The Plano City Council voted to hold a special election allowing residents to decide whether to leave Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
The Plano council decided unanimously November 5 to hold a special election in 2026, where residents will vote on whether to stay with DART or to seek other options.
As The Dallas Express previously reported, Farmers Branch and Highland Park voted November 4 to hold May 2, 2026, elections on whether to withdraw from DART. The Irving City Council will also decide November 6 on a withdrawal election.
If Plano residents decide to leave DART, services will cut off immediately after the election. During the meeting, Plano Director of Policy Andrew Fortune said the city has already secured $4 million for an alternative transit plan, so service could remain uninterrupted.
“Tonight, what’s before you is not transit or no transit. We’re not taking away transportation from our residents,” Fortune said. “Staff has been in conversations with potential vendors.”
Member cities may opt out of DART once every six years, so the next window is 2026. Frustrations have been mounting among suburban member cities about the agency’s spending, governance, and safety.
Mayor John Muns said officials support public transit, but want to find the most effective option.
“We owe it to the residents of Plano to weigh in on this, whether they support continuing on as member cities with DART or to come up with a better solution,” Muns said. “We want the growth that’s happening in Frisco, Allen, McKinney, Prosper, on and on and on, to be a participant in this connectivity.”
Defending DART
DART CEO Nadine Lee, Chair Randall Bryant, and former Chair Gary Slagel defended the agency during the meeting.
Lee said DART had worked in “good faith” to address Plano’s concerns. She highlighted the General Mobility Program (to return 5% local sales tax – $28 million in one year), the expansion of curb-to-curb GoLink zones, a new Legacy circulator bus route, and $110 million in funding for safety, reliability, and cleanliness since 2021.
“Crime on DART is down by double digits,” Lee said.
As The Dallas Express previously reported, crime on DART lines has risen in 2025. Group A Offenses – including arson, assault, robbery, and drugs – grew almost 44% since last year. Excluding drug offenses, they would have fallen more than 6%.
“The progress we’ve made comes from standing together and confronting our challenges as one region,” Lee said. “I invite you to work with us, with transparency, collaboration, and good faith to resolve these issues in place of withdrawal.”
Bryant, who took office October 28, said he learned within 12 hours of taking office that cities were going to advance withdrawal.
“I hope that those conversations in earnest continue. But this vote tonight hurts that ability,” he said. “We’ve seen the history from this council and others – when you take an action on one side, and you force the other side to go in the other corner, the opposition do not meet in the middle.”
The Regional Transportation Council, of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, has been developing a regional transit plan to resolve member cities’ concerns, according to Slagel. As The Dallas Express reported, the group recently offered to help resolve member cities’ concerns.
“Over the past six months or so, we’ve been having meetings on understanding what the future of transit might be,” Slagel said. “That is starting to materialize.”
Numerous residents across the region – including activists with the Democratic Socialists of America and DART advocacy group Dallas Area Transit Alliance – opposed Plano’s withdrawal vote.
Jane Harmon, a Carrollton woman in a wheelchair, said she relies on DART to reach medical appointments.
“I have, for many years, been seeing my medical providers and my therapists in Plano,” she said. “I’m terrified at what’s going to happen.”
Democrat state Rep. Venton Jones, of Dallas, urged local solutions before a withdrawal vote.
“I’ve heard as recent as December things were brought up to negotiate with the body, but I have not seen any earnest goodwill negotiations since,” Jones said. “I am asking you all to strongly consider, before using this method, to come to the table.”
Moving Forward
Mayor Pro Tem Maria Tu addressed Bryant’s request to continue discussions.
“You know what? We’ve been continuing talking for six and a half years – six and a half years of talking with no results,” Tu said. “Compromising requires that there’s good faith on both sides.”
She emphasized the need for an efficient transit provider that puts Plano’s needs first.
“Instead of kowtowing to Dallas Area Rapid Transit, why can’t we do Collin County Area Rapid Transit?” Tu said.
If Plano voters withdraw from DART, they would have to continue paying off a portion of the agency’s debt. DART is billions of dollars in debt, divided among member cities as an alleged exit barrier.
This would require Plano to continue paying DART for seven to 10 years after it cuts off service, according to Muns. But the six-year withdrawal window would force the city to continue paying, postponing the debt payoff to “future councils and future residents.”
Muns said Plano officials hope to keep DART rail access, but are currently working out the details. Either way, he said, the city would find a way to bring people to their destinations.
“We’ve worked for the last six years with DART, trying to come up with some solutions, and come up with a better model of what it can be to Plano – and actually all the member cities. We’ve really struggled to be able to do that,” Muns said. “This is an opportunity for our community to weigh in on whether or not they want to continue down this same path.”
Spending, Governance, and Crime
Former Plano City Councilman Shelby Williams previously told The Dallas Express the city had tried “diligently” to work with DART, but the agency never followed through.
“Especially during the legislative sessions, DART says, ‘Oh no, we’ll work with Plano, we want a local solution to this,’” Williams said at the time. “As soon as the legislative session is over, they disappear, and we don’t hear from them, and they don’t actually work with us.”
After the council moved forward with the withdrawal election, Williams told The Dallas Express voters deserve to have a say.
“The voters back in 1983 lived in a very different Plano, where DART probably once made sense,” he said.
Plano is just one of numerous member cities with rising concerns about imbalances in DART spending and governance.
Plano gave $109.6 million in sales taxes to DART, but received only $44.6 million in services in 2023, according to a study The Dallas Express exclusively reported. This is an annual deficit of $65 million.
In the meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Maria Tu asked if the city’s spending on DART had increased “dramatically” since then. Fortune said yes.
Tu also asked if the 2023 DART cost estimates included the expenses of emergency responses from Plano Police Department and Plano Fire-Rescue.
“How about our Plano Police Department having to respond? … How about our fire department, who has to respond to emergencies on our DART rails or on buses?” she asked.
That estimate did not include the cost of emergency responses, according to Fortune.
DART spent more than $2.4 million on executive bonuses from 2020 to 2024, and over $800,000 in total on executive bonuses last year alone, as The Dallas Express exclusively reported.
While Dallas maintains a vast majority on the DART board of directors, cities like Highland Park must share a single representative with other cities – which mayors said makes it difficult to represent their constituents.
The DART board of directors approved a “General Mobility Program” in March, returning 5% of annual sales tax revenue to several member cities. Cities like Plano went to the Texas legislature, supporting bills to reform the DART board and allow cities to redirect some sales tax revenue.
In July, Slagel demanded member cities drop the reforms in exchange for GMP funding, as The Dallas Express exclusively reported. At the time, Carrollton Mayor Steve Babick said DART had made the compromise into a “poison pill.”
City Councilman Rick Horne said Plano is looking at spending $131 million on DART in 2025.
“I don’t see any improvements from DART to serve all the citizens of Plano. I still see empty buses. I still hear complaints of GoLink,” Horne said – when DART supporters erupted in the crowd.
“The Plano Police Association even reports to us that there’s high crime at DART stations, and they say that’s a greater problem to them than the short-term rentals that we looked at two years ago,” he continued.
Tu went to the Collin County Courthouse, and asked judges about crime near DART stations, she said.
“Lo and behold, I got an ear full – and an ear full – and an ear full,” Tu said. “I don’t believe the safety concerns of our residents are truly being addressed by the DART transit system at this point.”