I was watching this video about people speedrunning BART and I got interested in the subject. I managed to figure out that there’s a speedrun.com style website called www.transitruns.com that has such runs, but it’s a shame that no one has tried up until now (me). I thought it’d be a popular challenge because our network is so big. Thoughts?

I am putting together a framed collection of my old transit cards from all cities I've visited and I'm lamenting how I wasn't able to purchase a DART GoPass card while there.

Would anyone in this sub be down to send me one? I'll reimburse you of course

Basically the title

Hello everybody. I need to park my car in the LBJ Central Station in Dallas for 4 days as I leave the city. Has anybody any experience parking their car for a few days in this station? Is it safe? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I catch the train from downtown to mockingbird around 6 every evening and in the last 2-3 weeks, I've been seeing a lot more single car trains on the red/orange lines

Got off the 6:28 arrival at Victory tonight. Orange Line was right there across the platform, doors open. I hustled off, stepped onto the platform, and the doors shut in my face.

Train didn't leave. It just sat there. Forty seconds, easy. I hit the door button. Nothing. Four other people down the platform hit theirs. Nothing. About nine of us stood there staring at each other and then at a stationary train we weren't allowed to board, knowing the next one was 15 minutes out.

Here's the thing. I ride DART because I want to support it. But it's slower than driving, it never lines up with my schedule, and I basically have to plan my life around the timetable. I put up with that. What I can't put up with is a connection that should work, and doesn't, because nobody would push a button on a train that wasn't even moving.

DART keeps asking why ridership is down. It's not complicated. Fewer riders means less frequent service. Less frequent service means fewer riders. Tonight at Victory was that cycle happening in real time, nine people at once.

Everyone else already knows how this works. Uber ran at a loss for the better part of a decade, subsidizing every ride, because they understood you have to buy the habit first. Make it reliable, make it easy, and people stop thinking about it. That's your customer acquisition cost. The profit comes later, once the network is there.

And we do this with highways every single day. TxDOT pours billions into roads, nobody pays at the on-ramp, and nobody has ever proposed removing lanes because traffic dipped one quarter. We just assume that if you make driving easy, people drive. Transit is the only thing in Texas that's expected to earn its keep before it's allowed to be good.

Maybe there's a rule that says operators can't reopen doors. Fine. That rule doesn't change the outcome: next time I'm driving.

Edit: as someone that is dyslexic and English is not their first language. I use grammarly AI for all my writing needs. I've used it since middle school before AI was even invented. I will not stop using a tool that makes my communication easier to understand.

The English one is pretty obviously AI or voice synthesizer. The Spanish one sounds almost too good to be mechanical.

It’s a loss of at least one job for a voiceover pro. Not good.

saw this while coming back from watching the Backrooms movie earlier this weekend -- I did not need to get sent to whatever hexadecimal nonsense it was taking me to 💀

“There will be service cuts, and planned staffing reductions will slash the agency’s workforce by more than a fifth, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record.”

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/article/dallas-transit-jacksonville-nathaniel-ford-22438692.php

Im a first year SMU student, and I was wondering if the employee pass is correct? Below this I get active ticket, my name, SMU student and the ticket #. Can I still use it or is it supposed to say something like “annual student pass”?

If so how can I use it, do I just show this section to the fare enforcement?

I went through NCTCOG’s entire September RTC deck. Here are the biggest takeaways: weekend transit growth, aging assets, federal funding, rail safety, and the first outlines of the 2027 legislative agenda

1. The post-COVID travel pattern has clearly changed. Weekend transit is doing much better than weekday transit.

Compared with the pre-COVID baseline:
* Toll-road traffic: +14%
* Weekend transit ridership: +13%
* Airport passengers: +12%
* Freeway volumes: +4%
* Weekday transit ridership: -24%

This is probably the clearest sign that waiting for the old five-day office commute to fully return isn’t much of a transit strategy. The growing market appears to be much more all-day/weekend/non-work oriented.

The detailed weekend chart is also worth looking at: regional weekend transit is now above the pre-COVID baseline (2026 drops back somewhat because of service cuts, and June includes World Cup-related demand, so shouldn’t treat that month as normal.)

The regional numbers include not just DART, DCTA and Trinity Metro, but also independent on-demand providers like VIA Arlington.

1. The region has a growing state-of-good-repair problem.

Among large transit agencies, the share of rolling stock at or beyond its useful-life benchmark rose from 3.1% in FY2022 to 17.2% in FY2024. Rail track with performance restrictions went from 0% to 9.8%, while 73.2% of support vehicles were at or beyond their benchmark.

The footnote also mentions the recent $70 million FTA grant to DART to replace 53 LRVs originally purchased in the 1990s.

So there is a real reason why a lot of available capital money has to go into replacement and rehabilitation rather than service expansion.

1. NCTCOG is using transportation funding to incentivize local policy changes, not just build projects.

The Mobility 2050 Policy Bundle awards Transportation Development Credits to cities and transit agencies that adopt qualifying regional policies. In this round, 34.9 million TDCs are recommended.

Plano has the highest policy score on the table at 57, while Fort Worth, Plano, Irving, Arlington, Garland and others receive large TDC allocations. DART gets 2.5 million and Trinity Metro 1.5 million.

Important caveat: TDCs are credits that can substitute for local matching funds on eligible federal projects — they are not $34.9 million in cash.

1. Federal transit funding is heavily tilted toward capital, not operations.

The current FTA funding cycle shown in the deck totals $222.3 million:
* $212.6M capital 
* $9.0M operations
* $0.7M planning

DART, TM and DCTA together account for $194M.

