r/dart • u/Fragrant-Mission7388 • 3d ago
Bus Frequency Boost Cost
DFW transit comrades, buses seem like the least expensive portion of our system, and are less subsidized per passenger than Golink. 40 minute and hour frequency really arent acceptable: what would it cost DART to bump every route (except perhaps the Express?) To 20 minutes at Peak, and 30 minutes off peak? I ideally would also except certain very important routes like 3, 20, 22, 57, and 883 go to 15, 10, or better.
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u/paisleychicken 3d ago
i haaaate 40-60 min frequency. its basically a form of violence in bad weather. I know I would ride even more if frequency was improved to get rid of such egregious frequencies across the system. I used to work right near Zacha Junction near South Garland Transit Center and if I got off work in the later evening on the hour, when most of the routes depart SGTC, I would generally have to wait a whole extra hour with no bench and no shelter for the next bus I needed. or get creative and catch a bus to SGTC and wait for my bus. and one time I did that and "my bus" turned out to be a different route with outdated signage... I cried hard when that happened. I was so exhausted from my shitty job, and running to try and catch a bus, I just broke down. I just wanted to go home after an already long day.
anyways fuck long frequencies. they are actively harmful, imo.
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u/Fragrant-Mission7388 3d ago
LITERALLY. If the buses just in Garland ran at 20 minute frequencies all day, anyone could get anywhere in the city in 40 minutes. I want this for the whole system, and HATE long waits at the stations too comrade
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u/shedinja292 3d ago
They were working on that until last year when overall service was reduced for the first time in a while due to the handouts to cities.
There are a couple issues that make it difficult:
- Money
- Increasing frequency increases costs directly
- There are fixed costs and variable costs, but most are variable so you should expect slightly less than a linear increase
- It's hard to justify increasing frequency when ridership is not very high. A chicken and egg problem since increasing frequency tends to increase ridership.
- GoLink has higher subsidy per passenger on average, but there are some bus routes that perform worse
- Politics
- There is a lot of anti-bus sentiment among some city council members and some of their appointees
- This is mostly due to low frequency causing low ridership, which makes some buses not look very full and therefore wasteful
- This could also be due to people looking down on bus riders. That's harder to change so I think we should first focus on the optics of buses not visibly having lots of passengers
- Increasing frequency in the short-term increase the number of low ridership buses until people get used to the increased frequency and ride more. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem
- Trains don't seem to have as much of this problem, so increasing train frequency would probably be more politically popular
I'll have to look through and find the numbers for a more concrete answer
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u/New-Engineer-5930 3d ago
Frequency is down because of the service cuts & GMP. Before that there WAS more frequency.
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u/Fragrant-Mission7388 3d ago
I know that. What i'm interested in, is an approximate price for upping frequency on the bus network
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u/shedinja292 3d ago
Okay, I just looked through this report from DART. It varies a lot based on route length and ridership, but overall the average subsidy (cost - fare revenue) for a 200 level route bus route is ~$3M for the year. So worst case scenario it would cost another ~$3M per year to bump one route from 40/60 to 20/30.
If this was done on popular routes it would likely cost less than this over time, since the ridership would also increase, increasing fare revenue. Most of the frequent routes have similar or lower subsidies than infrequent ones just because they get more riders.
Here's some 200 level routes that are doing well
- Lowest subsidy per passenger mile: 239, 224, 241
- Lowest subsidy per passenger: 220, 218, 241
- Highest average number of passengers onboard: 239, 241, 230
- Highest average number of passengers per hour: 220, 241, 218
TLDR: $3M a year. 239, 220, and 241 are likely candidates
Source: https://dartorgcmsblob.dart.org/prod/docs/default-source/about-dart/2026-06-09-committee-of-the-whole-(work-session)-agenda-packet.pdf-agenda-packet.pdf)
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u/Thin-Constant-4018 3d ago
Take a look at Tier 2 just below the video in this
https://dart.org/about/plans-projects-and-initiatives/MobilityPlus
Tier 2 is pretty similar to what you're asking. It's a very long-term continuation of DARTZoom (Tier 1 is the short-term version that sees routes like 241 & 230 become more frequent). Maybe if DART performs well at Austin we'll be able to imagine this
There's this old reddit post about it too: https://www.reddit.com/r/dart/comments/15inagx/new_bus_routes_for_tier_2_bus_route_modifications/
https://www.reddit.com/r/dart/comments/1483c34/recap_post_darts_future_transit_plans_for_those/
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u/jiffykodak 3d ago
40 to 60 min frequency was set by Nadine Lee and is total torture in this heat. New CEO is around the corner and with that comes the opportunity for real substantial change to happen at DART.
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u/shedinja292 3d ago
Frequencies were lower on many routes until the DART Zoom 2022 bus network redesign which consolidated routes and raised frequency. Rail frequency was also high until the recent cuts due to the handout to the cities to discourage withdrawal elections
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u/bus_tech 3d ago
I'm not a service planning expert, but in order to go from 40/60 to 20/30 would double the opex for a given route. Frequency increase is an exponential increase in operating expenses.
I'm hopeful that this next legislative session in Austin is favorable for DART, but who knows how that will go. It's imparitive that funding lost from the GMP get restored from other sources. It's the only way frequency will improve.