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As the Suburbs Add More People, Dallas Watches Its Influence Over DART Wane
dmagazine.com
You don’t need a demographer to see that Dallas isn’t sharing in the rapid growth of its northern suburbs. This reality is beginning to settle in at City Hall, where, in discussions around land use and other policy decisions, planners wrestle with how to encourage more people to move, and afford to stay, in the region’s largest city.
The trend affects transportation decisions, too. Dallas is now staring at a future where it no longer controls a majority of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board, whose seats are appointed based on the population share of Dallas and the transportation agency’s 12 suburban partners.
DART and the City Council’s transportation and infrastructure committee held a dual meeting on Monday to explore the region’s changing demographics. The population trends show the board makeup flipping as soon as 2025, the next time apportionment gets reviewed, and almost certainly by 2030. (The makeup of board seats is adjusted every five years based on how many people are living in DART’s service area.)
Why is this important? The state statute that created DART tipped the scales to allow the region’s largest city to have a critical eighth seat on the body that sets policy. But since 2010, Dallas’ population has increased by only 9 percent while the surrounding service area has jumped by 40 percent. By 2030, projections show that most of DART’s service population will live outside the city of Dallas for the first time in the agency’s existence.
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DART Focuses on Improving Security, Sanitation
dallasexpress.com
In a joint meeting on Monday, DART president and CEO Nadine Lee briefed members of the agency’s board and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on security, ridership trends, and other issues impacting DART’s service area.
“We’ve been working on our strategic plan for the last year,” she said. “Some of the key points that drive our work here are the fact that we have 4 million people coming to the region over the next 20 years. The Dallas-Fort Worth region is expected to surpass Chicago as the third largest metro … in the next decade.”
The Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, service area also includes Addison, Carrollton, Garland, Cockrell Hill, Farmers Branch, Glenn Heights, Irving, Richardson, Rowlett, Plano, Highland Park, Plano, and University Park — member cities that pay a 1-cent sales tax. Such revenue accounts for about 75% of DART’s roughly $1 billion budget, Lee said.
Through the implementation of six “strategic goals,” DART is targeting operational areas customers say need attention.
DART is spending “$110 million to provide rider improvements in the area of security, cleanliness, and reliability,” Lee said. “We have added 100 additional security officers to our system. And we have launched a DART Cares pilot program” that provides mental-health resources to passengers and others.
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Make A Plan for the Upcoming MAIN ST. Arts Fest
fwtx.com
You just never know what you might see at the MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival presented by PNC Bank. Going on now for nearly four decades, this fest is full of surprises. From jugglers, to live music, and of course all kinds of visual stimuli, this event is easily the largest art fest in Texas every year. This four-day event, which runs from April 18 – 21, will have over 200 juried artists in attendance, who are estimated to sell at least $4 million worth of art.
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With hundreds of street closures and limited parking available, MAIN ST. attendees are encouraged to take public transportation to and from #MainSt2024. Options include:
TEXRail and Trinity Railway Express (TRE) – Both TEXRail and the TRE commuter rail lines will operate all four days of the festival, including a special TRE Sunday train, dropping off and picking up passengers at Fort Worth Central Station, located just two blocks from the festival at 9th and Jones Streets.
Molly The Trolley – Trinity Metro will operate its Molly the Trolley shuttle from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. all four days of the festival, transporting attendees from one end of the festival to the other for free.
Trinity Metro – Bus routes 1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 12, 15, 46, 89, and The Dash will operate normal service schedules to and from Fort Worth Central Station.
Fort Worth Bike Sharing – North Texas’ first bike-sharing system, Fort Worth Bike Sharing, has 14 bike-sharing stations within walking distance of the festival.
Rideshare – Houston, Commerce, and Throckmorton Streets provide the best opportunities for rideshare drop-off and pick-up during MAIN ST.
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Panther Island Study Gives Advocates High Hopes for Better Public Transit
fortworthreport.org
How do people get onto a manmade island in the middle of a big city? For Fort Worth’s future Panther Island, public transportation options remain to be seen.
As city officials and planners continue the reimagining of 800 acres of open space north of downtown into a flood control project that will also spur economic development, transportation to, from and on the island is being given more consideration.
“When you look at downtown, you look at the emergence of a new neighborhood on Panther Island and then, of course, the developments that are occurring in the Stockyards. It’s pretty logical to invest in transit in this corridor,” said Rich Andreski, president and CEO of Trinity Metro, Fort Worth’s transit agency. “This is where transit can really work in Fort Worth quite well.”
Although the vision for transit remains fairly conceptual, glimpses are emerging into how people will move around the future island.
Andreski said any implementation of the different options will be contingent on how the island develops. Currently, the only certain change coming is the rebranding and relaunching of the Route 15 bus that currently connects downtown to the Stockyards.
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‘Now’s the Time’: Amtrak Leader Urges Momentum on Dallas-to-Houston High-Speed Rail
dallasnews.com
Booming demand, Texas’s rapidly expanding population and growing political will have converged to create the right environment to move high-speed rail ahead, Amtrak leadership said Tuesday.
Andy Byford, Amtrak’s senior vice president of high-speed rail development, told participants of the 20th annual Southwestern Rail Conference in Hurst that the Dallas-to-Houston corridor “ticks all the boxes” for a high-speed rail project. It would connect two large population centers, it has straightforward topography and “suboptimal alternatives” for travel, pointing to congestion on Interstate 45 and area airports.
“If you put together all those characteristics, and then you figure out okay, which route would you build? There’s one that really stands out, and that is Dallas to Houston,” Byford said.
The proposed train would shuttle passengers from Dallas to Houston in about 90 minutes compared to the three-and-a-half-hour car trip on Interstate 45. Texas Central Partners, developers of the project, plan to model the bullet train after partner Japan Central Railways’ Shinkansen system.
Amtrak announced last fall that it would explore a partnership with Texas Central to move the project forward, and it was awarded $500,000 for planning and development from the federal Corridor Identification and Development Program. The grant is a sliver of the estimated tens of billions needed to complete the project.
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Open Streets Returns to Fort Worth’s Fairmount Neighborhood After Five-Year Hiatus
star-telegram.com
Thousands of people strolled (and some “rolled”) onto a car-free W. Magnolia Avenue on a sunny 80-degree Saturday afternoon for the return of Open Streets.
The event, hosted by local nonprofit Near Southside Inc., returned after the pandemic derailed it five years ago.
One side of the street was lined with vendors and community organizations in tents, food trucks and an array of games ranging from corn hole to tricycle races.
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Trinity Metro offered riders half off their fare to go to the event. They also ran a corn-hole stand at the event and gave out free tote bags.
Glenn Miller, director of marketing for Trinity Metro, said that the partnership with Near Southside was “incredibly valuable” and they were excited to be apart of the return of Open Streets.
"They are incredibly supportive of public transportation, and we’re well-represented in the neighborhood,” Miller said.
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