The Dallas City Council approved more than $1.8 million to Dallas Rapid Area Transit for the operation of a streetcar system.
The payment is required by the contract between DART and the city. And it was clear during Wednesday’s meeting that several council members had concerns about the funds — and the reliability of the streetcar system.
“I think we have a lot of issues with the streetcar and I’m just going to keep bringing it up,” District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn said during the meeting.
The streetcar system runs from Union Station in downtown to the Bishop Arts area of Dallas. And a ride only costs $1. City staff told the council on Wednesday that in the last fiscal year the ridership was about 164,000 — but the revenue came out to around $94,0000.
Mendelsohn said the explanation used for low ridership numbers in previous conversations was that the system simply isn’t far enough.
“Are we sure that’s what the reason is?” Mendelsohn said. “I’m concerned that we’re spending a lot of money for not a lot of people.”
Department of Transportation Director Gus Khankarli said the first step to make the system viable is to expand where the street car goes — and possibly connect with other area transit systems.
“That would increase and enhance the ridership in addition to the potential contribution,” Khankarli said.
But several council members pointed to the number of times the streetcar hasn’t been operating. said during the last three weeks she’s received several alerts about system outages.
“In the last three weeks I have gotten alerts from DART eight times that they were down to just one streetcar operating and twice that there was no streetcar operating,” Mendelsohn said. “And one of those was for a full day.”
Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn King Arnold represents parts of southern Dallas in District 4. She echoed some of the financial conernes of other council members.
“To me, for what we are investing, we are not getting our money’s worth,” Arnold said.
The streetcar system operates in District 1 — represented by Council Member Chad West. West told his colleagues that the city’s hands were tied when it comes to paying DART.
“We can just put this conversation on repeat,” West said during the meeting. “The bottom line is that we have a contractual obligation to pay for it that previous councils had agreed to.”
But, West said he did agree with the concerns about the streetcars reliability.
“That is DART’s responsibility and we need to look into why the line is down frequently, that’s not acceptable,” West said.
Khankarli told the council he believes expanding the streetcar line could have positive economic benefits — but that the project would need to wait.
“While this will help it, I would not recommend moving forward with any expansion unless we have a good model in place for the operation and maintenance,” Khankarli said.
District 7 Council Member Bazaldua said he wanted to know what accountability measures for DART were put in place — and if there aren’t any expectation clauses in the agreement, he wanted to know how the city could come up with some.
“Yes, we are contractual obligated, that’s come up every time we’ve had this discussion, but they should in turn be contractually obligated to some level of service,” Bazaldua said. “If not, this contract was not written very well.”
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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