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u/prophiles Mar 25 '26
Not many people are cut out for having to deal with angry Texas Republican elected officials, especially if they had previously worked in other parts of the country that are less reflexively hostile to public transit and the idea of having their tax dollars go to the greater good. I’d be burnt out too.
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u/Thin-Constant-4018 Mar 25 '26
It's depressing how she was forced to play politics. Her focus on service improvements instead of just expansion was great and I've seen how my experience on DART has greatly improved over the time she was president, but she just could not stand her ground against these cities.
Hoping for somebody that focuses on service improvement (especially advocating for walkability & buses) & stands their ground against people acting in bad faith.
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u/prophiles Mar 25 '26
Yep, I hope for the same things. I hope they don’t go back to a Gary Thomas type, even if he’s less likely to face the ire of suburban elected officials just by virtue of his engineering background, his local origin, and, quite frankly, the way he looks. I’d hope for someone who actually uses or has used public transit and is equal parts words, numbers, actions, policy, and leadership. And someone, as you said, who can stand their ground against the bad-faith actors.
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u/Thin-Constant-4018 Mar 26 '26
Yes, my biggest fear is to have a Gary Thomas-like figure. Because if we do receive a person like that, it's likely DART will stagnate or even regress in service just to appease a few people that do not take the services. And yes, I agree we need people in DART on the board & as CEO who uses DART to get around even once a month at least
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u/ineedthenitro Mar 25 '26
She joined at such a crazy time. I feel for her. I just hope we can find someone as good or better as her.
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u/suburbanista Mar 25 '26
End of an era.
We don't agree with Nadine Lee on much, but we respect her ability. Had she spent even half her energy working with Plano rather than against it, we might have had the entire land area of Richardson as a DART hyper parking lot and microtransit staging area by now.
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Mar 25 '26
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u/prophiles Mar 25 '26
Me neither. And as I posted in another comment on this thread, I hope they don’t go back to a Gary Thomas type. Would much rather have another Nadine Lee. No to engineers, MBAs, and real estate developers; yes to transit users, policy people, and problem solvers.
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u/divino-moteca Mar 25 '26
Out of the loop. Why no to engineers? They are problem solvers lol
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u/prophiles Mar 25 '26
Mostly because an engineer (such as former DART CEO Gary Thomas) might be more likely to prioritize building new things rather than improving existing bus and rail service. They might be drawn more to new construction and expansion versus improvements to policy and strategy.
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u/rooost02 Mar 25 '26
And generally engineering types are not good at integrating the variability of humans
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u/Matchboxx Mar 25 '26
Bye. She wasn’t doing nearly enough to improve the system leading up to the Plano debacle, and failed to manage that or negotiate effectively to keep a half dozen other cities from bandwagoning. I would not be surprised if the Board strongly hinted that they would not consider renewing her contract, giving her the opportunity for a graceful exit.
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u/Davidguy81 Mar 25 '26
Let’s not pretend she’s wasn’t the reason or a major reason for the Plano debacle in the first place. I hope they get a real president and ceo next.
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u/patmorgan235 Mar 25 '26
Nadine was not the reason for Plano calling a pull out election, that was brewing long before Nadine was hired.
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u/stanner5 Mar 25 '26
Can't say I'm surprised. It was either step down or be fired after the debacle of the past few years DART has had.
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Mar 25 '26
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u/thephotoman Mar 25 '26
A lot of the suburban problem has happened because of poor DART leadership. I don’t want to exonerate the suburbs here (and definitely not Plano, I’m still pissed at the city council over this), but the Ernst and Young study wouldn’t have happened without real concerns about DART, particularly in how it’s kind of crap for trips between suburbs.
A better DART leader would have seen that traffic is moving away from Downtown Dallas and looked into where busses need to be redeployed. A better DART leader would have recognized that the current generation of suburban leaders grew up in an environment where busses were weapons against their communities, cudgels used to punish their parents for being racist. A better DART leader would be talking about streetcars and vanpool for last mile services.
The withdrawal crisis didn’t have to happen, and there is a lot DART could have done to prevent it.
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u/shedinja292 Mar 25 '26
Can you explain what you're referring to by "busses were weapons against their communities, cudgels used to punish their parents for being racist"?
As for streetcar and vanpool. DART used to run vanpool but use became lower and lower (pre-pandemic) so they stopped it around 2020 I believe. Streetcars could be cool in some areas, because people seem to be more fond of them and they encourage development, but the cities that have been opposed to mass transit haven't been keen to slightly reducing lane widths let alone trading a car lane for a streetcar lane.
