DCTA Moves to Eliminate NTMC, Expand Bus Service (!!)
Later hours and higher frequency coming in August
More good news is coming out of DCTA, a sentence I am *beyond* happy to type. DCTA is still forging ahead on A-Train service improvements (15 minute headways, extension to Downtown Carrollton to meet DART’s new Silverline, faster travel times, consideration of longer hours, and a potential Corinth station), but as we all know — rail is a slow process. Paul Cristina is a former rail guy, so I trust he’ll get the job done, but in the mean time — big bus news!
In brief:
- NTMC is being folded into DCTA. Drivers will have significantly better pay and benefits, but lose collective bargaining and strike rights
- Route 3, 6, and 7 are getting 20 minute service headways all day, and being extended to run 7AM — 9PM
- Some GoZone capacity will move to Lewisville/Highland Village, and GoZones will not be available for trips entirely along routes 3/6/7.
First, let’s start with the mixed news: DCTA is folding the North Texas Mobility Corporation (NTMC) back into itself. NTMC is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of DCTA that held DCTA’s staffing for their bus operations. DCTA has a somewhat similar deal with Rio Grande Pacific, a rail company that holds the contract to run the A-Train, but unlike Rio Grande Pacific, NTMC *only* serviced DCTA. My personal opinion is that this arrangement existed to allow DCTA to cut costs by stiffing bus staff with worse healthcare and benefits. The agency said at the time it was to allow them to execute service contracts with other local governments who were interested in transit, but that doesn’t seem to have materialized.
There are a few practical upshots to this: the first is that DCTA is offering much higher pay — the current listing says driver pay starts at $20.42/hr (although this may include benefit value). Drivers I’ve spoken to said their pay at NTMC was around $14-$15. Their benefits package will also improve considerably, including better health insurance, better life insurance, and more PTO (this is based off comparing the listed benefits now versus when I applied for the job back in 2021). Additionally, DCTA promises that all NTMC staff will receive job offers, so this is not DCTA firing any staff.
The downside, for those who care about unions (and everybody should care about unions) is that DCTA bus operators will no longer have the right to collectively bargain or strike. Texas bans public employees from collectively bargaining or striking. Collective bargaining is the main tool of unions — individual employees have little ability to negotiate with employers as they likely need the job more than the company needs a single employee — a power imbalance that unions rectify. Striking is the leverage behind the bargaining.
Because NTMC was technically a private company, bus operators retained their right to strike and bargain, although the current round of collective bargaining did not seem to be going well. However, it isn’t just the present that matters here — no matter how collective bargaining may have gone this time around, the move means there will not be collective bargaining again. This is a loss for the DCTA bus operators.
Alison Maguire, DCTA Representative from City of Denton, provided this comment:
“DCTA will now directly employ workers in bus operations. The decision came at a time when contract negotiations between the bus operator’s unions and NTMC were at a stand still. Bus operators had been working for years under a collective bargaining agreement with pay and benefits far behind what other employers in the metroplex were offering to CDL drivers, frustrating efforts at driver recruitment and retention. Staffing shortages at NTMC left the organization without an agent authorized to negotiate on their behalf, and the search for a new agent failed. As a result, the only clear path toward raising driver pay and benefits was to dissolve NTMC and employ drivers directly through NTMC.”
My personal prediction is that, should DCTA continue to move forward with expanding bus service, which is a win for environmentalists, disabled folks, bus riders, people sick of searching for parking on the square (more riders means less drivers means less competition), and anybody with a burdensome car payment that might eventually be able to switch to a bus pass, the demand for CDL operators should continue to necessitate more generous pay. However, I still have some heartburn over the loss of union rights.
Representative Maguire again:
“This move has both pros and cons, on the positive side, in addition to better pay and benefits, merging NTMC and DCTA into a single entity will improve organizational efficiency and accountability. The downside is, in right-to-work states such as Texas, workers employed directly by public entities like DCTA do not have the right to collectively strike or bargain. For those who value democracy in the workplace, this is a real loss. It’s not one I take lightly. I hope that the Amalgamated Transit Union will continue to represent and advocate for bus operators to the greatest extent allowed by Texas law.”
But now, lets talk about that service expansion. As many observers predicted, GoZone is very inefficient at serving dense areas — it costs about $50/hr to operate a GoZone, they can carry 4 passengers per hour. No matter how many GoZones are on the road, they do not get cheaper per passenger. This is the point that this rather obtuse chart gets at.
Buses, on the other hand, have costs go down with riders per hour (see the sloped blue line). Historically, DCTA has not had the kind of ridership where bus service is cheap and efficient, but that’s because they haven’t had the network that has created high ridership. Best practices for high ridership bus network design are that bus routes should serve rider-dense areas such as high density housing, job centers, and retail centers, have linear routes, enable easy transfers, have good service hours, and have high frequency. Take an illustrative example: route 3.
