Commissioner Webb: Collin County saw 17.7% rise in traffic deaths as RTC begins unified-transit study

Commissioner Webb, Collin County commissioner for Precinct 4, told the court that Collin County traffic fatalities increased 17.74 percent in 2024 while neighboring counties declined and said the Regional Transportation Council is starting a yearlong effort to draft a unified transit policy.

The report came during Webb’s Regional Transportation Council update. “If you look at the fatalities, they've increased 17.74 percent in the last year versus Dallas went down, Denton went down, Tarrant went down, and we were up 17 percent,” Webb said. He said the county should work with the Texas Department of Transportation on design and other interventions to reduce fatalities.

Webb described a new RTC subcommittee formed to consider how to bring the region’s transit agencies together. “We had our first subcommittee meeting related to what we could do to bring the transit agencies together and formulate a policy that could, push the metroplex into a situation where we could have a unified transit system that's equitable to everybody,” Webb said. He said the subcommittee will meet roughly twice a month over the coming year to draft recommendations to present to the three transit agencies.

Other court members pressed Webb to compare the fatality increase to population growth and construction activity. One commissioner asked Webb to “bang that up against population increase and also about, all the construction that we're having here and if a lot of them are concentrated within construction,” noting construction could be a contributing factor. Webb agreed further location-level analysis was needed and said he would seek data on where crashes are occurring.

Webb also discussed policy options intended to make transit more attractive to nonmember cities, including changes to funding terms. “DART reduces its 1¢ to a half cent. Okay. It could be,” he said in an example of possible incentives to make membership or service agreements more appealing.

Webb warned of political pressure on the existing transit structure tied to upcoming withdrawal elections and demographic growth. “2026 is gonna be the year in which, withdrawal elections can occur for several of the big cities,” he said. “We're projected to double in size. The metroplex will be within, in the next 30 years, will be at effectively 16,000,000 people.” He added that without integrated transit, building sufficient road capacity would not be feasible.

The court did not take a formal vote on the RTC items; Webb’s remarks were presented as an update. He said the RTC update included routine policy and goal items and a crash-and-fatality briefing for 2024, and that the subcommittee will work on proposals that could be offered to transit agencies and member and nonmember cities.