Image courtesy of Chase Headley
Chase Headley is a Casa View neighbor who has been taking Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) to his job downtown five days a week for the last couple years, and while DART serves him well enough for his work commute, he thinks a different kind of route could improve public transit in the neighborhoods east of White Rock Lake.
So he designed a circulator route that he thinks would greatly improve in neighborhood’s public transportation, circulating between White Rock Lake, Casa Linda, Casa View and Eastfield College.
According to the DART website, it would take Headley 1 hour and 12 minutes to get from the Casa View Shopping Center to Arboretum Village on the south end of White Rock Lake. That is only 10 minutes faster than walking, and it’s a 10 minute drive by car.
White Rock Lake is the true gem Dallas,” Headley says. “For it to be a nightmare to get there by bus always baffled me.”
A circulator route is a bus that runs on a fixed and predictable schedule in a loop, often with two buses running in opposite directions so that passengers don’t have to ride all the way around the wrong direction if they want to go back a stop.
Headley noted circulator routes in other cities such as Washington D.C. that can help neighbors stay in their area to shop, run errands and enjoy the area’s attractions. In a neighborhood with a burgeoning shopping and restaurants on Garland Road, White Rock Lake, the arboretum, Eastfield College and a network of trails, East Dallas could be a good fit for such a route.
DART has the D-Link route downtown, which serves as a circulator route of sorts, but Headley sees potential for other areas of Dallas. Even just to get from the Casa View area to Casa Linda isn’t easy by bus, and in an area whose public transit woes are well documented, Headley has received positive responses from his neighbors.
“Going to Casa Linda from Casa View with provide added resources that Casa View doesn’t have,” he says.
But Rob Smith, DART’s assistant vice president of service planning and development, says a circulator in East Dallas is unlikely because there isn’t the density to make it cost effective. Right now, DART’s circulator routes exist in higher density areas like downtown and near Parkland Hospital, but are only feasible because they are subsidized by third parties.
“There is not enough ridership to justify the cost,” Smith says of an East Dallas circulator route.
Smith highlighted the On-Call and GoLink zones where DART provides pick-up and drop-off services to specific locations, but neither service is offered in the area of Headley’s circulator route.
