In Brief:
- Five cities near Dallas are preparing to vote on whether to leave the DART transit service.
- Leaders say they haven’t gotten the kind of service they want.
- Many are hoping to save more sales tax revenue to shore up municipal finances.
John Muns is the mayor of Plano, Texas, a city of about 300,000 people in the northern suburbs of the Dallas-Fort Worth region. Plano voted to join Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), the regional transit agency, in 1983. At that time the city had around 70,000 people, but it was poised for growth, and, Muns says, its residents wanted to be part of the metro’s maturation. Like all of DART’s 13 member cities, Plano pays a 1 percent sales tax for transit service, which includes buses, paratransit and light rail lines, including a Plano station serving the port that opened just last year. But in recent years, the city has begun to feel that it’s getting the raw end of the deal.
“If you drove around Plano and saw the big buses making those routes, you’d see very few people are getting on the buses,” Muns says. “Ridership is really low, and that’s being kind.”
Every six years, cities in DART’s service area have the option to vote on whether to withdraw from the agency. This year, Plano and a handful of other northern suburbs — Addison, Farmers Branch, Highland Park, Irving, and University Park — are preparing to go that route. If the elections are successful, DART would stop serving those communities right away, leaving thousands of suburban residents scrambling for transportation options. And they could kneecap the DART system itself, starving it of funds at a time when transit agencies around the country are barely hanging on.
The outcome of the elections is far from certain. But DART is working to negotiate changes with each of the cities considering withdrawal, in hopes that they will cancel the votes. That’s the outcome that Muns says he wants too.
“I would love to work something out with the agency and not have to go through this election, but I do think we’ve made more progress since we did put it on the ballot than we did in the last six years,” he says. “It has generated the discussion with DART that we’ve really never had before.”
Last year the accounting firm EY produced a study showing that Plano contributed around $109 million to DART in 2023, but that DART only spent around $40 million on transit service in Plano. That imbalance has emboldened Plano and other cities to demand more from DART while fighting to claw back some of the sales tax revenue. But their demands are not uniform. Plano is asking for more on-demand microtransit and less fixed-route bus service. Other cities say they want improvements to safety and greater representation on DART’s governing board.
“Each city is different. They want to be able to move their people around differently,” says Jeamy Molina, a DART spokesperson. “What we have been doing in the last couple years is sitting with cities’ transportation and economic development folks to really understand what the cities envision when they think of a system that they would love to see. What are your dreams? How can we make sure that DART can be moving in that direction with you?”
Molina says some of the requests are contradictory, however — more and better service for less money. The parties are working through the specifics while preparing for all potential outcomes. Plano’s City Council recently considered a plan to adopt an alternate transportation provider in the event that its withdrawal election moves forward and voters approve it. The council put off making that decision as it was reportedly getting closer to a deal with DART.
While local leaders have complaints and frustrations about ridership and service, the primary thing the cities want is to pay less into the system. Several cities, including Plano, have previously lobbied the state Legislature to reduce their sales tax contribution to DART by a quarter of a percent or more. The Legislature essentially told them to “work it out at home,” Muns says. That’s the request Plano and other cities are making now directly to DART, to keep a portion of the one-penny sales tax for their own use. Muns says the city needs more revenue for economic development and infrastructure projects. With caps on property tax increases and a movement at the state level to reduce property taxes, cities have limited options for raising additional revenue.
“Some are even saying, eliminate the property tax, which is really the nuts and bolts of most cities’ revenue,” Muns says. “With that being said, there’s a lot of pressure on municipalities to have enough revenue to pay for city services.”
Patrick Kennedy, a DART board member representing the city of Dallas since 2017, notes that suburban cities pushed for projects like the Silver Line commuter rail service over other more urban-oriented projects, like the shelved D2 Subway plan. Now that the Silver Line is operating, some suburbs are saying they want to opt out of DART’s other services, like buses. Even if the cities vote to leave DART, they’ll still be on the hook for debt service for the Silver Line for years to come.
Kennedy thinks it’s unlikely that voters in the six cities considering elections will actually want to leave DART. It’s also unlikely that the DART board will approve any deal with the cities that significantly undermines its finances, he says. Recent reports suggest the DART board is considering sharing more governance power with suburban communities. The Dallas City Council gave its approval to that proposal this week, but the DART board hasn't voted yet.
For cities, it may come down to dollars and cents.
“Cities have to grow or they’re going to have significant municipal finance problems,” Kennedy says. “If I was going to put my feet in their shoes, I would say, where’s the lowest hanging fruit to get revenue? It’s that sales tax that goes to DART.”
