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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
Plano vs Public Transit
Texas legislators have introduced bills that could slash DART funding by up to 50%, threatening the survival of Dallas's transit system in one of America's fastest-growing regions.
• Six Dallas suburban cities initially supported cutting DART funding by 25%, with Plano leading the charge
• Unable to get enough board votes, Plano representatives took their fight to the Texas Legislature
• House Bill 3187 would reduce the sales tax funding and allow diversion of additional money to non-transit projects
• If passed, this bill could effectively cut DART funding by 44-50%, making system survival impossible
• The Dallas Area Transit Alliance (DATA) is organizing concerned citizens to fight these cuts
Contact your state representatives and join DATA to help protect public transit funding in Texas. Visit DATA's links in the description to get involved.
Doors are closing.
Speaker 2:Public transit, that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Transit, it's the rhythm of my life.
Speaker 3:On this episode we dive into bills that have been introduced into the Texas legislature aimed at killing DART, the transit authority in the Dallas metro. Could they succeed? What would the real impact look like? All of this and more on Transit Tangents.
Speaker 4:Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we are going to kind of revisit a topic that we started to get into last year when we were in Dallas. We met with a group in Dallas called Data, the Dallas Area Transit Alliance, and we're talking about some potential cuts to the DART system, which is the Dallas Area Rapid Transit. There essentially are a few suburban areas that are part of this transit authority that were essentially just looking to cut the funding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the way that this is sort of set up. Dart, like you said, is a regional transit system. There are 13 member cities that make up the sort of DART service area and they all send board members into the DART board. The board members are sort of apportioned based on population size of these cities. But the way that DART is funded is a 1% sales tax that goes into this sort of regional transportation authority. This is under Chapter 452 of the Texas Transportation Code, which we'll talk about, I think, a little bit later, and it's been running this way since DART was founded in 1983.
Speaker 4:Yep, and it is a pretty this way since Dart was founded in 1983. Yep, and it is a pretty common way for transit agencies at least in Texas, but I'm sure in a lot of other places to be funded by a sales tax like this, to give them their kind of base of funding. Obviously they also earn revenue from selling fares and all that sort of stuff for folks to ride the transit ads, all sorts of random other little things, but the predominant, safest way for the funding mechanisms to work for these are through this sales tax. So last year in November, while we were up in Dallas, we had a chance to interview some folks with data. We've posted that on the channel, which we'll link below, but we're going to cut right now to just a short clip to hear directly from them about what these cuts actually entail, what caught our attention at first is a bunch of cities starting with Plano.
Speaker 3:This is Tyler Wright, the vice president of data.
Speaker 1: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 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. Uh, no real public comment. Engagement period. Yeah, it's really alarming.
Speaker 5:This is the president, 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. Uh, it's for such a major decision. Um, 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, um, the city of plano, they're really the ones pushing for this and they really want to see it happen. They want want to see DART's budget cut by 25%. One thing to note when they cut the budget by 25%, it lowers everyone's contribution, not just their own.
Speaker 4:So, to reiterate this, plano was proposing, instead of the one cent sales tax that they charge, fully going to DART, only 75% of it would actually go to dart and they would keep 25 percent uh for themselves, which would be a huge hit to the system because, as mentioned there, uh, this would have to be something that would take into effect for all of the dart member cities, because they all have to agree to do the same thing. Um, fortunately, uh, well, unfortunately, I guess. So there was a symbolic vote. Six of the 13 members' cities voted to kind of be on the side of Plano here. However, because the board seats, like you mentioned earlier on, are allocated by population and all of the larger population centers, like Dallas, garland and Richardson, are very pro-Dart, the likelihood of getting enough votes to make this happen is low. So it's been kind of a while. That has been a risk. It's not as much of a risk as what we're talking about now with what's happening in the statehouse.
Speaker 3:So the Texas statehouse historically not the most friendly to transit projects. We deal with this a lot in Austin, houston deals with it. You know all the big cities in Texas. But the plan from Plano's side was to go to the state house and see if they can get some type of preemption put in to. You know, circumvent this DART restriction, this DART board restriction, where they don't really have the votes and they have to rely really heavily on Dallas to get anything done Right.