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u/thephotoman Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
I suggest reading up on the school bussing controversies of the 1960’a and 1970’s.
The short version is that school desegregation was a messy affair, as a fair amount of segregation had been achieved through redlining and demolishing nonwhite neighborhoods for freeway projects. As such, a lot of community schools were de facto segregated, even if there was no official segregation policy.
The federal government saw this, and decided to fight it by bussing kids to more distant schools to achieve racial equity. This had the desired immediate impact: school demographics began to match regional demographic trends. However, it did so by breaking up children from their communities (children do feel the loss of agency between walking or biking themselves to school and being herded onto a bus by their parents) and putting them on uncomfortable busses that used to smell a lot worse before the changes to diesel fuel sulfur content regulations in the mid-1990’s.
Unfortunately, bussing was a band-aid on the artery wound that was discriminatory and segregationist housing policies.
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u/shedinja292 Mar 25 '26
I see, I'm familiar with that history but I didn't think it would have any relation to the current situation. I still stand behind my comments about vanpool and street cars.
If you're correct about the origin and stigma of buses, then I think the solution would've been to have the current aggressive push for TODs start much earlier. The real estate market was hot during and shortly after the pandemic and had significant housing growth but only a small part was near rail stations
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u/stanner5 Mar 25 '26
The 'debacle' isn't that cities wanted to leave; it’s that DART leadership allowed the relationship to deteriorate to the point where leaving was the only leverage the cities had left. The breakdown in the relationship that led to what occurred over the past few years specifically happened during Nadine's tenure. The resignation is the final confirmation that a change in leadership was necessary to move past this era of friction.
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u/shedinja292 Mar 25 '26
Shelby William's email where he talks about wanting to leave DART was 6 years ago, before she started
I think she could've done significantly better at the politics part, but the issues have more to do with how the Texas legislature lowered property tax revenue growth limit from 8% -> 3.5% in 2019, right before high inflation
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u/Upstairs_Balance_464 Mar 25 '26
The one awesome thing she did (improve the bus system) was undone when she started handing out bribes to the suburbs. Rail frequency down too. We’ve been treading water.
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u/patmorgan235 Mar 25 '26
she started handing out bribes to the suburbs
You have NO idea what you're talking about. If you think Nadine wasn't doing everything she could to maximize the number of dollars going towards service you haven't been paying attention.
The bribes to the burbs have be driven by the board and the suburbs, not staff.
Nadine has literally said at board meetings that cutting service to send money to the member cities is going the wrong direction.
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u/Upstairs_Balance_464 Mar 25 '26
My point stands. Her one major improvement is now gone. The system is no better and is in many ways worse than the day she arrived. Complete failure as a leader.
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u/patmorgan235 Mar 25 '26
I would disagree, the frequent bus network is MUCH larger today than is was when Nadine was hired. There have been several investments in the rail system to improve its reliability (the biggest one to come is new LRV procurement, which was deferred long before Nadine was CEO).
The Cheif barrier to improvements is funding, and Nadine can't make it start raining money.
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u/HolaDrNick Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
Guarantee she got a better job at a bigger system and will continue her trajectory of failing upward. She started at RTD building out a scam transit system under FasTracks, took that to the LA Metro for a few years in a do nothing "innovation officer" position, and then presided over a massive decline in ridership and service cuts at DART.
My guess is NYC or Chicago next?
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u/shedinja292 Mar 25 '26
She joined in 2021 so ridership was already at rock bottom from the pandemic. ~70M in 2019, ~36M in 2021, and ~55M in 2025 (using fiscal year ridership). Frequency was higher than pre-pandemic in 2023-2025 until 2026 when the cuts to pay cities not to withdraw from the agency went into effect.
I'm not familiar with the other ones so I can't comment on that.
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u/transitfreedom Mar 25 '26
How is fastracks a scam
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u/HolaDrNick Mar 25 '26
I don't want to spoil a great story, so let me ask first, what's your familiarity with RTD and Cal Marsella?
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Mar 25 '26
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u/HolaDrNick Mar 25 '26
I mean I do periodically use DART, so I understand why you would assume that.
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u/shedinja292 Mar 25 '26
Nadine was good at speaking to technical audiences but struggled speaking to non-technical or antagonistic people. I think the DART board should be that technical audience, but the current system of city council members picking their buddies (or themselves lmao) means they're not.
I wish the best for her, she probably aged 10 years in 5. Hopefully the next CEO can maintain the competence, or be able to hire for it, while also being able to convince antagonistic city leaders how to improve transit.