Route 3 is not linear, it loops in a tremendously confusing way. I’ve told dozens of people that I would give them $5 if they could explain to me how the bus runs, and I’ve never had to pay out. This confusion is offputting to potential riders, but confusing routes can still be useful. What’s worse is the rider experience. Say you live at the apartments at the stop designated 2 on the map. To go downtown, your fastest way is to catch the bus as it heads *away from downtown*, go around the loop to the county courthouse, sit for a moment at the “terminus” of the route (stop 1), and then ride back dowtown. To get home, you’ll either get off early and walk the rest of the way, or ride up towards Audra, down 288, and get off.
Of course, that’s just the start of the troubles: Route 3 only comes every 43 minutes, and only runs for 11 hours of the day — 7AM to 5PM (the bus is considered to “run” only till it’s last leave time at 5:09). This means you *might* be able to ride it home from work, if you work near downtown, get off before 5, and catch the last bus.
It’s also notable where route 3 doesn’t go — it doesn’t make it quite to Ryan High, nor does it go to the 3 large mobile home parks farther along McKinney. It also doesn’t go to the loop 288 shopping area/the mall — in fact, no DCTA buses do. A more suitable arrangement for this area would be something like Abundance Denton proposed in their “Bringing Back Our Buses” pitch (which I am happy to say I re-introduced at Denton’s Mobility Committee meeting on Wednesday). Something like this creates two, high frequency routes, allowing for fast transfers for folk headed to the shelter or the mall area, while offering a direct route for folks headed just along 288 or McKinney.
Abundance Denton proposed for these routes to run every 20 minutes* 6AM–8PM, although this was a matter of the funding source the proposal relied on, something like 6AM–10PM or 6AM–midnight would be preferable (*the blue would run every 43, but supplement the existing route 3, providing 20 minute service on most of the route). This would allow easy transfers between the two routes, provide service to tons of high demand areas, and simplify the system, making it easier to understand.
DCTA is not yet taking on new routes, but they have recently hired someone who oversaw DARTs network redesign, which is promising. What they are doing is bumping frequency and hours on existing routes, and removing trips entirely along those routes from the GoZone system.
As the chart shows, DCTA currently runs route 3 from 7AM to 5PM, every 43 minutes. Come August, they will run it every 20 minutes, from 7AM to 9PM. Route 6 also gets about on extra hour of service, again running from 7AM to 9PM (vs current 8:30AM-8:40PM). It will also run every 20 minutes all day, instead of having 40 minute service midday. Note that all these times are weekdays only — DCTA runs a separate Saturday schedule, and no Sunday service. The impetus for this comes from the data obtained by GoZone — a full 10% of GoZone trips in Denton happen entirely along Route 3, 6, and 7 (the GoZone may take other routes, but the pickup and dropoff both occur within 1/4 mile of a 3, 6, or 7 stop).
Representative Maguire again:
“The DCTA board is [..] in the process of designing a long range service plan to meet the needs of our rapidly growing community. This will bring improved rider experience and may require additional hiring. For an agency that just three years ago was contemplating elimination of the bus service and mass driver layoffs, this represents a major shift.”
The opportunity for service investments becomes even greater if UNT routes are considered, but currently DCTA does not integrate their Connect Routes and their UNT Routes tremendously well — even as a Connect Pass entitles riders to use UNT shuttles, and UNT students can use Connect for free.
The catch for folks is that when these improvements drop — GoZone service will no longer be available for folks making trips that start and end along 3, 6, and 7. I’ve spoken to my DCTA rep about ensuring that disabled people are exempt from this “geofence,” as only about 33% of streets in Denton have sidewalk, and even less of that is accessible. This may be a pain point for some riders, although many may prefer the reliability of high frequency bus service — GoZone still has about 10% of requests get a “Ride Not Available” refusal. Still, some riders do legitimately prefer GoZone to buses, although ultimately DCTA has a mandate to provide safe, efficient transportation, and should be agnostic on the form that takes (hint: it’s buses for most of the inner loop of Denton).
All in all, these are exciting developments — DCTA is learning from GoZone, bus service will expand, and drivers will get better pay and benefits. Other changes on the horizon include better stop infrastructure, City of Denton improving bike/pedestrian connectivity (including high quality sidewalk along McKinney between downtown and 288), and the A-Train upgrades presumably 3+ years out. NTMC’s closure and loss of collective bargaining rights for the drivers is a caution flag on the play, but it feels good to say — it’s an exciting day at DCTA.
