DART CEO cites "political hurdles" after announcing decision to step down

DALLAS - In her first interview since announcing she was stepping down, DART CEO Nadine Lee highlighted the service's operational successes during her tenure, while citing "political hurdles" the company has experienced in the last few months.

Operational success at DART

What they're saying:

Lee announced on March 25 she would not seek to renew her contract once it ends in September. She has been the leader of the service since 2021.

She pointed to several different aspects of DART when asked by FOX 4's Shaun Rabb to sum up her tenure with the company.

"First of all, from an organizational point of view, my tenure as CEO has really been guided by what we're trying to achieve for the customers and so everything that we've done has been in pursuit of becoming really excellent at operating our services for our customers."

Lee pointed to the company's readiness for this summer's FIFA World Cup. She compared it to an OU-Texas game, and said that the company has been preparing for two years how many people will use the service for the tournament's duration.

"Political hurdles"

Lee pointed to recent "political hurdles" for the service when examining her time with DART.

"But at the broader level, we've encountered a lot of political hurdles, and that's one of the things that has distracted us from our mission, distracted us from moving faster at improving the quality of our services and things like that."

When asked if those hurdles were why she decided to step down, Lee said "Not necessarily directly."

Hurdles include the upcoming DART withdrawal elections that Addison, Highland Park and University Park will have in May. 

"I think in every locality, there are disparate interests and disparate opinions on how to spend taxpayer money, and so, we really had to grapple with that acutely in this region over the last five years, particularly in the last two years."

Plano, Farmers Branch and Irving were originally scheduled to hold the same elections, but withdrew in recent months after DART pledged to change its board of directors and give hundreds of millions of dollars back to the cities.

"I think DART is going to have to recover a bit with the money that is going to be given to the cities. We have yet to see what the impact will be to services and capital program," Lee continued.

DART's future

What's next:

Lee doesn't have an immediate plan for her future, but she doesn't think it will be her last time as CEO of a transit company.

"Well for me, it was really fun for me, and you look at the leadership team and see that there are a lot more women in leadership roles," Lee said.

"I think my future involves making sure that I'm not the last female CEO here in Texas or in Dallas, I should say for transit."

As for DART's future, she said the following:

"There's not going to be a lower need for mass transit, so we have to all decide: "Do we want to invest in it and do we want to actually make it better?" Because we all want it to be better, but it's incongruent to say we want it to be better, but we're going to take money away from it. So I think that's something this region will face in the coming years."