Speaker 4:Just like any small government conservative would do, they would go up to the larger government so that the big government in the statehouse can tell the localities what to do. Yeah, so conservative.
Speaker 3:Those are Texas values, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 3:So Plano's leading this effort and they have introduced a bill. Rep Matt Shaheen, I think is how you say it is a Republican representing parts of Plano he has introduced House Bill 3187, and this would cut the sales tax rate by that 25%. So again we're looking at that 1 cent to 0.75 cents. But then in addition to that, the cities that are part of the START system can take an additional 25% and put it into a general mobility fund that can be used for any transportation product that's not specifically DART related.
Speaker 4:So roadways and Streetlights, random maintenance projects. Knowing a lot of these areas, it would go towards roadways, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so now we're looking at if this were to pass. Not a 25% cut to DART, we're looking at a 50% cut to DART.
Speaker 4:Right. Yeah, it's pretty shocking and we actually got to speak to some folks Towards the end of this episode. We're actually going to play more of the clips. But one of the folks we were able to have on a panel was actually interviewed in a Mass Transit Magazine article here. His name is Enrique McGregor, and I'm just going to read directly from the article here, just to get the full context. Again, he is a DART board member. To read directly from the article here, just to get the full context Again, he is a DART board member.
Speaker 4:The sum total of the bill, including the cutout for the general mobility program, is likely to result in an effective 44% reduction in funding for the agency. North Texas is one of the fastest growing regions in the country. We need leadership that understands that transit is a necessary investment, not a burden, said McGregor, who represents Cockrell Hill in Dallas. Instead of gutting public transit, lawmakers should work to strengthen it. He said Rep Shaheen's bill is a short-sighted attempt to divert critical transit funding without regard for the long-term consequences of the region's economy or our quality of life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Sean Duffy said what's your fertility rate? Yeah, it might be OK in some of these Dallas suburbs. Honestly, I don't know.
Speaker 4:I don't know, but you know it's it's. It's sad to see again. First off, that like you're now like trying to run up to the, to the state house to go do this, it really could go either way in the state house. I know data is kind of ready for this fight there. Go either way in the Statehouse. I know Data is kind of ready for this fight. They've got active days to be down here in Austin advocating on behalf of making sure this bill does not happen. There are going to be plenty of representatives who will be happy to support them. But you really never know.
Speaker 3:Well, it is going to be a big fight too, because I've read some competing articles about this and one did call out that DART, with a 25 cut, it's gonna hurt, they're gonna have to cut services, but dart survives. A 50 cut, dart doesn't survive, right, which is going to be devastating to so many people in the dallas, uh, in the in the dallas area. Um, as we mentioned earlier, uh, member cities, they can't get this done on their own, so, like you, they're going to the state house. Um, we did see one positive thing so far, and that is the city of Rowlett has, uh, rescinded their support of this Plano initiative, right, and now they are looking uh at DART and saying, actually, we want to keep this funded Right, and that was one of the six cities when we mentioned there was kind of a symbolic vote six of the 13 cities.
Speaker 4:So one of the six cities has said you know what this is, we don't like this. We're actually going to keep our support of the full one cent tax, which is that is a positive, and I mean that also. I mean, some of these members of the state house represent Rowlett and they're going to have to take that into consideration when they're actually going to vote on this. So going to vote on this, and you know, again, this transit cuts last week's episode we literally did Dallas in a day using only public transit. If you haven't seen it, you can go check it out.
