Shamia Rafter and Frances Rosewell rely on DART for essential travel, urging improvement over cuts and fare hikes.
DALLAS — Residents and leaders in South Dallas are speaking out as DART considers cuts to its services and increases to fares, changes they say could affect their daily lives.
“It is not about convenience. It’s survival,” said Shamia Rafter, TR Hoover Youth Director. “I depend on DART to get to and from work, to and from the grocery store, to do laundry. Anywhere that I need to go, I depend on DART.”
At TR Hoover, Rafter also helps residents such as Frances Rosewell, who relies on DART to help with some medical issues.
“I use DART to go to dialysis three times a week,” Rosewell said. She is also blind in one eye and uses DART’s ADA Paratransit service. “I have waited as long as an hour and a half or two hours for Paratransit to pick me up.”
That’s why both Rafter and Rosewell said DART should focus on improving service, not reducing it.
“We need more resources,” Rafter said. “We need more help versus taking things away.”
Sherri Mixon, Executive Director of the T.R. Hoover Community Development Corporation, also spoke out at a DART Board meeting Tuesday. She addressed the proposed elimination of certain stops, GoLink zones, and increases in fares for services such as ADA Paratransit.
“For people in this community, that was a real blow,” Mixon said. “South Dallas cannot be the scapegoat for what is considered bad decision making that did not follow through, and then you bring this to South Dallas with the last meeting in a location that was not accessible to all to have their voices heard.”
DART is proposing the changes as part of a new General Mobility Program, which would share its annual sales tax revenue across seven cities.
Councilwoman Lorie Blair, who represents District 8—including Red Bird and the Inland Port—said the proposed changes could impact access in growing areas of the city.
“What you’re doing is taking a community and disenfranchising it,” Blair said.
“If I don’t have access to get where I need to go, then what does life look like for me?” Rafter said.
The DART Board is expected to vote on the proposal in August. For more information on the proposed changes to DART, click here.
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