BILL ANALYSIS

Senate Research Center	S.B. 858
87R6610 SRA-F	By: Johnson; Paxton
	Transportation
	3/17/2021
	As Filed

AUTHOR'S / SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT

Since 2013, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) customers have had the ability to purchase tickets and transit passes through electronic applications, including DART.org and the GoPass mobile app. Section 452.061, Transportation Code, currently protects DART.org and GoPass app users by excepting the user's personal identifying information�such as name, address, email address, financial records, and passwords�from the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA).

As technology advances, DART's applications allow customers to purchase tickets and plan transit trips from their home, place of employment, and other locations. Due to these updated features in the application, DART collects and stores customers' personal travel itineraries such as travel time, travel date, trip origin, and destination location with address or latitudinal and longitudinal data as well as demographic information of the person scheduling the trip. If this information is released in response to a TPIA request, it could jeopardize the confidentiality of customer travel patterns and be used to identify home locations, work sites, and characteristics of individual customers.

S.B. 858 protects DART riders by clarifying that a customer's trip data, demographic information and financial information collected by Dallas Area Rapid Transit or Trinity Metro is confidential and not subject to disclosure under Chapter 552, Government Code.

As proposed, S.B. 858 amends current law relating to the disclosure of information collected by a regional transportation authority under the public information law.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

This bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, institution, or agency.

SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS

SECTION 1. Amends Section 452.061(e), Transportation Code, as follows:

(e) Provides that personal identifying information collected by a regional transportation authority is confidential and not subject to disclosure under Chapter 552 (Public Information), Government Code, including a person's:

(1) makes no changes to this subdivision;

(2) makes a nonsubstantive change to this subdivision;

(3) trip data, including the time, date, origin, and destination of a trip, and demographic information collected when the person purchases a ticket or schedules a trip; and

(4) other personal information, including financial information, rather than other personal financial information.

SECTION 2. Effective date: upon passage or September 1, 2021. �