Let's get this straight. The good folks of Dallas don't pay attention and get screwed. The burbs demand what they are due and they're the bad guys? And how tiny is your world when Irving is a Boonie? Ain't no game for a blind man.

Ok. Maybe you wrote about this in another column and I just didn't see it but Jim: What happened to the $1B?

Are you saying somebody ripped it off?

Or was the original budget that lead to the insufficient funding acquisition based faulty cost estimating done years ago by the (now) former planning director that is only now comming to the surface?

It makes a difference. And you would, of course, know this...being a big time journalist and all.

I've said this here before: Thomas is a very competent and very honest guy. That he "gets" to keep his job is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks for your passion!

Yes, it's a huge scam, and there should be an audit and heads should roll, but...

two new routes to nowhere

The Orange Line to DFW Airport is a "route to nowhere?"

while the boonie bubbas make off with the city’s pants

Someone might want to let Jim know about all the "diverse citizens" that live near the two "bubba" routes he's referring to.

Look, Dallas was already using its pants for ankle warmers. The suburbs are just trying to keep the same thing from happening to them. Not an ideal situation, but what, they're supposed to just take one for the team?

Make no mistake, rke, i'm just jealous. I wish we had people that sharp working for the city.

Irving is only boonies in a rail transit sense. If you built rail to reduce car congestion, you would build it were the people are, instead of using it to create new sprawl and new congestion where the people are not. yet. Like Rowlett.

As for Catbird, nobody knows where the $1 billion went. The chair of the damn board just had to quit under a cloud, with secret side-deal contracts with the agency's outside auditor, and DART has done nothing to clear the air on that, not to mention the possibility that it overspent the missing $1 billion on work that's already underway, or that the missing $1 billion was wasted because of the agency's desire to reduce opportunities for competitive bidding, a tendency it now proposes to exagerrate even more.

We know nothing about where the money went. The 'burbs don't care as long as they get more money. And the city is shy on the subject for reasons that might make us all blush.

The question that should be asked is, "If Gary Thomas concealed the one BILLION dollar shortfall, what else is he hiding? How can that idiot DART Board keep him on the payroll after such reprehensible behavior? Are they just stupid, or is David Dean protecting him? Why is David Dean involved in this anyway? Lots of questions need to be answered, but I won't live long enough to get the answers.

Man, this SUCKS! I knew this was going to happen, the moment I heard that they misplaced the reciepts for a B...b...b...b...Billion dollars. I work in Deep Ellum and I already heard that things were going to be hosed for 18 months with the new Dart construction. Now things will be screwed for evah!

If I ran my business like the city did, they would barbecue my ass in molasses.

Uh, Jim, have you even been to Irving? Have you ever tried to commute into Dallas from Irving? That rail line make a a lot of sense. There are definitely people in Irving, and "Bubba" is not the derogative term I would use to describe them.

So if Dallas has a contract to have DART start building the rail line now was that deal somehow legally negated or overridden by Thomas's ass covering? Hiring a guy from the burbs and firing the whistle blower don't seem to indicate that we in Dallas have to bend over on this one if we can get somebody to speak up. Did William Valesco have anything to say about the re-org or the burbs apparent kick in the nuts to Dallas?

They are also trying to fund the BBBBillion on the backs of long suffering bus riders who have supported DART through thick and thin.

Under the new service plans that started March 3, service to my neighborhood was essentially cut in half. The last rush hour bus which come only every 40 minutes leaves at 8:20 and the next isn't until 9:40.

While I have a car to drive if needed, many in my neighborhood don't. So the suburbs are also benefitting at the expense of current riders.

I meant "Bubba" in the good sense.

I'm still waiting to hear why the suburbs should apologize for anything...

So, the suburbs are the big bad enemy? For something that was promised to them?

Jim im usually in total agreement... but those of us in the Rowlett boonies who have to drive to Garland to catch a train that was supposed to be ready to operate out of Rowlett like... perhaps NEXT YEAR as was first promised and have been paying in our share of the DART funding for these long decades are well within our rights.... just cause Dallas leaders can't lead but sit and watch all the good stuff migrate out of town, don't take it out on us.

So how DO WE get the FEDS involved??

pjw

Did I hear the words, "David Dean?"

Let's look at this DART issue on a point by point basis:

1. While Gary is a fine, and charming man....he lacks the testicular abilities (ie: BALLS) that it would take to clean house like he should have done for years.

Since before I was on the DART Board (1990-1993), there has been members on staff who ruled the roost, without fear of retribution.

Gary was encouraged to fire off those staffers, and their cronies....but he allowed them to continue to bilk the tax payers, and live off the agency's larder.

There have been well publicized stories of the expense lunches, lavish trips, and bonuses....all while bus service suffered, and hidden deficits soared.

And there is NO WAY IN HELL that the 1 BILLION dollars deficit for construction was not well known within the agency....and I am sure there had to be awareness of it at a Board Level for quite some time.

2. The Suburbs....(who received a fraction of the service in comparison to Dallas for over 22 years) are due the rail service that was promised to them when the 14 city Transit System was voted on. DART is OBLIGATED contractually to to finish those lines BEFORE the City of Dallas can start adding other items to the system.

and finally:

3. Doug Allen was NOT unceremoniously pushed out. To get the job he now has, he would have had to have interviewed for over several months. I think he was given the option to leave, in an attempt to save face for what ultimately was HIS errors, and lack honesty with the Board, and the Cities.

Now, I am not saying that the increase cost of materials, and construction delays are all his fault....but Doug knew...and bided his time until those ASTROFRICKINOMINALLY huge deficits could be hidden no more.