Speaker 4:There are plenty of things that could be improved, frequency being the kind of main one. There were a lot of really great context things included in the comments too. So thanks for folks who commented on that. But frequency is an issue, and the bus network commented on that. But frequency is an issue and and the bus network, I think, was kind of an issue. So cutting this is going to make it harder to get around and you know we have a little bit now of a firsthand experience with it, although folks who live in Dallas obviously have a lot more.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, Another thing to note here. We're not trying to do any sort of fear mongering for other Texans in the state. This is very much a Dallas or DFW issue that's really focused there At the moment and this is knocking on wood at the moment, thank you, there is no further risk to Austin, houston, san Antonio or any other major metro in Austin for these projects. And the reason for that we mentioned before. We have two different chapters in the Texas Transportation Code 451 and 452. 451 is mostly focused on metropolitan transit systems, so things like what the city would run like Austin or Houston, and 452 is regional transit systems.
Speaker 4:Right. So like Cap Metro, for example, is part of a metropolitan rapid transit authority and DART is a regional rapid transit authority we're getting into some wonkiness there, but yeah. But again, they do function very similarly with a one cent sales tax revenue. So it's definitely something to be concerned about, but right now this is specifically targeted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and one of the big fears I know that I was reading from other people on comments online was if they do this to Dallas, what's to stop them from doing it other places? Would this have a statewide effect? And at the moment the answer is it won't have a statewide effect Right, and we're going to knock on wood again here.
Speaker 4:Have a statewide effect Right, and we're going to knock on wood again here. But while Austin is currently unscathed in that element of this, there have always kind of been a. This is a recurring theme now. There has been a bill introduced by Representative Ellen Troxclare.
Speaker 3:She's probably up there as one of our top two or three transit villains for.
Speaker 4:Austin. Yeah, she should have made the list for the national one even. But yeah, if we had a local list she'd be on it. This is HB 3879. This one essentially kills the funding mechanism for Project Connect. We've done quite a few episodes on Project Connect at this point that you can go check out, but it would make Project Connect very difficult to happen. This did get introduced in the last legislative session and our mayor, kirk Watson, did some backroom smoke-filled room dealings, from what I can understand, to make sure it didn't get through. I think I talked about this in a previous episode. Basically, the main reason I voted for him again in this last election was so that he will then go reenter the smoke-filled back rooms and drink whiskey with folks in the Senate to make sure that this bill doesn't get the votes. For the context, kirk Watson was a Texas state senator before his current stint as mayor of Austin.
Speaker 3:I just have this image of dogs playing poker. You know the painting and Kirk Watson's in the middle of them. Yeah, and the dogs are all of the anti-transit people around the state yes.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I also will say one potential positive, one potential reason to be a little optimistic about the Project Connect House bill is that, if we'll remember back to an earlier episode we talked about the Texas speaker race the speaker of the House was kind of the more favored Republican by Democrats. He was elected with more Democrats than Republicans to get into the seat, including by members of the Austin delegation. So I'm hoping that there were some arrangements there to be like, hey, we're not going to put this up for a vote.
Speaker 3:Maybe, but he also kicked Democrats off of every leadership position of committees in the state house. So Democrats have no chairs of any committee or leadership positions in the state government.
Speaker 4:So we'll definitely see. I would say it's more optimistic than if the I forget his name but if the more MAGA right-wing person won, I think that there'd probably be a strong likelihood that this would get a vote Under. Now I'm not so sure.
Speaker 3:And another good thing here is that so many bills that go into committee don't make it out. It varies by year. Some years the statehouse is very productive and 70% of the bills get voted on. In other years, 40% of the bills get voted on. So let's hope it's not a very productive year.
Speaker 4:For sure for both of these bills. With that, though, we lightly mentioned here that we a couple weeks ago were able to have an event with folks from Data. We had a Dallas city councilman. We also had a DART board member, and we're not going to post the whole conversation here, but we are going to take a couple clips here, some highlights for folks to see and get the perspective from a DART board member, a city councilman as well as an advocate on some of these potential state cuts.
Speaker 4:Now, the bit of information here is this bill had not been introduced yet, but we were expecting it to be introduced, so we did get some questions surrounding this. So we'll, in a second here, cut to that conversation. But first, if you haven't liked the video, please consider doing so, subscribe. If you haven't subscribed, and if you want to support us directly, you know the place to do so Down in the comments. You can look Patreon, you can check out our merch store, all that sort of stuff. But without further ado, let's jump into some of our conversation from back in Dallas.
