The chairman of Dallas Area Rapid Transit's board used an Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce event on Friday to outline transit ideas he wants the agency to pursue over the next decade, including a roughly $300 million rail program and a larger role for Union Station.
The chamber's 2026 Transportation Summit, held Oct. 23 in Hitt Auditorium at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, brought together officials responsible for regional planning, transit and state highways, Dallas Weekly reported.
Along with DART board chair Randall Bryant, the speakers were Regional Transportation Council Chairman Stephen Mason; Steven Alvis of the Texas Transportation Commission; and Ceason Clemens, who leads the Texas Department of Transportation's Dallas District as its district engineer. Sessions covered the region's long-range planning, where North Texas transit goes next, and what the 2027 Legislature and TxDOT may mean for the Dallas area.
What Bryant proposed
Bryant told Dallas Weekly that choices made in the next 10 years will decide how well the region handles congestion and air quality, and he named how densely land near rail stations is developed as another major issue.
He described a capital program he called "closing the system," which he put at about $300 million and said he would like to see finished within five years. Dallas Weekly reported that he presented it as something DART should pursue, not as a funded commitment.
He also described a second rail line through downtown that would route every DART rail line to Union Station, where riders could transfer to Amtrak, the Dallas Streetcar or the Trinity Railway Express. "It gives us the ability to put more capacity and more frequency," Bryant said.
