Route Ideas for the Proposed TWU DCTA Route
Today at the DCTA board meeting, DCTA announced that they are working with TWU to create a new route. TWU, like UNT, has run out of on campus housing. To address this, they have partnered with two apartment complexes — The Arch Denton and Redpoint, both in what some folks refer to as “the triangle of density” (due to the large amount of what is effectively student housing) between Dallas Dr, Fort Worth Dr, and i35.
There’s a few bumps in the road, per discussion at the DCTA board — they’re looking to get this up and running by August (for folks playing along at that’s less than two months from now, which is a very short timeline) and TWU hasn’t yet committed to a dollar number they’re willing to put on this. I can only imagine how difficult that makes planning. I’ll add a third bump, which is that Denton’s road topography — between one way streets, dead ends from suburban street design, and a variety of highways and railroads that block in different areas — is not the easiest to route buses around. Take, for example, the two apartments.
The apartments, circled in green, are on opposite sides of the rail road tracks, the area has limited direct access to other areas thanks to i35 and the railroad (as well as the truly horrid i35/Dallas Drive one-way-only merge). This makes getting a neat, direct route or extending it to, say, the mall (which you might expect given that the route should come within a mile of the mall) difficult or impossible.
This problem is worsened by the mishmash of routes that exist in the current DCTA system. This is my own DIY map, so all errors are my fault, but also DCTA still doesn’t have a public comprehensive route map I could use instead.
Abundance Denton has called for the network to go through a comprehensive redesign to create something more akin to a network rather than a loose collection of routes. It’s a common problem for transit agencies that it is easier to add various routes for specific purposes over time, than it is to make each incremental step towards more transit mesh into a coherent hole.
In this, I want to propose two possible directions should TWU not have the funds to get their ideal route alignment, which I feel doesn’t add to a cohesive network. The first option helps build a cohesive network, the second is a cheap option that is a bit messy.
The first would involve a budget addition to take some of the unspent funds DCTA has (DCTA takes in more than they spend each year, their current proposed 2025 budget actually clocks in $1M under the 2024 budget, despite some good raises for bus operators and service expansions, and higher ridership projections, a bit of financial/service wizardry from the DCTA team that’s kind of inspiring).
This would provide service to the dense apartments on the other side of 35, which is a high demand area not currently served by buses, access northbound for all the folks living in that area up to 380 to meet the proposed 380 bus route, access to Strickland Middle School (though due to it’s attendance zone, this would mostly benefit staff, not students), and accommodate the churches, grocery store, and apartments on Coranodo along the northern end. It would also allow a potential future realignment of Route 6, which currently goes up Locust but down Bell, an arrangement that makes segments difficult to access, as riders in those areas have to ride a full circle of the bus to get back home. Moving route 6 to go south the whole way down Elm would allow riders in the elm/locust area a more useful bus. (One way streets, especially the segment of locust/elm north of 380, which has no cross-streets till they join, adds some difficulty for riders trying to use the bus).
Should DCTA not wish split the cost with TWU on this, a shorter, shuttle route could be run to the A-Train station, and riders could transfer to route 6.
In this case, DCTA will absolutely need to realign Route 6, though this time moving off Locust and over to Bell for it’s northbound segment, otherwise tens or hundreds of students a day will need to ride all the way up to Discovery Park, wait, and then ride back down to campus, as opposed to the small handful of students who do this currently.
This is an interesting problem for DCTA, and an exciting opportunity. Regardless of how the exact route shakes out, should this move forward, Denton will have a new connection from South of the square up into the north part of Denton, and to the train. Riders will no longer have to ride to UNT via a UNT bus then over to Downtown via Route 7 (or walk a mile to the station from the nearest UNT bus stop).
As I said in my post on the service expansion and operator pay increase, it’s again an exciting day at DCTA, and an exciting day for Dentonites who rely on public transit or wish they could rely on public transit.