Speaker 3:We constantly in Austin are battling the statehouse. I mean it's always there, it's always in the news. I mean they just walk up the street, right, but we get a lot of preemption laws where the state comes in and they tell us we can't do what we need to do to make the city run more efficiently. Do you foresee that as a risk in this battle currently, that they will be successful by going to the state legislature and the state legislature intervening? This is Enrique McGregor, a Dark Board member.
Speaker 6:We're all biting our nails over my personal view, not having had experience lobbying in Austin and not knowing personally the senators. I think Senator Nichols is going to head the Committee for Transportation, that's going to look at this, and there's a Senator Parker that's also in the committee.
Speaker 7:Yes.
Speaker 6:Thank you, and my frustration is that, from what I can see, the anti-DART members have very good connections with these senators and are feeding them the same misinformation that we've been seeing for months. And I don't know them. I can't say, hey, can we have coffee, can you give me a minute? And I believe that we as a board, our leadership, including our CEO and our chair, really need to not wait till the day of the hearing, but ahead of time to hear. Here's what you've been hearing, here's what the facts are. Let's you know. This is why it does not make sense for you to do it. Everybody across the board agrees that it would be a disaster if Austin got into this, and try to resolve the issue.
Speaker 7:I wanted to take this opportunity to give a data follow-up to this question about.
Speaker 3:This is Hexel Colorado. Founder of the Dallas Urbanist.
Speaker 7:If data didn't exist today, I'd be very, very worried about it, but now I almost feel excited about it, ready for a fight. Yeah, because in the last few weeks, and I think in many cases the last few days, you know, we have, you know, over 100 people on our group meeting, our Discord, and we have, you know, 60, 70 people coming to our monthly meetings and, but on top of those, just constant communication amongst ourselves, we got people in this room who met with their representative, sat down with them, called them, emailed them. I mean, you know, kind of calling back to the legacy of Mary Collier. I mean, you know, kind of calling back to the legacy of Mary Collier, like she personally, at every event she was like, you know, I want people to stay here after the meeting ends. I want you to call, I want you to email on the spot. In December we had our holiday social gathering and it's like for our holiday social, so it's passing out papers. I want you all to. Okay, here's a sticker.
Speaker 7:Each of you are divided into groups and you're all going to take turns learning how to call who your representative is, how to call them, write down their phone number. We're going to have practice sessions where you can practice what to say, and so and we have people who are signing up to, like you know, maybe carpool or get a bus down to Austin to, you know, to talk to these people I us down to Austin to talk to these people. I think the fact that, heck, we have people who data is so organized, we have someone who's their main role within data is just to hit refresh on the filed bills every day to check when they come through on their threat to file something. It's so easy to get a meeting with your representative, at least right now. The deeper we get into the session it'll become impossible. But we've started this work of meeting and talking and email and calling.
Speaker 7:Mary was canvassing on trains During the state fair. She had flyers and she'd round up a whole bunch of us and they would go and just get signatures and get people signed up on the trains and she was responsible for hundreds and perhaps thousands of communications. So I say right now, yes, I think the fact that, like they were saying, if you don't do this DART board, we're going to go to the state, and then the fact that the board you know it was this big battle we were going to all of these board meetings, and the fact that I think we had a role in making sure that the board didn't budge, and the fact that they have to go to the state. I take that as a data win. And then data is going to be there and we have so many people who are now trained.
Speaker 7:So many people in this room have not done anything like this this time last year, and so I do feel excited. There is a battle coming. It's going to happen, but this is not the first time that state legislature, people, representatives and special interests from Plano have tried to cut dark funding. They've done that for the last three sessions consecutively, but they failed before, and even though they're gonna put up a bigger fight this year, they have not faced data yet.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 4:I'm really excited about the legislature, honestly, and I think we'll get the council member in too.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go with the simple. I'm not worried either.
Speaker 3:This is council member Narvaez of the Dallas City Council.