I am heartsick over what has happened to the Agency, and the 14 City Transit System I worked so hard to build, and keep together. And I know I am not the only former Board member that feels that way.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the reason the suburbs are the villain is because...

suburbs = urban sprawl = more reliance on freeways and cars = more congestion and higher oil consumption = more pollution and dead American kids in Iraq (or the next place we need oil from).

So yeah...suburbs generally suck.

Coop, so you want more than a million people to move into the urban core? or "the loop"???

will you fund the 200, 100 story buildings for that?

thanks

This way, there will be no need for DART, and we can save billions!

Coopdizzle the thing about "sprawl" is that it isn't bad.

It's a sure sign that the capitalist system is creating wealth and enabling more of our citizens to live the American dream of single family home ownership away from crowded/small/smelly/noisy/dangerous/expensive apartments.

Only leftist urban planners, global warming alarmists and control freak liberal politicians and bureaucrats find anything at all wrong with modern surban life.

The America suburb is the heartland of the free world.

And dude, in my view, all the creeps that hate it need to build themselves a co-housing project, focus on managing each other and leave the rest of us alone.

"If you built rail to reduce car congestion, you would build it were the people are, instead of using it to create new sprawl and new congestion where the people are not."
It's so easy to write, so hard to think.
Nobody but a fool builds rail to "reduce car congestion," because as soon as you've reduced it, people get back into their cars (if they left them in the first place) and so you're back where you started. And nobody but a fool builds rail to where people are, because by the time you get there, they've moved on, leaving a tangle of roads and highways behind them.
Successful systems such as Sacramento and Portland are building rail to where people are going to be in 10-20-50-70 years -- I guess you would call those places the "boonies." How are they doing this? By creating concentrations of high-density housing, retail and services so that people will cluster around rail and not clutter up the countryside with sprawl. Because it's the auto and roads that have given us sprawl, not rail.
I don't know a thing about Thomas and DART's use or misuse of funds. But I do know how easy it is to fire off a couple cheap lines about "Bubba" out in the "boonies" that make one appear to know something about a subject that, it turns out, one does not really understand at all.

Thinking you're better than everyone else + clueless youth + "me" generation + too much Deep Elum + starring in his own movie = Coopdizzle.

So yeah...Coopdizzle generally sucks.

We had a few high density areas in the city where I grew up. Very walkable, most of the residents used public transportation. Diverse population. Lots of entertainment, non-chain retail, etc.

The area was know as the Jeffries Housing Projects and my mom always made us lock the car doors before we drove by...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffries_Projects

Hicks. Suburbanites. Urbanites. It's called evolution.

Catbird is right, there is nothing technically wrong with the burbs, just like there is nothing technically wrong about sitting around watching paint dry if that floats your boat. The burbs are a lot like what I imagine Purgatory to be like, not exactly hell, just a whole lot of waiting around.

Heh, way to stir the shit, Jim.

I have been reading a ton on Cyburbia.com an urban planning web site. There are some village planners with some cred that are saying that fuel prices are the wild card in the slumification of the suburbs. That if fuel gets expensive enough, those McMansions will get chopped up into apartments (like Swiss Avenue during WWII). I'm not sure if I buy it, but it's an interesting scenario.

It would be some fucking irony if the maids had to take Dart from "Cumberland Crossing" in Frisco to service the rich people living off of Ross Avenue (instead of vice versa).

Fuel prices or not, the bottom line is that middle class families will not return to the city in significant numbers for any type of housing until the DISD school system is improved. And that's not happening anytime soon.

So we have the rich, the poor and the childless.

I don't know if I've ever seen anyone on these boards get so completely destroyed the way Anne just destroyed Schutze. Wow.

"live the American dream of single family home ownership away from crowded/small/smelly/noisy/dangerous/expensive apartments."

umm - sooooo - the American Dream is to be in soulless, ticky tacky house farm, with a fat bitter stay-at-home mom, and 2-hour-round-trip-commute dad, a fat leased SUV that burns too much gas, and two over-scheduled uber-kids who haven't been out in their postage stamp backyard to do anything other than clean up the dog shit from their dog that never gets walked???

Is there a problem with the American dream as defined by a PLACE? The conformity and homogeneity of the burbs gives a false sense that we can protect ourselves from the "undesirables - you know, non-bible beaters, non-whites, etc.

So we get fatter because we never walk anywhere, more bitter so the divorce rate stays high, more detached from our neighbors because we never see them.

Oh - and by the way, when gas gets to be $5 a gallon, and the food costs skyrocket because of all the grains going to make bio-fuels, and your house devalues by 35% because of all the foreclosures in the area, whatcha gonna do then?

The "American Dream" has to do with FREEDOM, not material goods packed into a house with a lawn.

MWBE programs are a way to get more people to work. They are unfair, they support already wealthy caucasion males willing to put a female or "Qualified" individual in charge of their company. The USA has been eating itself from the inside out for decades. Because I am classified as a NON ETHNIC WHITE AMERICAN, I am repeatedly denied business by the US's major telecom carriers like AT&T, SBC, the US Govt itself and many other carriers. It is all a damned lie to keep the fat people fat. I have been courted by other companies because of my abilites to provide tested equipment, but I am repeatedly denied access to the fat contracts. Instead, I have to sell to MWBE companies so they can put it in their box and mark it up another 30%. MWBE's have NOTHING to do with race. RACE IS A MYTH. These programs were created for the greed of the fat lawyers and bankers that aren't wiling to get their hands dirty. WAKE UP AMERICA AND BOYCOTT THESE BULLIES THAT ARE TAKING YOUR MONEY BECAUSE THEY ARE "ETHNIC." By the way, I have just as much ethnicity as any other being on this planet. STICK IT SBC.