DART Magic Counters and Public Hearings
DART continues to be a topic at the first Council Work Session in the new year. Irving has until Feb. 27 to pull the vote on dropping out of the very expensive and basically worthless public transit system. As we have covered, this is a negotiating tactic to try to get some of our money back to use to actually transport people, rather than for empty buses and trains. We want an Interlocal Cooperation Agreement with Dallas to get some dollars back to serve their own residents’ transportation needs.
Irving and others have been trying for a year to get Dallas City Council to talk to DART member cities, to no avail. At the Work Session, Mayor Rick Stopfer said, “At metroplex mayor’s breakfast, everyone wants to figure out how we can move forward. Everyone agrees on the governance part: Carrolton just approved it.” But by “everyone” he means everyone except DART itself, which does not even put these concerns on the agenda. Stopfer: “They are not serious about working with us. How do we deal with spending more money and getting less service? Their response is ‘Get used to it.’ The staff and the board is that way. We are trying to work with them, but we need to put something on the agenda concerning the governance piece.”
An interesting nugget of information surfaced. Although we have been asking for two years, it turns out DART does have a way of knowing how many riders are using their system. DART just let us know that they have “magic counters that count people when they get on and off, and when they transfer. We have the ability to know when people get in and out ... somewhat. It is not on all vehicles. They started it 4 years ago,” Stopfer related.
DART wants to hold public hearings. Why is that? So they can scare people. Apparently there will be 14 meetings around the city, the first one at the University of Dallas.
Councilman Dennis Webb is upset. “DART is getting out of the bus business in Irving. I am ready to leave that [pullout] item on the ballot. DART is not serious about this, based on my experience with the RTC. Services keep decreasing and we have no control over our sales tax revenue; we just give it to DART.”
Unfortunately, there have been several incidents of mentally handicapped riders being taken advantage of by DART drivers.