Speaker 2:Keep doing what y'all are doing Data, because it helps us, the city of Dallas, dallas County. So you have to also know how the legislature typically works. Right, I know you guys do, but usually if it's a local issue, the rest of the legislators do not want to get involved. If you ever watch this on city council and you see us start fighting with each other, it's because you played in my playground and I'm like get out of my. Why are you messing with my district? I did all my homework. I'm done Like. Why are you jumping in the same thing with state reps and senators? There might be a senator from Plano who will file it who's failed three times. No state rep had done it. There are more state reps, including a Republican, who favor DART being fully funded.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying that things can change. You never know. You have to keep educating, keep fighting like y'all are doing, and Mary was an amazing person when it came to organizing and making things get done. So take that spirit, take that energy that she taught everybody and keep it going, because you can do that. You yourself can be Mary with three people in your household and you know when you're riding the bus or the train or whatever, and get those things going, because the more they hear from you, the more they will. And I can you that angie chen benton, state representative um, she's she my understanding. She served on the board of dart at one point and um, she's pro dart, they're not gonna change her mind. So you know, that's, that's a big win for us. And um, right now, just gonna say, with the numbers, with the member cities and the state reps that represent those um, and you know there's more Dems than there are Rs in the House for DART. So that's where I see some win.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is, on that Transportation Committee in the Senate, both Senators Nathan Johnson and Senator West are now committee members and those two are huge for Dallas County, for us, when it comes to DART. So I think the ball has moved to our side and not really theirs. They're going to have to do way more offense and I mean they're going to I don't know we're going to we're going to be able to defend yeah Right, we're going to be able to defend DART. And also I've been appointed by our legislative ad hoc chair, who hates DART, to be the council member who goes down to Austin for those DART issues and I have relationships with all of those folks.
Speaker 2:You may not, I do, and y'all are gaining them and learning them. Keep it up, because, let me tell you, I'm gonna give you a secret about politics the thing that we, as politicians, are the most scared of is you guys. We're scared of voters, and when voters start showing up, we start to listen, we start to go ah, I mean, we do, because we're like y'all, they fill the chamber across the street.
Speaker 7:I'm like what are they here for? Who's that?
Speaker 2:Whose neighborhood is that? What's going on? We all do. We all want to, because they know I'm going to represent them. It's not what I want, it's what my constituents want, so that's why I think that we're going to be able to. We're going to be able to win this, but we can't let up because they'll sneak something in.
Speaker 4:They like sneak attacks, yeah, no and I think, yeah, I just want to share a fun, funny, uh, quick thing on the when you guys show up.
Speaker 6:In the earlier times, when Data was showing up to the horseshoe at DART at the board, one of the anti-DART members came up to me and said who are they? Who are they? I said, well, I don't know. They're like you know, it's like a group of people that write DART. He said, oh, are they funded by the Source Foundation or something?
Speaker 3:I said I said.
Speaker 6:I said I think, I think they're actors from Austin, you know, like students, and they bus him in, they give him a sandwich and then they come and speak. So that's.
Speaker 4:that's amazing. Yeah, that was funny. I'm glad you like we're like. I need to say this yeah, that was, that was good and I think.
Speaker 6:I think he was probably joking, but but you know that how the mind works, you never know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so huge thanks to the Dallas Area Transit Alliance for inviting us up to help host this event. Also a huge thanks to Hexel Colorado, who runs the Dallas Urbanist Group and is such a good advocate, to Enrique McGregor, who's part of the DART board, and to Councilmember Narvaez, who is there representing the Dallas City Council. If you want to see the entire panel discussion, you can see it on our Patreon or you can check it out on Data's.
Speaker 4:YouTube, yes, but with all that, let us know what you think. If you're in Texas and you want to get involved in this, we're going to have all of Data's links in the description here. The easy things you can do, though I mean writing letters or calling your representatives, goes a long way, but if you're looking to get involved with another group of people who are actively working on this, the folks at Data couldn't be nicer. We've met them a handful of times now and they're doing really great work, and that's the reason why we keep talking about them in multiple episodes. But with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit. Tangents Tuesday.