As the storm picked up outside, the stale air in the windowless grey boardroom thickened, perhaps from the increasing humidity or the growing animosity between DART leaders and the people passionately condemning the new general mobility plan (GMP), conceived in March.
Of those who provided comments in the meeting, not one spoke in favor of the plan.
“[This is] asking people to pay more for less, less reliability, less access, less equality,” said former city council candidate Erik Wilson to the DART board. “For many in Southern Dallas, our working-class communities, DART isn't just a convenience, it's a lifeline.”
The GMP’s reduction of services includes cutting certain bus routes, doubling paratransit costs, reducing frequency across several fixed routes and increasing fares. DART hosted 16 pre-hearings across all service areas ahead of the meeting on Tuesday night. At each meeting, droves of North Texans representing the elderly, the visually impaired, the disabled and those without cars complained about the spontaneous plan that seemed to appear out of thin air. DART collected comment cards at the end of each meeting, and by the 16th session, they had gathered almost 700 cards.
The final hearing on Tuesday stretched close to midnight, lasting five hours and 58 minutes. It was the longest DART board meeting in the last five years. Preachers, politicians and pundits stood behind the podium, flabbergasted at the planned cuts that appear to place most of the burden on the most riders most reliant on DART services.
“You have to make some tough decisions, but those decisions shouldn’t be balanced on the backs of people that can least afford it,” state Sen. Royce West told the board.
Among those who trekked to the headquarters through the rain to speak against the plan were newly elected councilmember Lorie Blair, Dallas ISD trustee Byron Sanders and Friendship-West Baptist Church Senior Pastor Frederick Haynes. Staring into the eyes of the board, they spoke on behalf of the southern sector of Dallas, for the young students who take the bus to school, the faithful riding the rail to Sunday church, the sick taking curbside paratransit services to doctor’s appointments and the people who view DART not only as a convenient form of transportation, but as their only source of mobility.
“What you're proposing like here creates problems on the backs of those who are already oppressed, as it were, by a system that denies opportunity,” said Haynes over the claps and cheers of a room at capacity.
The Storm Raged On As Tensions Grew
Walking through the space was limited to small hobbles through the crowd, and many were left to wait in the hall when the boardroom's capacity was quickly achieved. Staffers working the sign-in tables beelined around people, looking for their higher-ups with questions they didn’t have the answers to, and guards stood at every corner with eyes locked on the more frustrated attendees. Order was nowhere to be found in a group of people so large.“I knew this stuff was big, but I was even taken aback by how big it was last night,” said Jed Ullrich, a transportation activist who is conditioned to empty board meetings where pin drops can be heard. “It was poorly organized.”
Ullrich was lucky to have arrived early, being granted a seat before the meeting commenced. He stayed until 8 p.m., but was heavily encouraged to leave after his 120 seconds at the podium had ended in order to make more room for the next slate of speakers.
Candace Wicks also arrived early. As a double amputee and electric wheelchair user, transportation coordination is always a first priority for her. Making it to the headquarters took a concerted effort, especially in the weather conditions, but Wicks said it was her duty to speak for the disabled community no matter what.
“I have to speak for those that cannot at all, that would not put themselves out there,” she said. “There was no way that I could have missed that meeting. Looking at the other people that are affected just as much as I am, shame on me if I had stayed at home. When they don't see us, they forget us.”
'Just Sad': Those In Wheelchairs Left To Wait In The Hall
Wicks made sure her presence could not be forgotten. She signed up to speak on site, and was given a number and told all speakers would go in sequential order. So she waited patiently to hear the number 62 and say her piece. After idling in the foyer, she realized that her turn to speak had been skipped. The other people in wheelchairs around her had been skipped, too. By the time Wicks had lost her patience, she had been waiting in the hallway for over an hour and a half with no updates and no access to the boardroom. She was told they had no room for wheelchairs in the boardroom, and she would need to continue to wait outside while more as more people not confined to wheelchairs were escorted in ahead of her. “It was frustrating,” she said to the Observer. “It was just downright ridiculous.”
When Wicks finally got her turn to speak to the board, she trashed her prepared speech, instead speaking from an angry but impassioned heart, attacking DART’s “spirit of dismissiveness” with the GMP and with the events unfolding at the hearing.
“We're sitting up in the hallway trying to figure out how to get in,” she said. “We want a smooth transition in and out, but it looked like a traffic jam, imagine living that every day.”
At a point in the night, when her frustration was at its highest after a staffer with DART got far too close for her personal comfort, Wicks was near her breaking point. But she relented, refusing to allow her community to be ignored any longer.
“I was almost on the verge of tears, but I had to hold them back,” she said. “I know that there are people who can't do what I can do, the little bit I can do.”
She said the scene in the foyer was a perfect depiction of the daily transportation and mobility issues of the disabled community, which the DART changes will only worsen.
“Don't disrespect us,” she said. “You're playing with us. We are people. We are people, too, with a high degree of intelligence. Don't let the wheelchair fool you. Don't play with me. And don't play with people who are in wheelchairs. It's sad. It's just sad.”
How We Got Here
The new GMP was announced in mid-March, while a controversial bill, dubbed the "DART Killer," moved through the legislature. Rep. Matt Shaheen of Plano authored the bill, which did not pass but made it further than identical versions filed in previous sessions. It fast-tracked past the House Committee on Transportation but was never scheduled for a House reading after large efforts from transportation advocates halted the progress. DART openly disapproved of the bill, which would allow member cities to reduce their tax contributions by a quarter, amounting to billions in revenue losses for the transit service. The bill would require DART to significantly restructure its funding, and would allow for member cities who opt out to increase their budget for city-centric general mobility projects like improving sidewalks and drainage. But critics question the cost of allowing wealthy suburbs, like Plano, to be paid by the everyday transit riders who keep DART running.
The GMP has been described as an obvious conciliatory attempt to appease Plano, which has been slowly trying to wiggle its way out of contributing equally to the transit service as the other 12 member cities. It's likely Shaheen will file another matching bill at the next legislative session, but riders have begged DART not to give in to the legislative bullying.
"I won't accept a city getting its state representative to bypass [their constituents] and all of DART as a whole, just to present a bill to gut the agency," said Ullrich. "This stuff needs to be brought to a general vote by the people who actually use this service. It's atrocious."
