TX: Costs, crime rates and riders: Five charts that show how people use DART

As nearly half of Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s 13 member cities have sought to leave the agency this year, throwing the system’s future into limbo, questions of how people use DART and what services the system provides have swirled alongside debates over its governance and funding.

DART is a regional transit agency authorized under state law. It was created by voters in 1983 and is funded with a one-cent local sales tax from member cities across a 700-square-mile service area. DART buses and trains both see more than 20 million trips apiece per year, data shows.

Here are five charts that explain how people use DART, what services cost and what crimes the agency reports on and near its buses and trains.

Overall ridership

DART’s ridership has been steadily trending up in the past four years, according to Jing Xu, the agency’s interim vice president of service planning and scheduling. DART redesigned its bus network and expanded its microtransit service in 2022 with a focus on ridership-driven routes, she said.

DART mainly uses technology that automatically counts when someone boards a DART train or bus, not manual counts or data on how many tickets are bought, which are less accurate, to measure ridership. Microtransit and paratransit data is counted through booking software.

DART is required to report and certify its ridership data to the federal government accurately. The agency tracks ridership by city quarterly and presents that information to DART’s board of directors.

Ridership was dashed in half or more during the pandemic, Xu said, but has gradually increased since 2022. DART now sees about 78% of the ridership it saw before 2020, which Xu said is common in the transit industry.

“A lot of agencies are shifting away from looking at prepandemic comparison, because we are under a new normal,” Xu said. “We need to recognize that … the hybrid work schedule type of arrangement widely exists.”

Weekday ridership

Weekday average ridership is highest on DART’s buses and light rail lines — including its Red, Green, Orange and Blue Lines. The system added the Silver Line, a 26-mile train line that connects seven cities with DFW International Airport, last fall.

The Silver Line’s ridership for December 2025 was nearly 1,600 people per weekday, according to Xu, and the agency expects to see 10,000 riders use the line every day by 2040. The ridership data DART has been able to share for the Silver Line is based on manual counts, not automatic counts by technology.

The conductor of the train tallies ridership and records it manually. The technology to automatically count ridership is not working, Xu said, because the data transfer is experiencing technical difficulties. The agency is working on a fix.

Xu also said ridership is expected to be lower for a newer service. The Silver Line opened in October of last year and it takes a new transit service about two years to reach full ridership potential, she said.

“For any type of transit service, it takes time to build up the ridership and consistent usage of the service,” she said.

On-time performance

DART has struggled to meet its on-time performance goals of 95% on-time arrivals for trains and 85% for buses in the past five years. The target for on-time arrivals is set by DART’s leadership as an “aspirational goal,” Xu said, and punctual bus performance is often affected by road conditions and uncontrollable factors.

Cost of services

The subsidy per trip shows how much tax money is subsidizing each trip on a DART vehicle, calculated by how much money it takes to run that mode of transportation, minus how much money DART gets back for providing it, divided by trips taken on it.

The subsidy for buses was about $11.40 per passenger in 2025, according to the agency, and $8.64 for light rail.

At the center of debates around reforming DART are concerns from some suburban city leaders that they pay too much in sales tax for the services they receive.

Safety and security

DART Police Chief Charles Cato said thefts and assaults reported by the agency have gone down significantly since 2023. But it’s seen crimes against society — such as drug violations — increase. Cato said DART’s reporting requirements for its crime data related to drug use have gotten stricter, which contributes to the increase.

While some crime rates have gone down, people’s beliefs about crime on DART is a different matter.

“I understand that numbers, statistics are just that — they’re numbers on a piece of paper,” Cato said. “People’s ideas and perceptions are what really matters to them.”

The agency saw five homicides on DART property last year, adding to criticism of safety on public transportation. DART’s board cleared $25 million in key contracts to improve security and cleanliness last fall, including about $16.8 million for upgrades to the surveillance camera system.

One of the agency’s largest hurdles in creating a safer environment, Cato said, is convincing riders to report unsafe or illegal activity.

“It’s hard for us as a system to be safer than the communities [from] which we come,” Cato said. “It’s in our interest to help the cities be safer, and it’s in the city’s interest to help us have a safer system.”

©2026 The Dallas Morning News.
Visit dallasnews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.