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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Dallas Morning News
Byline: Tony Hartzel
Feb. 26--Once faced with keeping member cities from fleeing, Dallas Area Rapid Transit now faces the equally difficult task of figuring out how to accept new members. More than a dozen cities surrounding Dallas have approached the once-scorned agency with visions of buses and trains serving their residents.
DART has developed a tentative proposal to extend commuter rail service more easily to nonmember cities, which could improve the region's worsening traffic snarls. At the same time, it must consider the 13 cities that have dedicated almost $4 billion to build and run the agency's trains, buses and high-occupancy vehicle lanes since 1984.
"We're grappling with how to be fair," Dallas resident and DART board member Linda Koop said. "There's no question that as we get more crowded, it's becoming more important to provide mass transit to the entire region."
After several committee meetings, DART board members have focused on several key proposals:
-- Requiring new member cities to commit a mandated 1 percent sales tax to DART. That would prove difficult for the majority of non-DART cities that would have to make room for it under the cap that the state sets for cities' use of local sales tax.
-- Allowing cities outside DART to contract for bus service or rail service, which the agency currently does not permit.
-- Creating commuter rail networks with outlying cities that form their own transit agency, similar...
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