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Originally Posted by electricron
Wow! You want DART to concentrate its efforts providing a better service to 18% of Dallas' economic growth, and not to concentrate its efforts to providing a better service to 82% of Dallas' economic growth. That's a formula for ultimate failure. DART needs to provide better transit services to everyone, urban and suburban alike. It certainly taxes everyone the same.
Kicking suburban cities out of DART and concentrating transit to Dallas alone is not going to change where that economic growth is occurring by itself. I believe DART is doing far better job providing needed transit to more people under the current board than it would under you. Following you, BART would not have any transit at all in the East Bay, the tunnels under the Bay would never have been built, concentrating all transit services to just San Francisco; or MTA of New York concentrating all transit service to just Manhattan alone, let Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island fend for themselves. I repeat, that is a formula for ultimate failure.
If you want downtown Dallas to flourish much better than it is today, look at the City Council to change things and not at DART's Board. When developers from around the world invest in property and are denied building their dream real estate projects by actions taken by the city, do not expect downtown to grow much. Every project delayed and cancelled is one less project around to spur even more growth from other developers.
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I totally agree that cities need to take a more 'market urbanism'-minded approach to planning and density, and I'm not against the idea of public transit in the suburbs, but I just don't see the current dynamic working very well as it seems to me that the agency is spreading itself too far at the moment. To clarify a little more on my armchair-planning thoughts, I'd be happy if the Collin County suburbs formed their own agency if they want rail for their portion of the metroplex, but I'd rather not have DART expending their dollars to fund rail in an area that is antithetical to the idea of easy access without owning a car since I believe there is simply more utility in putting those dollars to work in areas that are already built for easy pedestrian access and population density.
Ideally I'd like to see a dynamic similar to Chicago's transit agencies, where you have the CTA which focuses on providing high frequency train and bus transit within the city limits and inner ring suburbs, METRA which operates the commuter rail system which seamlessly whisks suburban commuters in and out of the city and acts as an anchor for many suburban town centers, and Pace which provides bus service to the suburbs using METRA stations as nodes. All three of which fall under the purview of the RTA (Regional Transit Authority). Dallas' situation just gives us suburban-like transit planning in the central city, and rail projects in the suburbs that will ultimately end up under-utilized. Again, I'm not opposed to rail in the suburbs, but it's currently being done at the expense of projects in the central city where the same dollars would generate larger marginal effects.