On February 2, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) will begin implementing changes to routes and weekday rail and bus frequencies. In a press release yesterday, the agency said that it would discontinue “several low-performing bus routes,” and change the frequency of others. Weekday light-rail frequency on the Red, Blue, Green, and Orange lines will move from every 15 minutes to every 20 minutes.
DART says the changes followed a series of community meetings last year. “These changes reflect what our riders and communities told us last year: ‘minimize disruption while maintaining access’,” DART spokesperson Jeamy Molina said in a statement. Alex Wolford attended several of those meetings this summer and filed a report in August about the reaction to what DART was proposing, which at the time included reducing paratransit zones and raising fares for single-rides and paratransit services. (The DART board ultimately approved the latter, but not the former.)
Alex wrote of those meetings: “Riders explained how those services help them and how they could not live without them. What was also clear in this far too small room was that there was a palpable sense of frustration and not knowing exactly whom to pin it on. DART itself, member cities, the state?”…