The University Park City Council has canceled an agreement to provide paratransit services in the wake of voters’ decision to remain part of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART).
The University Park City Council had contracted with Via for the on-demand transit company to provide paratransit services if residents had opted to withdraw from DART. The Town of Highland Park also approved an agreement with Via ahead of the vote.
About 54% of University Park voters, or 1,461 total, favored continuing DART service in the city. Voters in the Town of Highland Park, meanwhile, voted by about 70% (1,076 total votes) to discontinue DART service there.
Highland Park is expected to canvass its election results on May 13. DART services, including paratransit and GoLink, will cease in Highland Park May 14. At that time, DART’s bus route 237 along Preston Road will continue through Highland Park, but it won’t stop in the town.
Highland Park’s vote to withdraw reduces the number of DART member cities to 12 and marked the first time since Flower Mound and Coppell withdrew from the transit agency in 1989 that a member city had left. DART collects a one-cent sales and use tax from member cities.
“The election’s behind us, now we’ve got to go forward,” new University Park Mayor Randy Biddle said. “It’d be nice to have the money, but that’s the way it goes the citizens have said what they want.”
Ahead of the vote, Highland Park Mayor Will Beecherl wrote an opinion piece about the town’s decision to call a special election on DART membership.
“In fiscal year 2023, Dallas received service value from DART that equated to 169% of the sales tax it contributed, a $283 million surplus subsidized by other member cities. Compare that to Highland Park, which received service value that equated to only 30% of the sales tax it contributed, and the disparities between ‘donor’ cities like Highland Park and ‘recipient’ cities like Dallas are clear,” Beecherl wrote.
Walt Humann, a University Park resident who is widely recognized as helping to create the DART system in the 1980s, praised the voters who opted to remain in DART.
“I’d like to thank those in Highland Park and University Park that voted to stay in DART,” Humann said. “We go forward, University Park now has a seat on the board, along with Addison, and let’s all work together to improve DART and change those things that may have caused Highland Park and no voters to opt out.”
Peter Young, a Highland Park resident who’s involved in the Dallas Area Transit Alliance and campaigned for the Park Cities to remain in DART, said he was surprised by the margin of the vote in Highland Park.
“I believe it is a shame that my community has turned its back on regional cooperation and responsibility. In more practical terms I believe this result will worsen the growing traffic and parking problems in the town,” Young said.
At a press conference May 4 following the vote, DART Board Chair Randall Bryant and new interim CEO David Leininger discussed the discontinuation of service in Highland Park and the transit agency’s plans going forward, which will start with the reconfiguration of its board.
Bryant said he hopes to see DART expand in the future, both northward toward McKinney and in the southern portion of Dallas County.
“Even in the midst of ending transit services in our second-smallest city in the days to come, we must continue to look beyond our current boundaries,” he said. “That’s where the future of DART lies.”
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