How to DART Around Dallas Mass Transit

With the environmental and energy concerns in this world, you might want to consider using public transit. Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, is the mass transit system for Dallas, Texas. It is continually growing and expanding services in the DFW area. From the yellow buses, to the light rails, to the trinity railway express it is a cost saving and effective way to find you way around Dallas.

Where does one start in planning a trip? The easiest way to plan a trip is to use the Internet and go to www.dart.org online. From there you have access to look at their entire website for more information, but a specific quick way to plan the best route is to click the trip planner link on the upper left of the DART website. A direct link to the trip planning web site is: http://tripplan.dart.org/

When you reach the trip planner site you simply type in the address for where you are coming from and then type the address for where you want to go in the spaces provided. If you know one of your locations is to or from a DART facility such as the West Transfer Center downtown you can choose that option from a pull down menu. Then you select the time of day, the date you want to go on your trip and how you want the results sorted such as by the number of transfers or the distance you must walk.

After entering all your information you will be taken to another screen. It will show you options for possible bus routes to take or that it doesn't provide service to your location if it doesn't. If you want to know more specifics on the possible bus routes you can click the link to the given bus route option and you will be taken to yet another page with more information.

Let's walk through step-by-step through an actual trip plan. I want to plan a route from the West End Transfer Center at San Jacinto and Griffin in downtown Dallas and go from there to Richland College. In the plan I want to arrive there by 9 AM on a certain day with the least amount of transfers. How would I go about planning that route?

First I would go to http://www.dart.org and go to the trip plan link on the top left corner of the screen or I would simply go to http://tripplan.dart.org to go directly there. From there under the number one, I would click the option of "selecting from landmarks," and I would click the link for "DART facilities." Then the page will refresh with options in the same box for different DART facilities to choose from and I would choose, "West Transfer Center - San Jacinto @Griffin."

After that comes a space beside the number two with the option of choosing a landmark. I go to that pull down menu and choose "colleges" and the page refreshes with a list on the menu of DFW colleges to choose from. I select, "Richland College."

Under the number three option is the date I will put in for my trip, choose arrival as the option, 8:00 am, and to sort by the number of transfers. And lastly under number four I would click the "get trip plan" button and it will take me to a page with bus routes I could take.

Those are the basics of planning a trip from using the Internet on mass transit in Dallas Texas. There are other ways however. Another way is to call the DART information line, 214-979-1111, and either use the automated route information or wait to speak to an operator. Yet, another way to plan a route is to wait at a bus stop and ask for a DART bus schedule from an operator. Also, bus schedules can be found at the front of public places sometimes like public libraries along bus routes and at DART transfer centers. If you are feeling brave you could just get on a bus and see where it takes you.