From FIFA soccer to streets, Plano transit pullout could drive gridlock in Fort Worth | Opinion

Most Fort Worthians won’t find themselves commuting to Plano, hardly any on our trains and rails. And yet, the fast-growing Dallas metro area outpost’s potential pullout from Dallas Area Rapid Transit would ripple across the entire North Texas region. Cowtown needs to pay attention.

Plano is one of a handful of DART “member cities” — meaning municipalities with rail and bus lines connecting to Dallas — straining its budget under the weight of its booming population. Instead of raising taxes, the Plano City Council proposed cutting its DART tax contribution by a quarter of a cent, a major blow to funding for a service still expanding across the city. A set of identical House and Senate bills goes a step further by echoing Plano’s defund dreams statewide, allowing member cities of any regional transit line to reduce their tax contributions by 25%.

DART defunders argue that their suburbs aren’t getting the services they need, pointing to the decline in transit usage since the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2023, DART posted its second consecutive year of multi-million rider growth and was on track to surpass pre-pandemic levels this decade. Defunding would bleed out bus and rail services in the suburbs and Dallas proper and kill ambitious expansion plans connecting more North Texans to jobs, entertainment and commerce regardless of our ZIP code or appetite for drifting across eight-lane highways.

This debate may feel far off and granular. But the TRE connects to DART at the Eddie Bernice Johnson station, so our fates are linked.

Speaking of, the Fort Worth riders who currently depend on Trinity Metro to Dallas’ downtown for work or play, such as the breezy, parking-free trip to the American Airlines Center for a Mavericks or Stars game, would be the first to feel the pain of increasingly infrequent DART buses and rails. Even worse, half of TRE’s funding comes from DART, throwing the commuter rail’s existence into jeopardy.

Poor service pushes those who can drive — and remember, hundreds of thousands young, elderly, disabled and/or cash-strapped North Texans don’t have that option — into their vehicles, which siphons ticket revenue and makes the rail service worse for everyone else. Those drivers won’t be able to escape the effects, dealing with congested roads and reduced federal funding for highway maintenance.

Those Dallas dominoes would continue falling in Tarrant County, leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as the hundreds of millions FIFA committed to support local transportation for the world’s most popular tournament would vanish. Talk about an own goal.

If DART goes under, our trains would likely soon veer off track. Because the Trinity Railway Express is jointly owned and operated with DART, Vice President of Rail Reed Lanham told the Star-Telegram, our transit system “couldn’t operate TRE without DART’s partnership.”

Meanwhile, even if Fort Worth managed to maintain the bulk of Trinity Metro services, the legal precedent of these bills would crush its expansion, permitting our burbs to walk out of future commitments. Any plan for investing in an accessible, efficient, and connected region could be ruined by a single town’s refusal to take responsibility for balancing its budget.

The end result of Plano’s gambit and its legislative boosters? A North Texas forever stuck in gridlock, collapsing under its lack of vision, growing but never moving. Until eventually, the growth ends, too.

An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the Trinity Railway Express (TRE) as Trinity Metro.

This story was originally published March 31, 2025 at 5:29 AM.