DCTA Board Moves Toward Replacing Most Fixed Bus Routes with On-Demand Vans
The DCTA Board voted Thursday to approve a proposal intended to replace all but two fixed bus routes with on-demand vans run by Via, a company based in New York. DCTA will launch this new service, called GoZone, on September 7th, 2021. There will be a 90-day overlap in fixed-route bus and GoZone services to provide riders with time to transition to the new service.
Example design of DCTA on-demand van.
Fixed bus routes have a set arrival and departure time at designated stops and can serve 40+ passengers on a single trip. On-demand operates more like Uber or Lyft, serving individual passengers or small groups upon request without designated stops, routes, or schedules.
DCTA will keep two fixed bus routes, Route 3 and Route 7, for at least six more months for further assessment. UNT shuttles will also remain.
This move to on-demand service is a response to declining ridership on fixed bus routes. Pre-pandemic, most fixed routes were not meeting the desired threshold of ten boardings per hour. Routes not meeting this threshold were averaging 4 to 8 boardings per hour. On-demand services carry 2.4 to 4.7 passengers per vehicle service hour. DCTA will trade frequency of service for an expanded on-demand service zone they hope will increase ridership.
Riders per hour on DCTA’s fixed bus routes, October 2019 - September 2020.
To be successful, mass transit services need to be reliable, frequent and complemented by medium-density, walkable land use patterns. The largely suburban, sprawling, car-oriented development pattern chosen by DCTA’s member cities makes successful mass transit difficult and more expensive to attain. Successful mass transit is easier and more inexpensive to attain in cities that choose more compact, transit-oriented development patterns, mixed land use, and pedestrian-focused design.
Sprawling, car-oriented development patterns make it difficult and unpleasant for people to travel by foot, wheelchair, bicycle, or mass transit. As a result, more people drive, leading to more cars on the road, more congestion, more pollution, more traffic crashes and injuries, billions more dollars needed to widen and maintain roads, higher transportation costs for households, and a more sedentary and chronically ill population.
Denton has so few places that are not car-oriented that most residents do not have the choice to live in ways that don’t rely on automobiles during all stages of life.
Read: Breaking the cycle of automobile dependency (Planetizen)
Cities looking to reduce traffic congestion and road expenditures focus on prioritizing more space-efficient transportation modes, with trams and buses being the most efficient and cars being the least efficient.
Time needed to transport 200 people by different modes.
Space needed to transport 200 people in the same amount of time via different modes.
On-demand micro transit can complement fixed bus routes, but replacing fixed routes with micro transit has its limits. With fixed bus routes, the subsidy per rider decreases as ridership increases. With on-demand service, necessary subsidies increase along with increases in ridership. In essence, ridership growth is financially a good thing on fixed bus routes, while ridership growth in an on-demand model becomes a financial problem at a certain point.
Replacing fixed bus routes with on-demand vans may work if ridership stays near current levels, but it will not be a scalable solution as Denton’s population spikes over the next few decades.
To reap the public benefits of mass transit and productive fixed bus routes, the City of Denton must pursue the type of compact, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use development that supports it.
Then we’ll need DCTA to provide the buses.
Further Reading:
Learning Module: Microtransit (Shared-Use Mobility Center)
Is Microtransit a Sensible Transit Investment (Human Transit)
Smart Growth and Transportation (Environment Protection Agency)
The Cost of Auto Orientation (Strong Towns)
Planning for Transit-Oriented Development (Federal Transit Administration)
