As DART plans more work for Cotton Belt line, Far North Dallas residents continue pushback

The Dallas City Council meeting on Wednesday marked a small win for Far North Dallas neighborhood residents concerned about the new Cotton Belt rail line. An agreement between the city and Dallas Area Rapid Transit promises to ban freight service on a 3-mile segment of the east-west commuter rail line.

But homeowners who have followed the rail project still fear what’s coming next.

Bolstered by a new council member, they plan to continue to fight the Cotton Belt plans as long as it takes, Maura Schreier-Fleming, president of the Highlands of McKamy IV & V Homeowners Association, said Wednesday.

Homeowners have opposed the Cotton Belt line proposal for years. DART initially proposed the project in 2006 and acquired 5.3 miles of the Cotton Belt freight line in 2010.

“DART gets to say what’s safe. DART gets to make decisions. Not fair, not right,” Schreier-Fleming said. “Somebody’s going to get killed.”

In the next few months, DART will push forward with construction of the 26-mile, $1.2 billion east-west commuter Cotton Belt or “Silver” line — starting with embankments, bridge structures and retaining walls. Construction began in November.

Built to ease increasing North Texas commuter transit demands, the line will span seven cities and connect Plano to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The connection is expected to be ready by 2022.

Central to residents’ complaints are features they said are unsafe, and what they perceive as a lack of transparency from the transit agency.

But Schreier-Fleming’s demand is a big ask — and one that’s come up before: Build a tunnel for the passing trains. The transit agency threw out that idea years ago. The reason? It’s too expensive.

“The only safe alternative is to tunnel a train,” Schreier-Fleming said, citing the surrounding residential neighborhood and the anticipated 60 to 90 crossings a day she was told by DART would occur. “For them not to realize that is incomprehensible.”

Councilmember Lee Kleinman, who heads the council’s transportation committee, said the proposal doesn’t stand a chance. DART’s final environmental impact statement and $908 million from the federal government is for the current alignment, he said.

DART had already promised city officials in March 2018 that freight trains would never run in the 3-mile segment between Waterview Parkway and the Dallas North Tollway. But Wednesday’s agreement appeases fears from neighborhood residents who say DART hasn’t kept its promises.

“How much do residents have to give up?” said Brian Finkelstein, a Far North Dallas resident, at the council meeting Wednesday.

DART plans 10 rail stations and four connections to other lines on the Cotton Belt project. Thomas said they expect 5,630 trips a day, bringing in $2 million a year at the beginning in 2022. He estimates ridership would double by 2040.

In September, at a protest near the Cotton Belt crossing over Preston Ridge Trail, Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn, who represents Far North Dallas, told residents there’s only so much they can control — DART has the right of way, and options are limited for stopping the project, she said.

But many of those residents said they feel they have a new advocate in Mendelsohn, who took office in June. She said there are some things they can control, like how to make the area safer.

“They are frustrated from years of not being listened to,” Mendelsohn said of residents in an earlier interview. “There’s no trust. … When everything keeps changing, DART’s earned that.”

At a council committee briefing Tuesday, DART President Gary Thomas said the agency has added safety features, like pedestrian gates for at-grade crossings.

That hasn’t done much to appease residents’ fears. They say DART officials’ plans don’t go far enough, and that they’ve been kept in the dark.

Residents said they were caught by surprise when plans for a 15-foot sound wall to quell noise grew 5 feet taller at Hillcrest Road at McCallum Boulevard. At Coit Road, a design DART proposed raised the tracks to 36 feet, which includes the 15-foot sound wall.

Mendelsohn on Wednesday slammed Thomas for coming forward with those plans, which she said would benefit a handful of homeowners at the expense of 1,250 Highland Springs residents.

“What I’m telling you is these are destructive solutions,” Mendelsohn said, “and the community is quite unhappy. Do you think the community is happy with where this is going?”

Thomas said DART officials will work on offering alternative solutions that would resolve Mendelsohn’s concerns.

Kleinman, a long-serving council member who has supported the project for years, said Wednesday that circumstances have changed since the project was proposed. But he still believes the rail line brings economic value to the region.

“I do believe this project contributes greatly to the east-west transportation needs in North Dallas and in the region,” Kleinman said earlier at the committee briefing. “We have to do our best to protect the interest of those neighbors that live along the alignment and are being most impacted by that.”