This week’s episode brought to you by the Waterway Cafe:
Of note in the episode:
Dallas has control of the DART board, with 8 votes. It spends $420 million on DART and gets nearly $700 million in services.
Grapevine and Coppell are served by DART’s new Silver Line train, but they are not member cities. They get a la carte service. (Why can’t Irving get that?)
The Silver Line was originally pitched as costing around $1.3 billion, but costs have ballooned to $2 billion.
Taxes in Irving work out to $400 per citizen for DART and $75 per citizen for road repair.
Users of GoLink in Irving have to transfer if they go to a different zone. (Why can’t Irving be all one zone?)
Irving City Council voted 9-0 to hold an election to pull out of DART. This can only happen every six years. If it fails or the election is pulled, the next window for a withdrawal election is 2032.
At the end of the Dec. 11 work session, Mayor Stopfer listed demands we have of DART:
Equal promotion for Irving events in regional marketing
DART participating directly in our TIF District
Governance reform
DART to design and fund two remaining stations in Las Colinas (Texas Stadium and at Teleport Boulevard near SH 114)
Money for a Circulator bus in the Urban Center to get people to the station
Bonus quote. At the end of the Dec. 11 work session, Mayor Stopfer asked the following:
“Who is DART and what is DART? Who owns it? Are we partners? Are the 13 cities partners in DART? Which means if it’s worth… $10 billion… then we should have some equity. If we’re just a cash cow who’s just paying and we’re not gaining anything in return, then we should have the same opportunity… to pick and choose our services and determine if we want it from DART or if we want it from somebody else.”
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