against it. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4:So we're just kind of waiting and seeing for the other shoe to drop right now and you know we'll see in the new year.
Speaker 2:I'm curious so, obviously, if you haven't been able to see, and we've been gifted some shirts as well. So thank you very much. You've got your Ride With Data shirts on. Can you guys explain what is data? How did you all get together and kind of what some of your goals and missions are with it?
Speaker 4:Well, connor was kind of first on this one, so I'll let him take leave there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we really formed in response to this sales tax issue. We actually spawned out of a Reddit community that was just really just for people to nerd out about transit, but it kind of turned political because it had to, because we are transit nerds but we want to protect it. So we've been contacting our state representatives, our city council members. We have an action network that lets you just send a templated email, but we also encourage people to just send personalized emails or phone calls to their state reps and I think we've been successful. We've been noticed. We've gone to board meetings and we think we've been successful. We've been noticed. We've gone to board meetings and we meet about once a month and we have a lot of social events. So, yeah, it's just this place. Data is just an advocacy organization that has spawned out of like a transit nerd online friend.
Speaker 4:And it's a pretty loose collection. So I think we've got like 140 people in our group meeting or something, and you know we'll get 50 60 coming to the meetings, which is excellent. But you know, it's mostly, yeah, political and also kind of a social platform to get people together and and we do spend a lot of time like informing New members to data or, like this, random people online about hey, this is how dart works, here's what you can do, here's how convenient it actually is, that kind of thing.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that's. That's really impressive. And actually I had the the honor of being invited to one of your uh meetings last week where I got to listen to um. Nadine lee, I believe, is the her name. She's the president of dart. She joined you ceo, sorry, ceo, excuse me. Ceo of dart, she joined you for a meeting and had some really great insights and was really engaging. Here is an excerpt from that meeting with Nadine Lee.
Speaker 6:I just wanted to first walk you through kind of what we're doing at DART in the interest of developing a better relationship with all of you as our writers, and I want to then talk a little bit about, of course, the sales tax resolution that you all are all following and tracking, and you know kind of what's at stake, and then we'll talk a little bit about. You know kind of. You know what we would love for you to do, even though you guys are very organized, I have to say, like just sitting in on all your committee reports. I'm just, I'm really really impressed at how much you all know, because you know as much as I know at this point and I mean it really speaks to the work that you have all done. You know this is a grassroots advocacy organization and I do want to tell you just how much it means to me and all the staff and of course you know, the DART board members who are in our court. It means so much to us to know that the riders have organized and come together to advocate for yourselves and know that we, the DART staff, really want the same things that you do.
Speaker 6:The point here is that what distinguishes the cities in our service area from the ones that are not in our service area is that they have DART and as we grow as a region, as you know, 4 million people come to this region over the next 20 years. You know we can't build ourselves out of this problem. We already have crazy traffic congestion right now and it's really important for us to make sure that we provide some additional travel capacity through transit, because that's the way we'll provide mobility for people without having to build wider and wider streets and highways. The 20-minute town concept is the idea that you can have, within a 20-minute walk roll, maybe transit ride. Within that 20 minutes from your home, you can access all of the services and amenities that you need to have a great life.
Speaker 5:It was really impressive to see that, even as a young group, you guys have enough of a presence to get DART's attention and really become part of the conversation. So congrats to you all for that.
Speaker 4:We were glad to have her. That Q&A session was really good. She spent like an hour with the group.
Speaker 3:And not to brag, but we got three candidates for state election to show up to our pre-meeting before that, yeah up to our pre-meeting before that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, and I mean that that is so important too. I mean, we've talked about this in earlier episodes like it's easy to get folks together online, but, like it, it's really important to actually get folks who care about this stuff together in person to be able to, you know, have these events, reach out to city council members, go to the meetings, do all this sort of stuff. So, yeah, props to you all for doing it. We'll'll make sure that there's links to all of your information in the description of this video or podcast, wherever you're watching or listening.
Speaker 5:So yeah, if someone is in the Dallas area and wants to learn more about you or get involved, where can they find more information about data?
Speaker 4:So we have a website. If you just Google Dallas Area Transit Alliance or find us at Ride With Data on most major and upcoming social media platforms, we'll have links there for everybody. We also have a YouTube channel that we just started. We're streaming some of our previous meetings, so look out for that. So a lot of platforms. You can find us on Instagram is probably the best one. Yes.
Speaker 2:That's Ride With Data. That's our tag. We'll make sure that all the links are in the description. Folks, Awesome. With all that being said, thank you all so much for watching. We really appreciate it and enjoy the rest of your Transit. Tangents Tuesday.