By Tony Hartzel / the Dallas Morning News

Word-association test: DART.
What springs to mind? Perhaps smooth rail transit. Or effortless bargain commuting. Maybe even images of legendary German efficiency in making sure the trains run on time.
If only it had always been that easy. DART celebrates the 10th anniversary of rail service in Dallas today. But it's a good bet no one will celebrate the excruciating birth pains. It's a good bet people want to bury memories of the neighborhood insurrections over noise and fear of degraded property values – not to mention the political fights that tried to derail what has blossomed into a prime civic selling point.
This is how bad it was: Cowboys owner Jerry Jones helped bankroll a DART pullout campaign in Irving not two months after the first commuter trains eased out of downtown Dallas. Plano, Carrollton and Rowlett also placed pullout issues on the ballot, but voters in all four cities wisely decided against bolting from the DART fold.
What a difference a decade makes. DART looks like a model of success. It points to robust ridership gains and ambitious plans to double the rail system to 90 miles within seven years.
By that time, all four erstwhile rebel suburbs will enjoy the benefits of DART commuter trains. Today, instead of plotting to undermine

rail service, leaders of unserved communities are struggling to attract it.
By that time, all four erstwhile rebel suburbs will enjoy the benefits of DART commuter trains.
They see the lucrative development alongside rail stations. They hear from residents who consider rail service an amenity in this day of $3-a-gallon gasoline. And, most significant, they grasp the regional importance of getting cars off the road. (For the uninitiated: Less traffic cuts the need for expensive highway lanes and helps avoid potentially costly clean-air violations.)
Today's challenge in meeting demand for rail is much trickier than dealing with pockets of small-minded antagonists.
DART's service area is surrounded by a ballooning outer ring of non-member cities that includes the state's hottest growth areas. Most have devoured the sales-tax cushion that otherwise could be used to buy into DART or another rail authority.
The area's legislative delegation and transit planners are trying to find solutions, including a promising plan to get cities a half-cent in extra taxing authority and help them tap into a seamless regional rail network. It's important they act with dispatch. In another 10 years, 60 percent of the region's population

will have sprawled outside DART's 13-city service area.
No one would suggest the politics of expanding the rail network will be easy. But as DART officials of 10 years ago could tell you, the fight is winnable – and worth it.

Gary Thomas at the 10th Anniversay of railway