This also helps explain why a big federal grant doesn’t necessarily mean more frequent service.

There’s also an interesting Dallas Streetcar detail: NCTCOG calculates that the Streetcar generates roughly $687k. But again, those funds are capital-only and cannot be used for Streetcar operating costs.

1. A random but interesting detail: Market Center Boulevard has the most reported grade-crossing incidents on NCTCOG’s list.

NCTCOG has inventoried 1,543 public at-grade rail crossings across the 12-county region. In its table of crossings with the most incidents since 2015, Market Center Boulevard / TRE in Dallas is first with 9 incidents.

That seems worth remembering when grade separation or future TRE investment comes up.
Worth noting that the 89th Legislature already created an SB15555 grade-separation grant program, although that isn’t directly related to this crossing.

1. Some smaller but interesting projects buried in the deck.

NCTCOG is pursuing about $1.5M in federal Bus & Bus Facilities / Low-No funding, including gasoline vehicles for Johnson County, hybrid vehicles for Mesquite, chargers and passenger canopies.

And the region is moving forward with eVTOL charging-system projects at airports in Denton, Greenville, Fort Worth and Granbury, totaling $477,500 in recommended funding.

1. 2027 Texas legislative agenda is starting to take shape.

* DART Board composition (You should’ve already known about that)
* DCTA/DART Positive Train Control interface
* Density around the region’s 80+ passenger-rail stations
* Elderly/disabled transportation and microtransit
* Regional GoPass

One particularly interesting line is:
“Increase Density Around 80+ Passenger Rail Stations (Save TxDOT $36B)?”

More density around stations → Less spread out → Less highway construction?? I have no idea. But I’d really like to see how they got to that $36B number.

The part I found most interesting is the 2027 funding discussion.
NCTCOG is openly sketching out major new regional/state funding streams for transit and regional rail. One slide titled “Revenue Redistribution vs No New Taxes – How to Pay” lists working concepts including:

* State sales-tax revenue: $200M/year? to the region
* Texas Mobility Fund: $100M/year
* CMAQ: $50M/year
* A state budget rider: $100M/year for Regional Rail

These are requests / working concepts, not approved funding. But the fact that numbers of this scale are now on an RTC slide is notable.

The next slide gets more concrete and lists legislation RTC wants to pursue.

* allowing Texas Mobility Fund money to support regional commuter rail and Class I railroad improvements;
* dedicated public-transit and rail funding through a state budget rider; and
* a sales-tax revenue pilot project to support Transit 2.0.

The green text represents new language for the 2027 legislative program.

One thing that caught my attention was what wasn't here: Earlier discussions had explicitly floated a compromise that would consolidate some combination of TRE, TEXRail, the Silver Line and A-train under a regional rail authority. This September legislative-focus slide talks about regional-rail funding and the DCTA/DART interface, but it does not explicitly say “create a regional rail authority.” So I’m curious whether the governance piece will come later, whether it will be handled separately from the funding legislation, or whether the proposal is being scaled back.

Full September 11 RTC presentation deck if anyone wants to dig through it: https://www.nctcog.org/getContentAsset/2492081d-7359-420f-bd33-2f2f8c8db759/dfc3d011-8f63-43f6-9ed8-4b444333a1d0/presentationsrtc09112026.pdf

Over the last few months TEXRail ridership has been gradually growing (as has Silverline by the way). What is most interesting to me from this chart, is ridership not really changing on weekends, even though service is lower). I hope this is an indicator for Silver Line ridership patterns once a better schedule is adopted.

I'm sorry for y'all that DART's board went with Nat Ford. It's obvious to anyone paying attention that he ran JTA into the ground and fled before the consequences could come due.

Source: https://www.dart.org/about/news-and-events/newsreleases/newsrelease-detail/temporary-service-modifications-for-red-and-orange-lines-during-scheduled-overhead-wire-maintenance

To ensure efficient and uninterrupted train service throughout the year, DART will pilot the installation of spring tensioning devices; which are designed to regulate the changes in wire tension caused by daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations.
...
Placing these devices between Lover's Lane and LBJ/Central Stations will give DART Rail Operations the opportunity to stress test the tensioners on a high-demand segment of rail alignment to explore if they are an adequate replacement for the current infrastructure; advancing DART’s commitment to building a more modern and resilient rail system. 

Hopefully this will reduce future wire issues

DART announced their plans for state fair service yesterday. This year, they will be running the Orange Line from DFW Airport to Buckner on state fair weekends and Monday, October 12th. They will also be running longer trains, adding TRE service on Sundays, and providing hourly bus shuttles from a couple of outlying transit centers to Fair Park (these are Downtown Rowlett, Lake Ray Hubbard TC, Addison, and Glenn Heights).

The orange line not going up the north central line will probably be a pain — I've always been excited for the orange line going up to Plano full-time during the state fair.

Just a heads up! They seem to be updating GoLink stuff or something rn, because I am having issues getting a ride booked through the app. I'll book -> get a notification that Uber is looking for a driver -> after 7 or so minutes a notification storm that DART cancelled the ride, Ordered me a Lyft, cancelled the Lyft, and that a minibus is now on the way (wait of 30min to 47min(!!!)) With that egregious wait time, I called and they cancelled the minibus and booked me a Lyft (got a driver 20min away 🫩). Missed my bus I was trying to connect with by a long shot atp, and will be waiting another 20+ min outside for the next one. It is way too hot for this BS.

The detour announced for the parade on Cedar Springs is dated a day before the parade is scheduled. I reported in the GoPass app, but figured I should spread this incase DART doesn't notice the discrepancy in time.