Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

A reddit post from cuberandgamer well worth a read:

"Meeting notes from DART CFO Elizabeth Reich"
https://www.reddit.com/r/dart/comments/17kcvow/meeting_notes_from_dart_cfo_elizabeth_reich_she/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Wow. Good read. It's encouraging to see more people joining DART leadership who "get it."

Also really discouraging to see the bits about how Collin County (and others like Denton) leach off of Dallas public services for their lower income population. She mentioned how they send their low income residents to Parkland on DART for free care at the expense of Dallas taxpayers. Even in stats from over 5 years ago, Collin County residents were receiving over $7 million annually in free (unpaid) care at Parkland, with millions more from other surrounding counties. I'm sure this number has grown as suburban county populations have grown, and as the lower and middle classes' budgets have been stretched even more.

Then, they use these cost savings to poach businesses from Dallas county with incentives, further exacerbating the problem. Something should be done. I feel bad for uninsured residents of Collin County, but they should be turned away until Collin County agrees to pay for their care.

Agreed. They have such a strong NIMBY mentality up there. I love hearing about how they view Dallas and downtown as full of homeless people and crime on DART, but they are contributors to the problem. Dallas City and County should put a foot down and say no more. They can still treat these people, but take it out of the subsidies we give them or send them a bill!

Matt777 wrote:Also really discouraging to see the bits about how Collin County (and others like Denton) leach off of Dallas public services for their lower income population. She mentioned how they send their low income residents to Parkland on DART for free care at the expense of Dallas taxpayers. Even in stats from over 5 years ago, Collin County residents were receiving over $7 million annually in free (unpaid) care at Parkland, with millions more from other surrounding counties. I'm sure this number has grown as suburban county populations have grown, and as the lower and middle classes' budgets have been stretched even more.

Agreed. It's very discouraging that Collin County politicians and voters are so much smarter than their Dallas County equivalents. Why do voters continue to elect so many crooks and fools? Imagine what we could do if local government didn't flush so much money down the toilet.

The parade Friday has me thinking - How is Dallas/Arlington handling transportation to AT&T for the World Cup given the nearest train station is a 30 minute or so walk?

KCHornedFrog wrote:The parade Friday has me thinking - How is Dallas/Arlington handling transportation to AT&T for the World Cup given the nearest train station is a 30 minute or so walk?

They plan to have a shuttle bus service regularly going back and forth between ATT stadium and CentrePort station during the world cup. They did this for Wrestlemania last year and are planning to do it again for the MLB All-star game next year.

There's actually a good DMN article about this stemming from the world series:
Why is there no mass public transportation to get to the World Series in Arlington?
To get a stop on the proposed I-30 high speed rail line Arlington would apparently have to join a transit authority.

Though there are roadblocks to joining a transit authority as a full member, there is another way. Grapevine is not a full member of Trinity Metro but joined as what’s called a local government corporation. Grapevine doesn’t get full Trinity Metro service and only pays 3/8ths of a cent in sales tax to join.

Morris explained that joining a transit authority as a local government corporation would allow Arlington to get around the membership sales tax minimum and get more creative with financing. It also doesn’t have to be voted on by residents like joining as a full member would, just the city council, according to state law.

I hope this path eventually leads to a couple steady bus routes at least.