DART-FTA Investigation

FTA - Civil Rights division will be at Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) on February 4th and 5th to investigate allegations of raced based action. It has been alleged that one of DART's top executives gave a mandate to hire Hispanics. There has been at least one lawsuit from a fired employee that made such a claim.

DART should not be allowed to say that their hiring practices are just because they have a large number of African Americans that are bus drivers. The FTA should look department by department as reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Office *EEOC".

I do not know who got them here, but Thanks to FTA for coming.

Why DART?

At the last DART Board meeting Chairman Randall Chrisman had community activist Lee Alcorn thrown out of the board meeting because Mr. Alcorn was asking for a meeting with him about the whispers going around that the Executive Vice President of DART, Ben Gomez had issued an order to hire Hispanics for a certain position.

Mr. Alcorn and other community activist like Rev. Ronald Wright went to DART out of concerns of discrimination. This should not be happening in this day and time. What happened to the best person for the job?

DART should not want to throw the public speakers out because they are asking question. Remember DART you are funded by the public.

DART DART

DART is overall a good agency. It is struggling with leadership just as Dallas ISD is struggling. If the person at the top is not competent, the administrative staff is usually lacking. Gary Thomas by all accounts appear to be a good person, but in over his head as the president of DART. When the comparison to Dick Rudell at the "T" in Fort Worth and Gary Thomas at DART is made there is a big difference in their leadership style and ability. You never hear about scandals at the "T" as you do at DART. That does not mean that things may or may not be going wrong at The "T", but the leadership seems to keep things running smoothly.

Part of the reason that DART struggles, is that the mayor of Dallas,Tom Leppert, and city council members like Dwaine (Dewayne,Dwayne) Caraway are interfering with the daily operations of the agency. Things like, Caraway attempting to get the DART board to focus on getting rail to come to the Cedar Crest Golf Course near his house instead of sticking with the current 20 year plan which focus on the access to the Inland Port that has estimated 30,000 jobs will be created. Would you want to get to a golf course or a job via rail? And there is the mayor calling DART Board members telling them how to vote on the pending Bus purchase. It has been said that he is telling the Dallas appointees to vote for natural gas buses which would be fueled by Clean Energy a company owned by T. Boone Pickens.

Now you have the DART President, Gary Thomas,some members of his staff and some of the board members not being good stewards of the taxpayers money when they attend conventions. It is so easy to do the right thing by attending the meetings and finding additional time to attend other functions.

DART also has to deal with its suburban board members who are more politically savvy than the Dallas appointees. They are making sure that DART's president stay in place as long as he is giving them what they want, and that is to make sure that the light rail build out to their cities is on time. It does not have to be on budget, because they are willing to spend more to get it to their cities on time.

And surely the last straw was the allegations that DART Executive Vice President Ben Gomez is telling Human Resources staff to hire Hispanics only. What a shame. Why not hire the best person for the job?

The plan for a regional transportation authority to take over DART,The "T" and Denton County Transit Authority is moving forward with all due speed, and the citizens of Dallas will loose the most because all of the long range plans for DART will go out the window and the planning of new service and building of rail will be to the outlying communities.

Wake up Dallas!

Are the Southern Sector Suburbs ready to jump on DART's bus offer?

It looks like a presentation was made to the DART Board of Directors about cities like Grand Prairie, Duncanville and DeSoto ready to contribute 1/4 of a cent to join the agency for bus service only. Wait a minute,that might not be quite the truth. It was stated in The Dallas Morning News that Duncanville City Manager Kent Cagle said his city, Cedar Hill and DeSoto have approached DART together about the possibility of the agency providing on-demand bus rides for senior citizens. He also said that his city never expressed any interest in paying for a commuter bus service along the lines that animated the discussion at Tuesday' DART board meeting. And in Grand Prairie, City Manager Tom Hart said his city has had no conversations with DART officials about contracting for DART bus service.

So what is the real story? Did DART President Gary Thomas and his staff have the conversations or not? Is this another one of those steps to mislead the Board?

All types (bus,rail,para transit and HOV) of public transportation are subsidized. That means if new service is added there is a strong possibility that the 1/4 cent will not pay for the service and additional dollars will come out of the operating fund which could have an impact on future DART service plans. That is what Ray Noah was implying with his comments.

DART and The "T"

I just learned over the weekend that DART and The "T" (Fort Worth Public Transportation) are having heated discussions about The "T" buying DART's trackage rights on the portion of the Cotton Belt line that is in Tarrent County. This should be interesting because over 2 years ago The "T" presented a plan to the DART board which showed that it would get to DFW Airport quicker than DART using those tracks.

Thank you Mayor Tom Leppert, Dwaine Caraway, Jerry Allen, Tennell Adkins, Ron Natinsky, Dave Newmann, Sheffie Kadane,Elba Garcia and Mitchell Rasansky for having such insight and putting people on the DART board who do not have a clue what is going on. Let's see what happens to the second downtown alignment, Monroe Shops and the extensions in Southern Dallas. Dallas is going to loose again.

Stay tuned for the Regional FIREWORKS!!!!!!!!!!

DART's $600,000.00 SNAFU

Frontburner is reporting that a person that lives near the new Hall Street Rail Station on the Green Line, sent word that workers were tearing up the tracks that were recently laid. DART explains it this way: The concrete pedestals put in place to support the tracks (about 6,000 linear ft.) were deficient. They say that the fault lies with the contractors and their intentions are to have the contractors absorb the cost of correcting the problem. I say watch for a change order.